Rose Bowl Tickets Now $75 : College football: Unannounced price hike of almost 60% is defended as necessary by officials, who expect no outcry.

In an effort to keep the Rose Bowl, proclaimed the “Granddaddy of Them All,” the sugar daddy to the Pacific 10 and Big Ten conferences, ticket prices are being increased 58.7%, from $48 to $75, for the 1996 game.

The move will increase the payout to each league from $6.7 million to $8.1 million and will boost the money available for expenses by about $435,000, to $1.125 million.

Tom Hansen, the Pac-10 commissioner and member of the Tournament of Roses Management Committee, said Monday its decision--made at a meeting April 27--was spawned by the beginning of the Bowl Alliance, prices for tickets to events of similar stature and heightened interest in the Rose Bowl in the last two years.

“To keep the Rose Bowl as a premier game, we have to be competitive with the Alliance bowls,” Hansen said. “They are pooling their money to pay competing teams about $8.4 million and we have to compete with that.”

The Bowl Alliance was established among the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East, Southeastern Conference, Big 12, Notre Dame and--for this season only--Southwest Conference to try to have a college national championship game played each year at one of three bowls: the Fiesta, Sugar and Orange.

“To be honest with you, it’s something the conferences thought we had to have to be competitive,” said Jack French, the game’s executive director. “It was an agenda item [on April 27], ‘ticket prices,’ and I thought we would increase it to $50 with the idea that this was the 50th anniversary of the Rose Bowl’s tie with the Pac-10 and Big Ten. We talked about going to $60 next year and then $75 the year after, but it was decided to just take the heat, if there is any, now and go to $75.”

The increase, which was not announced, is to hold for three years.

“To be honest with you, I don’t think we really addressed how [advising the public] was going to be handled,” French said. “Because all but about 2,000 tickets are sold by contract to participating universities and others, we really didn’t see that as a problem.”

The price, Hansen said, is a product of the market.

“We looked at what other bowls were doing, and other events of comparable and even lesser stature were doing, and decided this wasn’t excessive,” he said, citing Super Bowls, NBA All-Star games and the Olympic Games.

That tickets for the Wisconsin-UCLA Rose Bowl game of 1994 and Oregon-Penn State game of 1995 commanded prices of up to $500 on the scalpers’ markets did not escape the committee’s attention.

“It probably had some influence on the increase being as aggressive as it was,” said Hansen, who added he did not expect a huge public outcry over the increase.

“When you consider the 65,000 or so tickets that go to people away from Southern California, to the Big Ten and Pac-10 schools, except when USC or UCLA plays in the game, the ticket price isn’t a real big part of the package when you consider transportation, lodging and entertainment.”

Prices for Rose Bowl tickets have continually increased over the last 15 years, generally at a rate of about $1-$2 a year. The 1995 prices were $48.

French also said the price reflected a trend among the nation’s premier bowl games, particularly those of the Bowl Alliance.

The Fiesta Bowl has increased its tickets from $40 to between $55 and $80, depending on seat location, with a few premium seats going for $150. The Orange Bowl went from $35 to $42 last season and will go to $50 next year.

Troy Mathieu, the Sugar Bowl executive director, said ticket prices will be increased from a flat $50 per seat, regardless of location, to $50-$100, depending on location.