Going for Broker

The city that never sleeps is kept awake these days by one big question: Where are all the Final Four tickets?

College hoops hysteria, fueled by the NCAA tournament’s final games being played at East Rutherford, N.J., has overwhelmed the locals and flooded ticket brokers’ phone lines. Ticket availability is low and prices are high, something common among sports events as big as this--or the Super Bowl or World Series.

This year, though, ticket brokers say things are a little different.

The relatively tiny Meadowlands Arena seats only 18,500 for the games that begin today. That, combined with the participation of Massachusetts and Syracuse, East Coast schools with large alumni bases in the area, has made tickets to this Final Four the hottest--meaning the most expensive--in sports in a long time.

“It’s just crazy,” said one New York broker. “People are calling left and right.

“Everyone wants [tickets] but there just aren’t many out there. And the ones that are out there, people are asking some pretty ludicrous prices for.”

Ludicrous may be a subjective word, but $8,000 a ticket seems to fit the description. And that for ticket packages that sold for $70 at face value.

Ticket distribution is controlled by the NCAA, which takes the largest portion, about 3,500 seats, for its use. The National Assn. of Basketball Coaches receives the next-biggest allotment, 3,000.

The Final Four schools--Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi State and Syracuse--each received 2,500 tickets. They said their tickets were gone minutes after they were made available. The Meadowlands Organizing Committee received 1,000, leaving only 1,000 for the general public.

The public gained access to the three-game ticket packages, for today’s semifinals and the title game Monday night, through an NCAA lottery last year. The NCAA received almost 92,000 lottery applications.

Brokers said the high interest in Syracuse and Massachusetts, combined with seating limitations at the Meadowlands, has pushed prices higher than for any previous Final Four. By Friday, upper-level seats were going for $2,500. Courtside seats? About $8,000 and rising every New York minute.

Coaches have joked all week about how hot the tickets are.

“I’m praying [Kentucky Athletic Director] C.M. Newton can come up with some tickets,” Wildcat Coach Rick Pitino said. “I don’t have [former Kentucky Coach] Joe B. Hall’s allotment--they cut back on me.”

Jim Steeg has seen this before. The executive director of special events for the NFL, Steeg said that championship sports events and limited public ticket access typically increase fan enthusiasm--and drive up ticket prices. But he also agreed that this Final Four is unique.

“This one this week is definitely up there with the hottest tickets ever,” said Steeg, among those charged with coordinating the Super Bowl. “Being in New York, with an arena under 20,000 and the teams in it, that’s what’s making the difference from other years.”

However, Steeg said that even comparing this Final Four to the popularity of Super Bowls isn’t so clear cut. The NFL controls 25% of Super Bowl tickets compared to about 18% by the NCAA for this Final Four, but Steeg said there is more access to Super Bowl tickets by the public because there are more seats available at football stadiums.

“You have to look at the event and the amount of tickets available to the core fans,” he said. “Dallas’ and Pittsburgh’s fans each received about 11,500 tickets to the [last] Super Bowl. The UMass and Kentucky fans each got 2,500 for the Final Four. That’s a big difference.”

In this regard, the Super Bowl has a major advantage over other popular sports events, Steeg and officials in other sports said.

“We don’t play in football stadiums, so it’s an unfortunate reality that more fans will be turned away from the NBA finals, or the Final Four, than the Super Bowl,” said Chris Brienza, NBA director of media relations. “So many people want to go, but our arenas are much smaller. Once you do the math, you see there’s not much you can do.”

The Meadowlands is small, even by Final Four standards.

At last season’s title game in Seattle, won by UCLA, the attendance was 38,540 in the Kingdome. More than 64,000 attended the 1993 title game at the Superdome in New Orleans. Acknowledging this season’s problem, the NCAA said all future Final Fours will be played in arenas that seat at least 30,000. But that doesn’t help much right now.

“Certainly, tickets have been tight, and that’s been the main issue,” said the NCAA’s Kathryn Reith. “The allotments to the schools were smaller, and the allotment to the general public is smaller than we would have liked it to be.

“The [NCAA men’s basketball committee] thought it would be a little tighter than some of the other Final Fours, but they probably couldn’t have realized how tight it would be when they awarded [the venue] six years ago. The Final Four has grown enormously in popularity even since then.”

The ads illustrate the desperation.

In New York and New Jersey newspapers, eager ticket-seekers plead for as many as possible. Brokers who have them say they are reluctant to quote firm prices over the phone or talk about the ticket hysteria because of how prices have fluctuated during the week.

“I got burned in a [newspaper] story because I said tickets were going for a certain price and then they jumped that day,” said a Los Angeles broker. “I tell someone a price and then it changes because of the demand, and then they get mad at me. The whole thing is not worth it.”

Healthy profits should ease some of the brokers’ pain. Until last June, New Jersey brokers could not resell tickets for more than 20% above face value. But the state legislature changed the law and brokers now can resell tickets for whatever they can get.

Lacking the financial resources to buy tickets to the hottest sports events, many fans try to win them in contests. Radio stations such as XTRA in San Diego hold contests with ticket giveaways.

“Most fans, the John Q. Public, can’t afford a ticket,” said talk-show host Lee Hamilton. “So when a ticket becomes available through a contest or a radio promotion, it becomes a real hot thing.”

In major league baseball, the league office controls about 11,000 World Series tickets each season, officials said. Season-ticket holders of participating teams get the next crack through a lottery system.

“You would like to get as many tickets as possible out to the general public,” said Pat Courtney, a spokesman for major league baseball. “But you have to be fair to the season-ticker holders because they’re the ones who support the sport. It’s tough.”

And it will be as long as there are big sports events, said Jack French, executive director of the Tournament of Roses and Rose Bowl game.

“When you have high demand for something not open to the public, of course there’s going to be this type of atmosphere,” French said. “But this is a problem most [organizers] love to have.”

Times staff writer Chris Baker contributed to this story from Los Angeles.