$110 Rose Bowl Seat Not Ticket at UCLA

Faced with lukewarm response from season-ticket holders and students, UCLA has returned 6,300 unsold Rose Bowl tickets to the Tournament of Roses.

School administrators blamed lower-than-expected sales on the price of tickets, which has risen from $75 to $110, and on disappointment over a season-ending loss to Miami that bumped the Bruins from a national championship game in the Fiesta Bowl, tickets for which have a face value of $135.

“We’re a glass-is-half-full group here and we’re happy that we’re Pac-10 champions,” Ken Weiner, associate athletic director, said. “But I think some people think this is a second-place bowl for us.”

With UCLA playing ninth-ranked Wisconsin on New Year’s Day, that suspicion was echoed by fans.

“The true-blue Bruins, the ones who sit around me, will be at the Rose Bowl,” said Jack Allen, an alumnus from Pacific Palisades. “But I’ve been kind of concerned over the letdown.”

The unsold seats represent about one-fifth of UCLA’s allotment of 31,627. The school is still responsible for the cost of those tickets and has turned them over to Rose Bowl officials to sell on consignment.

With the game projected as a sellout for the 52nd consecutive year, bowl officials expected no problems finding takers. Some tickets will be sent to Wisconsin; others will go to sponsors and business partners.

“I’ve seen articles in the paper that this is a soft ticket,” said Jack French, the Rose Bowl chief executive officer. “Not for us, it’s not. In fact, I could use a few more tickets if I could get them.”

Wisconsin administrators have voiced a similar wish, saying their allotment of 25,856 tickets was not nearly enough to satisfy requests from season-ticket holders and students.

So UCLA’s inability to sell out could be viewed as another example of Bruin fans caring more about basketball than football. Last time the team reached the Rose Bowl, in 1994, administrators had similar concerns about covering their allotment and unloaded 4,000 tickets to a booster who sold them through a broker. Those tickets, along with many others, ended up in the hands of Wisconsin fans who turned the stadium into a sea of red.

“UCLA fans will sell their tickets,” said Scott Goldberg, president of All Season Tickets, Inc. in Tarzana. “They’re getting better, but UCLA is traditionally a basketball school and football is just coming up. Plus, when you back into a bowl game, it takes some of the luster off.”

Last year, UCLA lost out on an $8.5-million payday when Sugar Bowl officials chose Ohio State, in part, because they suspected not enough Bruin fans would travel to New Orleans for the game. The Bruins played in the less-profitable Cotton Bowl instead.

This year, UCLA administrators point out that the football team drew about 70,000 a game, with 33,000 of those fans holding season tickets. They said Rose Bowl policy prevents them from offering tickets to fans who are not season-ticket holders, students or university employees.

“There is a large amount of fans out there we couldn’t sell to,” said Marc Dellins, UCLA’s sports information director.

Still, Weiner acknowledged that the university is concerned about public perception of Bruin football fans. He plans a survey that will focus on fans’ willingness to attend bowl games in Los Angeles and other cities.

“We’re going to go out with some intensive mailings to ask that question,” Weiner said.

In this instance, UCLA returned its tickets after receiving only 50% response from three separate mailings to season-ticket holders.

Some of those fans were put off by the $110 price, only slightly less than the $133 they paid to see five regular-season games. And only 1,000 students, accustomed to paying $6 per game, ordered Rose Bowl tickets.

That compares to 4,800 students who saw the Bruins play Wisconsin in 1994, when tickets cost $46.

“The price . . . that may have stung a few people,” Weiner said. “It certainly stung our students.”

* ROSE BOWL NOTES: Surgery to repair a torn knee ligament will keep UCLA nose guard Micah Webb out of Rose Bowl, but he will be back in the fall. Page 6

* GOOD SEATS AVAILABLE: Want to spend New Year’s Eve in El Paso? USC won’t come close to selling its allotment of 8,000 tickets to the Dec. 31 Sun Bowl. Page 6

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Blooming Prices

In half a century, the cost for a ticket to the Rose Bowl game has increased twenty-fivefold.

1998: $110.00

1994: $4.40

Source: Tournament of Roses Public Relations