Rose Bowl Ticket Options Sold

You’re not a student, not an alumnus, not a booster. But if USC plays for a third consecutive national championship this season, you want to be there.

Ticket brokers are available to help you, of course, at a hefty surplus. However, if you’re willing to gamble that USC will play in the title game, you can reserve your ticket now.

In an experimental program announced Friday, the Rose Bowl will sell 2,500 tickets to the Jan. 4 BCS championship game to fans who have bought options on the competing teams. By buying an option on USC, for instance, fans reserve a ticket should the Trojans appear in the Rose Bowl.

The tickets cost $175 each, their face value. The cost of the option is not included in the price of the ticket.

“This is a chance for Joe Fan to have a shot at a ticket he wouldn’t normally have otherwise,” said Mitch Dorger, chief executive of the Tournament of Roses.

The gamble: You pay for the option, with no refund if your team does not play in the Rose Bowl.

The options are on sale on www.theticketreserve.com, with 1,250 available for each school. The initial cost of the option varies -- $100 for USC and Texas, $50 for California and Florida State, $10 for UCLA and Northwestern, for example.

Once the allotment is sold out, buyers can sell their options. If USC rolls along undefeated, the value would be expected to rise. If the Trojans lose a couple of games, the option would be virtually worthless.

The Ticket Reserve has sold such options to major sporting events for the last four years, but Chief Executive Rick Harmon said the Rose Bowl agreement represents his company’s “largest and most significant marketplace to date.”

The company generally obtains its tickets from leagues and event organizers or from agencies granted rights by them, company President Peter Roisman said.

“It’s not just the big boosters now,” Roisman said. “You don’t have to be a season-ticket holder. It can be anybody.”

Under its agreement with the BCS, Dorger said, the Rose Bowl allocates 22,000 tickets to each of the competing schools. The Pacific 10 Conference and Big Ten Conference each are obligated to purchase 9,000 tickets, he said.

Pac-10 and Big Ten officials expressed concern they might not be able to sell those tickets if a conference team did not qualify for the Rose Bowl, Dorger said. The 2,500 tickets available for option come from that allotment, he said.

The 1,250 seats sold for each school through the program will be located next to the regularly allocated ones, so a USC fan buying a ticket on option would be seated next to the USC section.

Pac-10 spokesman Jim Muldoon did not return a call for comment. The ticket allocation varies in years the Rose Bowl does not play host to the BCS title game, Dorger said, and officials have made no commitment to the option sales beyond this year.

Neither Dorger nor Roisman would say how much the Rose Bowl might generate from the option sales. Rather than accepting a guaranteed fee, Dorger said, the Rose Bowl will share profits with the Ticket Reserve.

“The revenue potential could be very significant,” Dorger said.

If fans buy all available options for 16 teams at an average of $50, the company would gross $1 million. The revenue from the option sales will be split between the company and the Rose Bowl.

Fans who sell their options keep any profit, but the company charges a transaction fee of 7% to the buyer and 10% to the seller. That revenue would be split as well.

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Taking an option

A look at Ticket Reserve’s option program to buy the right to purchase tickets for bowl games featuring specific teams:

ROSE BOWL

The per-ticket price for options to buy Rose Bowl tickets featuring Pac-10 teams, and for a selection of other schools (prices as listed Thursday evening on Theticketreserve.com for a purchase of two options):

*--* USC $100 Oregon $10 Arizona State $50 Oregon State $10 California $50 Stanford $10 UCLA $10 Washington $10 Arizona $10 Wash. State $10

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*--* OTHERS Georgia $100 Florida $75 LSU $100 Akron $10 Notre Dame $100 Duke $10 Texas $100 Nebraska $10

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BCS BOWLS

The Ticket Reserve uses the same option system for the other three BCS bowls, along with an “All-Access” option that covers a team qualifying for the Fiesta, Orange or Sugar bowl. The prices on those options for Los Angeles’ teams:

*--* USC UCLA Fiesta $30 Fiesta $5 Orange $40 Orange $5 Sugar $20 Sugar $5 All-Access $80 All-Access $8

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