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West Virginia Could Lose $650,000 on Orange Bowl Tickets

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The Orange Bowl required West Virginia University to purchase 17,500 tickets. WVU has sold just 7,500 of that allotment for their Jan 4th match up with Clemson. Even the most optimistic of projections have them coming well short, and eventually losing about $650,000 on the Orange Bowl ticket agreement.

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

West Virginia is also competing with other sources that are selling Orange Bowl tickets for less. The lowest ticket prices through the school are $99 in the upper level, but on Monday afternoon, StubHub.com had tickets for the Orange Bowl as low as $19…

…West Virginia also struggled in ticket sales during its last BCS bowl appearance. The Mountaineers sold just under 8,000 of its allotment for the 2008 Fiesta Bowl. However, there were other circumstances surrounding the bowl game that season.

The current bowl tickets set-up socializes all risk to the University and privatizes all gain to the Bowl. That’s not free enterprise nor free market. What’s going to be the incentive for a school to get to the BCS, if it leads to a large financial loss for a state-subsidized University?
Who’s going to buy tickets through the West Virginia Mountaineers when the nose bleeds are costing a C-Note yet you can get tickets through the secondary market for less than an Andrew Jackson?

Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site that generates millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports

A Fulbright scholar and MBA, Banks has appeared on live radio shows all across the world. The President of the United States follows him on Twitter (@Paul_M_BanksTSB) You should too.