Bang for Your Basketball Buck

Oh were we ever excited about December 1st.

Not because it is the birthday of our senior year high school president, Max Grinnell, but because it is the day that Husky men's basketball single game tickets go on sale.

We'd organized a group of five. We were ready to buy our tickets for the Gonzaga, Arizona and Stanford game. But, when we called the ticket office yesterday to ask a preliminary question, we discovered this tragedy: the games are already sold out.

How can they be sold out when tickets haven't even gone on sale yet? Because the Huskies offered season ticket holders the right to buy extra tickets to these games.

This is a stupid policy, and you should be annoyed about it, because, in the end, it costs YOU money.

We will tell you why:

The UW sells these extra tickets to season ticket holders, for the normal season ticket price of $35. The season ticket holders (no dummies) turn around and sell these tickets, at a markup, to scalpers. The scalpers then sell them on the Internet for eight times the face value.

Why does this cost you money? Because the University of Washington is a taxpayer-supported institution. If the athletic department simply had the foresight to hold a few thousand single game tickets to sell for, say $50? $75? (far less than they are going for on StubHub or Ebay) they'd generate $100,000 extra per game to educate our state's misguided youth. Instead, the scalpers reap profits and Abdul Q. Taxpayer gets the shaft.

This kind of inexplicable economic behavior isn't restricted to the educational world. Microsoft sells the new Xbox for $399. Yet on eBay new Xboxes are going for nearly $1000. Some guy even sold an empty Xbox box for $600. Microsoft is missing out on millions of dollars in revenue. Does Ballmer know about this?

But, we have digressed. Back to basketball. If you are on a budget, the game for you is this Friday night. 6'11" Spencer Hawes, the #2 rated prep center in the entire nation, leads Seattle Prep against Ingraham.

The game is at Ingraham's gym, at 8pm. Cost to you? Six clams. To watch a player who will start for the Huskies next year, and who NBA scouts said might have been a top ten pick in last June's draft. What a bargain.

Seattlest tip: Turn north on Meridian, not Ashworth, when heading to Ingraham. Also, while you're up north, stop by the Granite Curling Club, which pays Seattlest for frequent and favorable publicity. It's across the street from Ingraham.