The highest-priced real estate in Los Angeles these days may well be a seat at the USC-UCLA game.
Tickets on the resale market are being offered for up to $6,000 each, although supplies have been limited. “People are just not selling tickets,” said Doug Knittle, founder of Beverly Hills-based RazorGator, an online ticket resale site.
With both teams having spectacularly successful seasons, the battle of the cross-town rivals has gone from an annual Southern California tradition to having an impact on college football’s national rankings.
On one side is powerful USC, the defending national champion, and on the other is surprising UCLA, which won eight straight games, several of them involving improbable comebacks, before falling to lowly Arizona on Nov. 5. Even that upset hasn’t slowed demand for the Dec. 3 game, according to ticket brokers.
San Francisco-based StubHub, another resale ticket site, sees the matchup surpassing USC-Notre Dame as its highest grossing regular season football game. The hype could even push gross ticket sales beyond that of any regular season National Football League game.
“It could potentially be the top selling professional or college regular season football game of the year,” said Sean Pate, a StubHub spokesman. Currently the game is fourth among all regular season football games professional and college as ranked by gross sales.
Pate said sales could surpass $500,000, making it the highest selling regular season college football game in the company’s history. The average sale price for the UCLA-USC game was $367, Pate said, with the highest asking price reaching $6,000.
Of course, many ticket holders aren’t willing to give up their seat to the Dec. 3 game at any price. “Anybody who has a ticket should use it,” said John Tournour, a host for Los Angeles-based Fox Sports Radio Network.
For local ticket brokers, the Bruin-Trojan face-off will be followed by the Jan. 4 Rose Bowl, which will feature the top two teams in college football’s convoluted Bowl Championship Series. Knittle suspects that ticket prices are likely to go even higher if USC plays Texas for the national championship.
