Georgia Tech's ticket office will begin selling tickets Sept. 9 for the annual rivalry game against Georgia in November, but instead of selling tickets at a fixed price, the university will experiment with fluid prices that reflect fluctuating market demand — much like how the secondary ticketing market functions.
The goal is to optimize pricing, capture revenue otherwise lost to the secondary market and remove that "middle man."
As reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Tech has previously sold tickets to the Georgia game only through season-ticket or multi-game packages, in part to keep tickets in the hands of Yellow Jackets fans. However, that has impacted sales of other games. Brokers purchasing season tickets have long sold tickets to more in-demand games such as Georgia or Clemson at a premium but then sold the rest at much lower prices. Likewise, the ticket office found that Georgia and Clemson fans were buying the multi-game packs but using the tickets only for their teams’ games and then unloading the rest on secondary markets, which drove down the price for tickets for those games.
From AB: Dynamic Pricing Pinpoints Market Value of Tickets
Both practices ensured revenue for Tech on the front end but undercut the ticket office’s ability to sell tickets to games other than the most popular matchups when secondary market prices were lower than Tech’s set prices.
From AB: Variable Ticket Pricing Catching On With Colleges
“Really, it’s about just having your finger on the pulse of supply and demand and how that affects pricing to make sure we’re accurately pricing and moving tickets at an optimum price,” Mike Castle, Tech’s assistant athletic director for ticket sales and operations, told the Journal-Constitution.
