If you’re looking to pinch pennies and get into a Duke-North Carolina game, tonight might be your best shot.
The average secondary-market ticket for tonight’s 9 p.m. contest at the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill is $412, according to Will Flaherty, communications director of SeatGeek.com, a website that gathers data from “a hundred different retailers on the secondary market.”
That is the cheapest it has been to get into the game at the Dean Dome in the last three years, with an average cost of $483 the prior two years. It's also way cheaper than the average price it takes to scalp your way in to the game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, where it cost $1,007 this year and averages out to $1,139 over the last three years.
Although the primary factor in the price differential between the games' locations is the seating capacity—the Dean Dome holds 21,750 occupants while Cameron Indoor Stadium squeezes in 9,314—the universities also have different ticket pricing and scalping policies.
It takes a $5,000 donation to the Rams Club in order to be eligible to purchase two season tickets to North Carolina men’s basketball games, plus the cost of tickets, which varies from game to game. The face-value cost for the Duke game ranges from $100 in the lower level to $90 in the upper one.
Read more about this year's matchup between Duke and North Carolina
In order to purchase two season tickets to Duke men’s basketball, it takes a $7,000 donation to the Iron Dukes. Ticket costs do not vary from game to game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, with the most expensive ones going off at $84 per game and the cheapest ones—in the very back corners of the stadium—costing $39.
However the biggest difference may not be in the price, but instead in what patrons are allowed to do with the tickets. Duke has a strict policy against scalping, while North Carolina allows it.
“The secondary market is out there,” said Brian Bersticker, director of donation services for the Rams Club. “Once you buy a season ticket, it’s pretty much yours.”
Duke, however, states that “ticket scalping is against Duke University policy and is strictly prohibited,” with violators getting a permanent loss in ticket purchasing privileges for all Duke athletic events.
It can be difficult to catch scalpers, though, said Jack Winters, Duke associate athletic director and executive director of the Iron Dukes Annual Fund.
Winters said the Iron Dukes needs to be completely certain which seat is being sold in order to punish somebody, something that is often difficult on common resale websites such as StubHub, which may list a seat row and section, but not the exact number.
"If we don’t have the specific info for the exact tickets that are being scaled, it’s tough for us to act,” Winters said. "For us to do something on StubHub we'd have to actually buy the tickets."
But that doesn’t mean they never catch anybody. Winters said they find people “at least once a month” and follow through on their stated policy, revoking ticket purchase privileges for that patron.
"Bottom line: when we have first hand knowledge that tickets were being scalped, that’s when are able to act on the people who bought the tickets originally," Winters said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.