Sports Illustrated (12/19/19)

Eventellect co-founder Patrick Ryan cited three issues underlying the erosion of the college football bowl ticketing market over the last several years. The biggest influence has been the dearth of viable upper bowl seats due to competition from TV. To remedy this, Ryan suggested "the worst seats shouldn't be made available for sale until the better sections are sold and if suddenly the matchup changes and there is greater demand, the bowl game can start selling additional rows. This takes some analytics and planning, but it's certainly viable as some professional teams have successfully implemented the strategy." The second factor Ryan noted was the secondary ticket market, and he thinks improving school allocations could benefit the bowls, and eventually recondition fans to buy through primary sellers. The third factor was bowls' risk mitigation strategy, which effectively ceded control over their own inventory. Ryan said a handful of bowls have started relying on advanced data and analytics to adjust to "selling fewer tickets to resellers and foregoing some of that upfront revenue in exchange for having more control over pricing overall." This could avoid severe undercutting of pricing so that the game is more likely to sell its remaining tickets closer to face value.

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