The Ryder Cup Ticket Prices

[iacas]

2 hours ago, Beastie said:

It’s not live on free to air tv in the UK, and hasn’t been since 1995. ( I pay a subscription to Sky for generally good golf coverage). There are limited highlights on the BBC for some golf events, but that’s it. Are other/all PGA events on NBC?

I'm still not sure why you think lower ticket prices should encourage free to view, particularly for a Ryder Cup in the U.S. where it's broadcast on NBC, which is free to us here. The U.S. PGA reaps the benefits of a U.S. Ryder Cup. The European Tour reaps the benefits of a Euro Ryder Cup.

2 hours ago, Beastie said:

Allowing ticket scalping is a systemic failure across sports and showbiz

You're missing the point.

2 hours ago, Beastie said:

Charging more to keep prices down is an interesting concept, in practice no doubt you are right even if It sounds a bit Catch 22 

You misunderstood.

2 hours ago, Beastie said:

Do you think sports tickets and broadcast rights  should be sold on a purely capitalist basis, or is there an argument to say that some sports might benefit more from wider exposure and affordable access.

Oh man.

They sold out. It's as wide an exposure as they wanted to get. Given the limited quantity of tickets, your best plan to maximize profits is to sell them for the highest price.

Let's say they wanted to sell 50k tickets a day.

• If you price the tickets at $1,000,000, the market size might be 20 people, so you might sell ten to some super-wealthy golf fan. That's $10M/day.
• If you price the tickets at $1, the market size is maybe 2 million people, so you'll definitely sell all 50k tickets. You'll make $50,000.
• If you price the tickets at, I dunno, let's say $750, your market size might be 51,000, or 75,000… but either way, you still sell all 50k tickets. You make $37,500,000.
• If you price the tickets at $1,000, the market size might only be 35,000. So you'd make $35,000,000.
• Let's say you attended the Beastie School of Economics, and you sell the tickets for $200. You sell all 50k, making a profit of $10,000,000. You're leaving $27,500,000 on the table, and the secondary market ticket resellers probably bought up all the tickets, sensing value.

Simple stuff here, really. The only trick is getting the price right. Price it too high, and you won't sell out. Price it too low, and you left money on the table (which secondary market ticket resellers will sop up).

2 hours ago, Beastie said:

Fans might benefit from cheaper tickets and in the UK at least, TV coverage that reaches a wider audience.

I suggest re-reading the first post and this post.

[Ty_Webb]

9 hours ago, iacas said:

They sold out. It's as wide an exposure as they wanted to get. Given the limited quantity of tickets, your best plan to maximize profits is to sell them for the highest price.

To whom? To actual fans who want to go? Or to scalpers? Lots of tickets available on stubhub. Does that sound like fans who snagged the tickets, but now found out they can't go or people who grabbed stacks of tickets in the hope of reselling them for more money (the prices are all north of $750 - apart from a ticket for parking at Jones Beach, but I don't count that).

[dennyjones]

1 hour ago, Ty_Webb said:

To whom? To actual fans who want to go? Or to scalpers? Lots of tickets available on stubhub. Does that sound like fans who snagged the tickets, but now found out they can't go or people who grabbed stacks of tickets in the hope of reselling them for more money (the prices are all north of $750 - apart from a ticket for parking at Jones Beach, but I don't count that).

While you make a point, the Ryder Cup doesn't care who buys their tickets.   The tickets were sold and the revenue was received.   If there was a severe outpouring of complaints maybe something would be done about the state of ticket sales.  Sadly this is the current state of the market, ie. Taylor Swift. 

[Ty_Webb]

6 minutes ago, dennyjones said:

While you make a point, the Ryder Cup doesn't care who buys their tickets.   The tickets were sold and the revenue was received.   If there was a severe outpouring of complaints maybe something would be done about the state of ticket sales.  Sadly this is the current state of the market, ie. Taylor Swift. 

I was responding to the discussion with Beastie where he was suggesting that scalpers should be banned. I would think that the PGA could set this up in such a fashion that you can't transfer tickets - if you find that you can't go, you could sell them back to the PGA for maybe like a $25 restocking fee or something like that. That would make the tickets much easier to get for people who actually want to go and they'd get the price that the PGA charged, rather than whatever additional profit the scalpers want to make. They're making money while providing no service whatsoever. 

I might also be inclined to suggest that the PGA perhaps should care some who buys their tickets. I don't know exactly what their mission statement is, but I would hope that access to the game for more people should be a part of it. I would also think that PGA pros should want the game to grow - more people playing the game equals more lessons. At $750+ there aren't going to be many 10 year olds who go and catch a bug for the game.

[iacas]

2 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

To whom? To actual fans who want to go? Or to scalpers?

That's not relevant. If they wanted to sell 50k tickets, they still managed to do that. The tickets will get used, so that's as "widespread" as they wanted. Dropping the price to still sell the same number of tickets would be dumb.

Again, it's not like the tickets won't get used, and the way to reduce the # of tickets on stubhub, etc. is to price them where secondary ticket resellers don't see a lot of value. If the tickets were $1M, no secondary ticket resellers would buy it. If they were $1, they'd buy as many as they could.

48 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

I would think that the PGA could set this up in such a fashion that you can't transfer tickets - if you find that you can't go, you could sell them back to the PGA for maybe like a $25 restocking fee or something like that.

That's an order of magnitude more complicated. And, again, if you price them appropriately, you can sell out while minimizing the value seen by secondary ticket resellers, while keeping it simple.

48 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

I might also be inclined to suggest that the PGA perhaps should care some who buys their tickets. I don't know exactly what their mission statement is, but I would hope that access to the game for more people should be a part of it.

Stuff like that sounds good until you scratch a few atoms off the top.

48 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

I would also think that PGA pros should want the game to grow - more people playing the game equals more lessons. At $750+ there aren't going to be many 10 year olds who go and catch a bug for the game.

Scratch a few atoms off the top man.

[ChetlovesMer]

1 hour ago, Ty_Webb said:

if you find that you can't go, you could sell them back to the PGA for maybe like a $25 restocking fee or something like that. That would make the tickets much easier to get for people who actually want to go and they'd get the price that the PGA charged,

Just an FYI, this has been tried by nearly every major sport at one time or another. Its surprisingly difficult and expensive for the sport to deal with. 

1 hour ago, Ty_Webb said:

At $750+ there aren't going to be many 10 year olds who go and catch a bug for the game.

I'm not sure that is necessarily a problem. Within a short driver of where I live there are tons of lesser events, semi-pro, corn-ferry, even college or high-school events I can and have taken my son and daughter to, in order to help them catch a bug for the game. We've all had a great time attending them. Plus we could leave early and not feel bad when the 10-year-old attention span starts to wain. ... although unfortunately no bugs for the game have been caught so far. 😢

 

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

the way to reduce the # of tickets on stubhub, etc. is to price them where secondary ticket resellers don't see a lot of value.

As a consumer you could always refuse to buy from stubhub, etc.... If everyone did that it would put the secondary sellers out of business. 
I say that as a complete hypocrite, as I have used stubhub more than once to get tickets to events. I paid over face value for the tickets but not that much over face value. Plus, Stubhub actually had fewer added fees than did the original seller, which narrowed the gap between what I paid and what I would have paid from original seller. (I assume the original seller waives such fees for the likes of Stubhub) 

[Beastie]

The US players are to get 500k to play- 300k to charity and 200k to fill their nearly empty wallets. Tiger will be disappointed it’s not more. 

[Lolitaaa]

On 12/5/2024 at 6:34 PM, Ty_Webb said:

I was responding to the discussion with Beastie where he was suggesting that scalpers should be banned. I would think that the PGA could set this up in such a fashion that you can't transfer tickets - if you find that you can't go, you could sell them back to the PGA for maybe like a $25 restocking fee or something like that. That would make the tickets much easier to get for people who actually want to go and they'd get the price that the PGA charged, rather than whatever additional profit the scalpers want to make. They're making money while providing no service whatsoever. 

I might also be inclined to suggest that the PGA perhaps should care some who buys their tickets. I don't know exactly what their mission statement is, but I would hope that access to the game for more people should be a part of it. I would also think that PGA pros should want the game to grow - more people playing the game equals more lessons. At $750+ there aren't going to be many 10 year olds who go and catch a bug for the game.

Agree, scalpers ruin access. PGA could easily implement non-transferable tickets with a return option to keep it fair for real fans.

[turtleback]

On 12/16/2024 at 1:56 PM, Beastie said:

The US players are to get 500k to play- 300k to charity and 200k to fill their nearly empty wallets. Tiger will be disappointed it’s not more. 

I just noticed this because someone else brought the thread back up.  Tiger is on record saying the players should get a large chunk of the millions the event generates to donate to their selected charities, not to put in their own pockets.  Just to be clear.

[Lolitaaa]

On 11/5/2024 at 10:20 PM, Wally Fairway said:

Great point - my experience from the 2004 Oakland Hills Ryder Cup. I got 4 tickets for Friday, had some buddies go with me and we saw shots on about 4 holes. You really have to decide who you want to see, then try to jump ahead to see them somewhere on the back 9. If you got into the grandstands then you'd likely have a good view only of that green/tee box. 

Sidenote: I knew a guy who was a member at Birmingham CC, and he was a marshal on the 18th hole and he was out there all day, both morning and afternoon groups. And he had 1 group play the hole in the morning and another in the afternoon. Huge corporate tents around the 18 green, along with some grandstands. And you get to see maybe 6 or 7 shots counting the approach and putts. 

Learned my lesson, I have no issue in going to another Ryder Cup, especially at the prices they want for 2025. I think it was $40 for a practice round (went to one of those as well) and maybe $75 for Friday/Saturday, $100 for Sunday. And it was "limited" to 20,000 tickets/day, which is still very crowded to follow 4 pairings around the course.

Totally agree, Ryder Cup crowds are wild. If you're not in a grandstand early, you're chasing glimpses of shots all day.

[Lolitaaa]

On 12/4/2024 at 10:16 PM, Ty_Webb said:

As a supporter of the European team even though I chose to live in the US, this is kind of good news. I'm pretty close to Bethpage, but won't be going at these prices. Neither will the crazy drunk NY sports fans who would have made this a very difficult place to play as a Euro. The tickets will go to the city types who are entertaining clients and don't care about the money. Many of them are going to sit there and watch, not get all raucous. I am not dumb enough to believe that this is going to be like a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park for the Euros, but I think it will be significantly more subdued as a result of the prices. Even at $250 I would probably have been watching on the TV anyway so no real skin in the game. I completely agree that this is more of a one-time trip with friends than a family outing. The price is high, but if you consider the experience, it might be worth not upgrading your gear this year. Speaking of good value for money, I came across this list of online casinos with a deposit of only 5 euros https://casinosfest.com/fr/casino-en-ligne-5-depot/ a cool way to have fun without spending a lot. The idea is the same: it's all about your desired experience. 

Totally get that high prices definitely change the vibe! Sometimes, a quieter crowd makes for a better game experience anyway!

Edited June 23, 2025 by Lolitaaa