VANCOUVER – Ticket prices for Saturday’s UFC 115 event in Vancouver appear to be dropping quickly, following speculation that scalpers had scooped up most pre-sale tickets and oversaturated the resale market.
Tickets for the mixed martial arts event at GM Place sold out in 30 minutes on April 13 – two days before the sale would have been opened to the general public. Members of the Ultimate Fighting Championship Fight Club, who pay $75 a year for a number of inside-access privileges, had scooped up all of the nearly 19,000 tickets, which ranged in price from $75 to $601.
Within minutes, tickets began appearing on sites such as Craigslist, StubHub and eBay, marked up several times over. On April 14, the cheapest seats at online ticket marketplace StubHub were listed for $265 US each. On Tuesday, however, the cheapest tickets on the same site had dropped to $69. Floor seats were available for $475.
Craigslist had about 1,000 postings from people looking to buy or sell UFC 115 tickets, with many going for between $200 and $300 and several for less than $100. Online marketplace eBay, StubHub’s parent company, had “buy-it-now” prices starting at $99.80.
“Tickets are perishable items, so given that there is quite a bit of availability right now, we should expect to see fluctuations in pricing between now and the event day itself,” said Joellen Ferrer, manager of public relations and corporate communications for StubHub. “If supply outpaces demand, we will certainly see prices go down even further.”
More than 1,000 tickets were available on StubHub as of Tuesday afternoon, Ferrer noted, up from about 500 in April. Not everyone has abandoned dreams of earning a small fortune off ticket resales, however: One seller had listed on StubHub two eighth-row floor seat tickets for a total of $15,000.
Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell, who has been spotted walking around downtown Vancouver, takes on Rich Franklin in UFC 115’s main card. Canadians Rory MacDonald, David Loiseau and Claude Patrick also appear on the Vancouver card.
with files from Chris Parry, Vancouver Sun
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