The prospect of scoring a sought-after ticket to the BCS National Championship Game is enough to prompt some people to cross the country and do the unthinkable: offer thousands of dollars to complete strangers they meet in parking lots.
With heavy ticket demand for the national championship game between two undefeated teams rivaling the Valley's last monumental sporting event - Super Bowl XLII - law-enforcement agencies and bowl officials are concerned that some desperate fans may drop big money on fake tickets.
To that end, police and bowl officials have some recommendations intended to protect fans trying to get a ticket to the sold-out game:
- Those shopping online should buy from a site such as StubHub, which offers a "fan protect" feature. "They protect the buyer more than they do the seller," said Adam Lehe, Fiesta Bowl ticket manager.
- Those shopping for tickets near the stadium should use the designated ticket-resale area on the north end of University of Phoenix Stadium.
- Whether fans buy scalped tickets in the parking lot or the designated resale area, they should have no qualms asking the ticket seller to escort them to the stadium gate to ensure the ticket is legitimate, Glendale police Detective Travis Darby said.
The prospect of waiting in line to get to the stadium with a scalper might seem abnormal to fans traveling from out of state where such activity is illegal, but Darby said the emphasis for law enforcement is on protecting fans.
"A legitimate ticket-resale broker, if they want to sell you a ticket, they will walk with you up to the gate to get that ticket scanned to make sure it's legit," Darby said. "Someone selling tickets who doesn't want to walk with you to the gate to verify them, there should be something wrong with it."
The alternative - paying for a ticket that won't get you into the game - is a losing proposition for everyone except the scalper, Darby said.
While demand for Tostitos Fiesta Bowl tickets does not compare with that of the BCS national title game, officials offered the same warnings to fans looking for last-minute tickets to Saturday night's game.
Darby and other officers took counterfeit-ticket claims when Glendale hosted the Super Bowl in 2008, and he said the high demand for game tickets created a lucrative market for counterfeiters. When fans found out they'd been had, there generally was little information for law enforcement to work with, Darby said.
"Some of the folks had purchased seats minutes before this happened and they get up to the gate and say 'I purchased them from that guy right there,' " Darby said. " 'That guy' was never seen again."
The BCS National Championship Game tickets come with a number of security features known to only bowl and security officials, Lehe said, but there were some poorly made fake tickets circulating when Glendale hosted the BCS national title game in 2007 that would have raised anyone's suspicions.
"Poor quality print and ink, and the paper was of poor quality," Lehe said. "Those are the two biggest flags the average person on the street will notice."
But some of the fakes were so well done that officials had to rely on security features embedded in the tickets to identify the counterfeits.
The abundance of tickets printed off of the Internet has added to concerns for officials this year. Darby said a newer scam involves a legitimate ticket buyer printing off multiple copies of a ticket for a single seat, and selling those tickets. The first person to get scanned at the gate will get the seat. The rest of the buyers will be out of luck, despite having a ticket that looks exactly like a legitimate ticket printed off the Internet, Darby said.
The high demand for tickets and the crooked scalpers that follow are unique to Glendale this season, but it is an issue the NCAA encounters wherever the BCS National Championship Game is played.
"Our bottom line is buyer beware," said Christopher Radford, an NCAA spokesman. "If someone is not purchasing a ticket from us or one of our schools or hospitality partners, they do so at their own peril."
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