So, who's having any luck getting ahold of tickets? I've got 8 SA tickets and just found out that I need to get two more. I've noticed the SA Ticket Exchange is very heavily weighted towards buyers (to the tune of about 25 to 1). Any advice for scrounging up a few last minute SA tickets at something close to face value? Anyone have any to sell?
Good luck. It's not going to be easy. More than likely you're going to have to pay a lot more than face value to get two more.
some lowlifes are selling them on eBay at a huge profit http://tickets.search.ebay.com/us-mexico_Tickets_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8QQsacatZ1305
You call them lowlifes and yet you provide the link? And your name is capitalist. Something rings strange here.
You're right. I'm actually mad at US Soccer for taking the most important WCQ to the smallest soccer stadium. I do need a few more tickets but I'm not capitalist enough to pay $600 for them
actually the 4 seats together went up to $835 (link) and $900 (link) I think it's fair to say that US Soccer miscalcuated the demand for this game
I think they made the right decision. It wasn't about miscalculating the demand as much as it was trying to give us a homefield advantage against our biggest rivals. Where else to you propose we could have played this? Chicago...no; Home Depot Center...absolutely not; Texas, Florida...no way. The only other option would be Salt Lake or in the Northeast somewhere, both of which locations have hosted the last 2 home games.
Salt Lake has a huge stadium, and there's a few Mexicans in Denver, who could easily drive out there. They wanted a small stadium where the majority of tickets would be sold through presales such as season ticket holders and Sam's Army. Both these groups are generally very likely to take extra care when re-selling tickets.
Id rather play in a small 22k stadium were we will easily have a Pro US crowd of 80/20 instead of going to a 60k stadium were the chances of a 50/50 crowd are higher. Even if it is SLC.
This is the one game every four years where US Soccer isn't "All about the Benjamins" and you get pissed at them for it?
I've been to Columbus for the Grenada WCQ last June. There was no home field advantage in Columbus. Attendance: "A crowd of 9,137 -- the smallest at a U.S. home World Cup qualifier in two decades." - Miami Herald (PATHETIC given the 4-5,000 spice fans - boy, are those SpiceBoyz loud) If you remember, there were dozens of threads here at the time blaming everyone from US Soccer to the Pope. Don't lecture me about C-bus.
Okay, this is going to sound mean but... Get a clue. That Grenada game. This Mexico game. Oranges. Apples. Were you here in 2001? Then don't lecture me about Crew Stadium.
I was there in 2001. I know this is different. I was just correcting a misconception that due to its geographical location, C-bus can guarantee home field advantage (which was mentioned in several places these past few weeks).
I was there for Grenada and Jamaica in 2004. There is no comparison to Mexico in 2005 and 2001. C'mon dude - buy a clue!
It's not because of geographic location, fact is, you're going to run into a large amount of Mexicans anywhere you go in this country these days. The dynamics of the ticket sales in C-Bus, and capacity, is what controls the home field advantage these days, location isn't as much as of factor anymore (unless it's Salt Lake City).
My point is that with proper planning, we could have had a massive home field advantage in a much larger stadium. Simple as that.
Salt Lake City would not have a home field advantage if we played a team with more than 80K expatriots living the US. If we had played Guatemala or Honduras there, that crowd would not have been the pro USA crowd of the scale we saw against CR. The reality is that the Central Americans with large expat populations living in the US (e.g, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador) are going to come see their team play against the US, no matter where in the damn country the game is played. These people fly on planes, drive cars, ride in busses to get to the games. I believe the SLC is served by all these forms of transportation. For comparison, check this http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/foreign/ppl-145/tab03-4.pdf The Mexican-born ex-pat population is 100 times that of Costa Rica. The Guatemalan-born population is 4.5 times that of CR. I figure there were at least 10K CR fans at the game in RSL. Multiply that times the proportionate number of Guatemalans in the US and you could just about fill Rice-Eccles stadium with Guatemalans.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you on that one. I don't think that the "massive" need for more tickets is coming from the US-side. I think we will nearly max-out our US fan base at Columbus with the tickets that were sold. Sure, there are still US supporters without tickets, but say we release another 5,000 tickets (for a stadium that has that many more seats than Columbus). If those 5,000 tickets were open to whoever wanted them, how many do you think would go to US supporters who do not already have tickets to the game in Columbus? Sure, the Fed could sell at least another 10,000 tickets for this game, but they wouldn't be to US supporters...thus, there goes the home field advantage that we can get in Columbus. I think you are grossly overestimating the support for US soccer and US soccer fan's willingness to travel to see a game, even one of this magnitude.
I'd say that they should at least tap into the MLS season ticket holder population for advance sales. Also, a way to track repeat buyers so those people get dibs on big games before other people. I think that may require more resources than the USSF wants to expend, though. The $$ they'd have to spend wouldn't likely generate any revenue.