Futures Market for Eagles Superbowl Tickets

One of my favorite website's Wired.com posted an interesting piece about futures markets for Superbowl tickets which focuses on the experience of two Eagles fans:

The market opened at midnight, and the brothers jumped right in. After a few minutes, with the option price at $150, Paul spent $1,200 for the right to buy eight standard tickets to the 2006 Super Bowl (if the Eagles make it). Meanwhile, Brad, who was only just getting warm after his walk, didn't fare so well. The site couldn't handle the heavy traffic and stalled as he tried to join the frenzied buyers - prospective Eagles seats sold out in minutes. Brad had little choice but to try an end around. He bought options for all the teams that he thought Philadelphia might play in the next Super Bowl.

It's definitely an interesting idea, especially for those who have both an interest in sports and financial markets.  With my post yesterday featuring a sports betting site allowing you to bet on what team Terrell Owens will play for next season, your local bookie's business isn't what it used to be. 

Of similar interest is the new type of fantasy football which Troy Aikman has been pushing lately over at ProTrade.com which allows you to put together a portfolio of players each with their own market value or stock price.  Some interesting stuff going on over there, I'm curious if such a "game" will catch on.

What ever happened to a fun night of beers and drafting a team of players in real life on your neighbor's back porch?  I remember my first fantasy league when I was in 7th grade we had a real draft board which was actually a piece of poster board we wrote down our picks on with a magic marker.  Those were the days before millions of different fantasy guides and websites about which players ranked in which order.

Comments

[bryan]

Incidentally, I don't know if you know, but one of the founders of the Protrade site is Jeff Ma. You may know him better as Kevin Lewis of the MIT Blackjack team in Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House.

[Jackson DeVille]

You think David Bell and Mike Lieberthal stink? What have you been watching? JUST KIDDING.

[David]

I read articles for places such as TechCrunch, NY Times, Forbes, and many other websites regarding a website known as yoonew that has a similar product to what ticketreserve(the website that this article is referring to) is offering. The only difference is that at yoonew, you only pay once, while at ticketreserve, not only are you paying a premium for the contract, but you are also paying face value for the ticket if your team makes it to the superbowl. So all in all, even though you're still paying a price below market value, the price that you're paying at ticketreserve is significantly greater than what you would pay at yoonew.