Open Cup Ticket Update

Today, Sporting KC season ticket holders had the opportunity to purchase even more tickets to August 8th's US Open Cup final against Seattle.  This was the second release phase of tickets for the finals.  The first had allowed season ticket holders to purchase their existing ticket(s) for the game.  Today, KC season ticket holders were able to purchase ones in addition to their existing tickets.  And it certainly looks like there aren't going to be a ton of tickets available when they go on sale to the general public tomorrow.

The Cauldron and the South Stand both appear to be sold out (although tickets seem to be occasionally still cropping up to by on Ticket Master, and word is a number of South Stand tickets will come available tomorrow).  Other sections around the stadium are starting to really fill up as well. 

The selling of the Cauldron caused a few problems today, because people couldn't get onto the Account Manager to buy the extra tickets.  Personally I can't get on the account manager at work so I placed a call in to the front office almost exactly at 10am and purchased a few extra tickets for some friends that are currently not season ticket holders.  I got them purchased without a problem and continued on with my day.  Checking Twitter and online later, I realized issues had come up, people couldn't purchase through the account manager, and apparently the Cauldron sold out very quickly from people that called in to the front office. 

Turns out that wasn't totally true.  Many of the extra tickets for the members stand had already been allotted to the Cauldron to sell to the general public.  According to Sean Dane on the Cauldron Facebook page, there was nothing the KC front office staff that dealt with ticket sales directly could do about it because Ticket Master had allocated those tickets, so in the eyes of the people selling tickets, the section was sold out.  Dane worked with the front office to get those tickets back to the team so that they could sell them in the presale, and even those tickets sold out as well, leaving very few, if any, available for the general public tomorrow.

That is, unless you want to pay well above market price for the ticket.  Checking some third party ticket sites this evening, I saw tickets in the members stand available for between $95 and $124 for just a single ticket in the section.  It appears that some people bought quite a few extra tickets, looking to sell them for a nice profit.  The easiest way to resolve this would have been something that the Cauldron currently does when they sell tickets, limit the number of tickets that can be sold to one person.  The Cauldron limits this to 2, something like that probably would have helped a little bit.

The enormous ticket prices are shocking, years ago I never would have figured that a ticket in the Cauldron would be priced at over $100.  These prices will only stay this way if people actually pay those ticket prices, if people don't buy those tickets at that price, tickets will go down.

At this rate though it looks like KC will do a nice job of filling the stadium for the Open Cup final.  The question remains of Sounders fans buying tickets around the stadium in other sections outside their supporters' section.  The Sounders have apparently already sold their allotment of tickets that have been provided by KC, and with the way sales have gone the past few days, I'm not sure if they'll get any more in their allocation.