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Brokers have plenty of Masters badges for "rent."
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The Masters is coming up, but all the talk about how hard it is to attend the tournament is enough to discourage most golfers from even trying. That would be a mistake. While it’s not as simple as calling a ticket office like you can with other tournaments, the Web has made it almost as effortless.
First of all, when most people refer to Masters tickets, they really mean "Tournament" or "Series" badges, which grant access to the official competitive rounds from Thursday through Sunday. Tickets to the practice rounds are a lot easier to come by, but if we were going to the trouble of organizing a golf vacation to see golf's masters, we'd want to see them play, not practice.
Because Augusta National Golf Club's list of patrons (those who have the right to buy badges at the $175 face value) has been closed since 1972 and the waiting list has been closed since 1978 (it reopened briefly in 2000) the only way most outsiders can get inside the event is by using a ticket broker.
A list of ticket brokers can be found in Brent Kelly's very good About.com article on Masters tickets. As with any online transaction, caution and due diligence should be exercised.
It works like this: a patron sells his badges to a ticket broker for, say, $300-$500 each. The broker then sells them to you for between $600-$1,000 (the going rate when we checked yesterday). Actually, it's more like they rent them to you because the badges often must be returned at some agreed upon time and location in Augusta. In a way, you are just attending the tournament as a guest of the badge owner.
Those prices might seem high, but they're a veritable bargain when compared to the cost of attending other sporting events of similar caliber or cache. For example, an average Superbowl ticket (through a broker) might cost $3,000-$5,000. That event lasts only about four hours whereas the Masters is a full day of fun. And, when is the last time you heard of the fans being allowed on the field at the Superbowl?
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