Standing in the shadow of Ryan Field, a short man in a red sweatshirt and matching cap carefully scans the scores of fans making their way up Central Avenue. A wad of twenties sits in his right pocket and a dozen football tickets are in his left.
“Who needs tickets? You got two? Who needs two?” the man known only as “Ray Ray” repeats to every passing fan. A factory worker five days a week, Ray Ray said he has been moonlighting as a middleman between buyers and sellers at major sporting events and concerts in and around Chicago for seven years.
Coming off a Big Ten championship last year and Saturday’s last-second thriller, the once-dismal tradition of Northwestern football is quickly becoming a hot ticket. With fans traveling hundreds of miles to watch their alma maters face off in Evanston, Ray Ray and his fellow scalpers with nicknames like “Drop Top,” “Bee-Bop” and “Lex” arrived at Ryan Field four hours before game time looking to rake in a few hundred dollars buying and reselling tickets.
“I just do this to get extra money – and it’s free,” said Ray Ray, who expected to make $150 to $200 Saturday. “But it’s the fans that love this game. If they don’t go, we can’t make no money.”
Saturday’s win over Michigan State wasn’t a sellout, so getting fans to shell out much more than face value proved a significant challenge.
“When you call up (the ticket office), the only available tickets are in the end zones, so I have to go to the scalpers,” said one Michigan State alumnus from Chicago who bought tickets from Ray Ray at a 25 percent markup. “I don’t know where they got them, but I don’t really care.”
Drop Top compared the scalping business to the stock market.
“You’re just buying and selling, and you’ve just gotta know what the market value is,” he said. “If it’s sold out, you’ll get about face (value). But the trick is to start off with a price about double and go from there.”
Although scalpers claim to pull in upwards of $500 dollars at an average game, the university says it prevents scalping.
“There is no reselling of tickets on university property,” said Mark Wesoloski, director of ticket operations. “On game days, the University Police are on the lookout. They are more around the more rare the ticket is.”
But separated from uniformed policemen by a chain-link fence, scalpers deftly slide by each other, handing off tickets and cash. While they appear to have the market’s strings in their hands, sometimes they can’t hide the fact that this merely is a side gig.
“Who needs two?” Drop Top asks the crowd? “I’ve got two, centerfield.”
“You mean 50-yard-line,” another scalper whispers in his ear with a tap on the shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, 50-yard-line,” Drop Top corrects himself. “Who needs tickets?”
