The High Cost of "BEDLAM"

Sometimes you just have to ask.....What the heck are they thinking?

We have heard for years that the rising tickets prices is 'killing Nascar attendance' and that may or may not be true. But something unthinkable is going to happen this Saturday in Stillwater when Oklahoma travels to Okie Lite. There will be empty seats!!!!! Yep, the state's BEDLAM game will not sell out, and what is more sad is that T. Boone Picken's Stadium only holds 43,500 fans.

Now you might be wonder how this can take place, after all, OU has sold out a 84,000 seat stadium for over 50 straight games (since the beginning of the '99 season), surely the Sooner faithful would love to gobble up those empty seats. Just as 20 or so thousand Sooner fans traveled to Waco the week before and 'outnumbered' the home team, the Baylor Bears. But if the Sooner fans wanted to go to this year's Beldam game they have/had a couple of choices.

1) Before Sept, Okie Lite sold a the three-game mini-pack included tickets to Missouri State, Baylor and Oklahoma for $160.
2) After Sept, Okie Lite sold tickets to Bedlam were released for single-game sale at $100.

Now understand, Tickets for a sold out Sooner home game range from $57 to $67, depending on the opponent and $98 for OU/Texas.

Students get the shaft even more.

3) Okie Lite is charging $100 for a student seat. (A student ticket for the Red River Shootout is $88, and that is a game where tickets are in high demand)

Now some might think those prices are not that high and should not be a factor in selling out a 43,500 seat stadium, but here is the catch. All those seats mentioned above were limited in the number of them, and availability. So what is left at the Big 12's smallest football venue?




As of 5 p.m. Monday, remaining tickets were priced at $250, $350 and $600. There were 43 of the $250 seats (located between the 25- and 35-yard lines on the south side) and 114 of the $300 tickets (at midfield on the south side) and each of the 1,426 remaining club seats that goes for $600.

Okie Lite Athletic Director, Mike holder defends his pricing with this comment: "Good, stay home. Don't come, I don't care if any of them show up. Just bring that football team out here."

Pretty strong words considering that Okie Lite has yet to sell out its stadium at all this year, and that attendance is down from previous years.

BEDLAM is a big deal, but asking $75 to $500 more than an OU-Texas ticket is ridiculous. Why would Okie Lite raise prices like this? As no one wants to give that much money to a school that can't fill its own stadium.