Once it was the ``world's best garden party'' where invitations came from the cupboards and mailboxes of Augusta. But with an influx of ticket brokers eager to crash the party, the cost of Masters Tournament ticket-badges have skyrocketed out of the hands of local brokers and out of reach of the average golf fan.
In conversations with local brokers and agents for national sports tour companies, all insisted upon anonymity for fear of reprisals from Augusta National Golf Club, the tournament host. The club's ticket policy expressly forbids the brokering and the club's vengeance is legendary.
Local ticket brokers, for whom the tournament is a part-time enterprise or is just one service provided to local companies, pine for the old days of just five years ago.
``This used to be the world's best garden party,'' one local broker said. ``I think it's become way too commercial.''
Now the clientele is strictly national corporations that can afford the tens of thousands it would take to secure the badges and lodging at local homes to entertain clients or reward executives. The days of the rabid golf fan buying his way in are gone in the price hike.
``This is the first year I haven't sold to a single individual,'' said John, 32, an agent for a national sports company.
Ticket-badges that just a few years ago fetched $1,000 to $1,500 now are routinely bought for up for $2,500. To understand why, it is necessary to look at how the badges are bought and sold and ultimately used to gain access to the Masters Tournament.
Price: $100 each
The Augusta National sells the badges for $100 apiece to a confidential list of patrons whose number is reported to be about 40,000. Even the waiting list for the badges has been closed for two decades. But some patrons, particularly older patrons, will part with the badges in secret arrangements.
With local brokers, in many cases it is done through home rentals. The badges come along as part of the deal and the homeowner-patron has the psychological comfort that the badges are not really being sold, said one local broker.
The brokers in this case are involved year-round with the companies buying the badges, setting up events or providing party supplies. Or in some cases, the Augusta-based brokers are well-connected executives who buy and sell the badges as a sideline.
In many cases, their market is less volatile than the ones the national sports companies operate in. The homeowner-patrons feel comfortable dealing with companies that have rented their homes from them for years, so they'll accept less money.
``They leave the badges on the kitchen table and if the people use them, they use them,'' said one local broker who deals with a small number of houses and companies.
The price in the local market is more modest. A two-bedroom home at National Hills with two badges might rent for $10,000 for Masters Week, a 50-75 percent increase from last year, local brokers said. Others say a grand four-bedroom house on The Hill with four ``privileges,'' as some local brokers like to call the badges, might rent for $18,000, where a few years ago it went for $5,000.
Relationship threatened
But with the suicide a year ago of Augusta broker Allen Caldwell III and the reported ticket frenzy that drove the price to $10,000 per badge in some cases, that cozy relationship is being threatened, local brokers said.
``These are people who are right now living in fear because they don't want to find it's a second or third (buyer) using the ticket,'' someone they don't know who could run afoul of tournament officials and get the badge traced back to them, said a local broker who coordinates events throughout the year.
``These people are scared to death,'' added a smaller, part-time broker.
The reason for the price increase is a simple lesson in economics. While the number of brokers and would-be buyers has tripled in the last few years, the number of tickets available has remained about the same, sports tour agents said. Estimates put it at around 1,500 tickets, a figure that has not changed much even as the price has gone up, said John, a sports agent.
Brokers get their badges this way: Agents like John come to town a few months before the tournament and rent an apartment, get a telephone and place some advertisements. More than likely, the ads will be just to pick up a few extra, new customers, John said.
The bulk of their tickets will come from established relationships with local ``middlemen,'' people who live in the area and buy up tickets from long-established sellers, usually longtime patrons of the Masters, John said.
``About 85 percent of the badges I get come from the same people every year,'' John said.
This year, the middlemen might pay $2,500 and sell each badge to John for $3,000, who in turn sells them to his company at $3,500. The badge is then made part of a ``package deal,'' with a house or hotel room, rental car for the week and golf outings at local courses. The badge itself would cost about $4,000 -- part of a package that for four people might come in at around $22,000, John said.
Face to face
The meetings between broker and middleman are always done face to face and even when he is arranging to buy a new badge, John insists on meeting the seller in person, he said.
``I'm not going to spend $3,500 on something that might be stolen,'' he said.
Local brokers and national agents say there is an honor code, a code that broke down last year when Mr. Caldwell was promised tickets but then couldn't get them to fill his orders. John was also short 20 tickets for the 1997 Masters and when the price shot from $3,000 to $7,000, he lost $80,000 right there.
``I could absorb it,'' he said. Mr. Caldwell couldn't.
It provided a sobering lesson to even the biggest companies, who were careful this year not to oversell, to only accept the number of orders they knew they could fill, agents said. For that reason, the price may not escalate as wildly as it did last year because there may not be as many agents looking for tickets. And, frankly, ``the Tiger (Woods) novelty has worn off,'' John said, referring to the 1997 Masters champion.
Even if the price has leveled off, it is still out of range of the average fan like Mike Figler. He didn't hesitate when his wife asked the question.
``What do you want to do for your 50th birthday?'' asked Doreen, his wife.
``Go to the Masters,'' he said.
But Mrs. Figler, of Syracuse, N.Y., soon found that birthday wish impossible to grant. She posted a ticket request on a golf-related Internet site and talked to some ticket brokers. She just wanted to send her husband and a friend for the final round of the tournament on Sunday.
``I had one (broker) offer me a four-day badge for $5,000,'' Mrs. Figler said. ``I think the guy wanted $1,750 for final round only.''
Or she could buy the package deal for the week -- a hotel room, rental car, golf outing and Masters Tournament badge -- for $8,200. Even just trying to book a hotel room in Augusta, everywhere she called she was told she had to take the room for seven days.
``That's when I learned that it was way out of my reach,'' she said.
Prices put Masters out of reach
