Duke player Amber Henson. Photo © Roshan Yadama, licensed Creative Commons Attribution.
If you’re visiting the Triangle during college basketball season and are hoping to catch a game in person, you can count on not being able to buy tickets at the box office. The 20,000-seat “Dean Dome,” UNC’s Dean E. Smith Center, routinely sells out for men’s basketball in-conference games, and the PNC Arena, the 20,000-seat NC State men’s basketball home court, often does as well. Duke plays at the comparatively small Cameron Indoor Stadium, and its 9,000 seats are the hardest of all to obtain tickets for. Tickets for women’s basketball games, which at UNC and NC State are played on older, smaller courts, are much less difficult to come by, although the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) division games sometimes sell out, and the Duke-versus-UNC women’s games always do. The most prized and scarce treasure of all is a ticket to the Duke-versus-UNC men’s basketball game. Unless a current student of one of the schools really likes you or you’re a major benefactor with a classroom building named in your honor, your chances of paying face value for a ticket are slim to none. For a sold-out game between ACC teams, prices go up steeply; expect to pay three or more times the face value for a seat at an in-conference game of minor importance.During basketball season, tickets appear on eBay, Craigslist, and ticket-scalping websites. Really good tickets will probably go on the auction block well in advance of the game and are fought over fiercely. If you wait until the day of a game, there’s a chance of finding a seller who has just that day decided not to use his or her own tickets and wants to get rid of them fast; to win these, you’ve got to stay alert and act fast. Prices vary from game to game, and for a minor out-of-conference game played early in the season, you should be able to get a reasonably good ticket for $10-20 above face value and without much difficulty, if the game sells out at all. For a sold-out game between ACC teams, prices go up steeply; expect to pay three or more times the face value for a seat at an in-conference game of minor importance. For an important ACC game, the worst seats in the house could be over $100, and good seats $200-300 or more. If you want to go to a UNC-versus-Duke game, seats up in the rafters will be in the hundreds, and a good seat could easily set you back over $1,000.Ticket scalping is illegal in North Carolina, and it’s also pretty common. On game day, the scalpers are the people hanging around outside the arena or on nearby street corners holding signs that say “Need Tickets.” Technically, they probably will buy tickets if you’re selling, but “Need Tickets” is code for “I have tickets.” If you buy from a scalper, be firm in your negotiations. If you ask for courtside seats for $20, you’ll only get laughter and lose your bargaining position, but if you start not too far below the bounds of reason, they’ll talk business. Be willing to turn down a best offer; there’s another scalper just a few steps away. If you don’t mind missing the first few minutes of the game, you’ll find that prices start going down at tip-off.
For hard-core basketball fans, the research, haggling, and expense are a small price to pay for a chance to attend an ACC game. There’s nothing like watching your favorite team warm up, seeing Crazy Towel Guy do his thing at Cameron Indoor Stadium, or being in the same room with 10,000 people who know all the words to the fight song.
Excerpted from the Fifth Edition of Moon North Carolina.
