The hottest ticket in town? It’s not Nebraska football or volleyball

The hottest ticket in Lincoln right now is not Nebraska football. Nor is it for the women’s highly ranked volleyball team.

It’s the Nebraska men’s basketball game against the Kansas Jayhawks in prime time on Saturday, Dec. 16, at the Pinnacle Bank Arena.

While the game is not sold out yet, it is expected to be before game time. And expect many of the nearly 15,000 seats in the arena to be filled with Kansas crimson and blue, especially with the relatively short drive-time or airplane distance between the schools.

Indeed, many Nebraska and Kansas basketball fans have had the game circled on their calendar since the two schools announced plans for a two-game home-and-home series, which started last December at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence.

Based on a HuskerOnline review of current prices in the secondary brokerage market as of early November, seats in the upper level at Pinnacle are hovering around $95 to $100 a seat. Lower-level seats are about $200 each, though those seats are less plentiful. A few parking passes are also for sale.

Ticket brokers say those prices have held steady over the last month. But they expect the market to heat up closer to game day, especially if Nebraska -- perhaps more so than Kansas -- gets off to a strong start on the season.

The Kansas game “certainly is the most popular when it comes to both sales and the average price people are paying,” said Chris Leyden at the SeatGeek ticket brokerage. If you just look at the bottom line price to get into Huskers’ games, he added, the Kansas game “sticks out like a sore thumb.”

What’s the average ticket price for the game through SeatGeek? About $200, said Leyden.

Holly Adam, Nebraska’s assistant athletic director for tickets, is not surprised by the ticket demand for this one.

“We’ve averaged 15,000 fans per game over the last four years since moving into Pinnacle Bank Arena,” she said. “It’s the first time a Big 12 team has traveled to Lincoln since we joined the Big Ten, and it’s a marquee game on the non-conference schedule.”

Not only is the game a huge draw because of the opponent, which is ranked No. 4 in preseason polls, but it’s a Saturday night game with a favorable 7 p.m. start time, said Chad Carr, president of Ticket Express, an Omaha-based ticket broker.

“A lot of marquee games in the past have been on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, and for a lot of people, it’s hard to get to those game,” Carr said.

Carr said the game is also appealing to fans because of the long history between the two schools. And while Kansas holds the series edge by a wide margin, Nebraska has pulled off a few upsets.

“A lot of Husker fans have those memories from the 80’s and 90’s” and will want to be in the house for this game, Carr said.

You have to go back to the 2013-2014 season to find the last time Nebraska basketball was this tough a ticket. That was the Wisconsin game at the end of the regular season, where a huge walk-up crowd on game day helped propel Nebraska to victory and a March Madness appearance.

“Other than Wisconsin, this is the biggest ticket for Nebraska basketball since playing in Pinnacle,” said Carr, whose ticket outlet company has been in business for 25 years.

Nebraska’s ticket office also has had the Kansas game circled on its calendar for a long time. In fact, the Kansas game is only being sold by the university’s ticket office through the purchase of an 18-game season ticket package.

A season ticket package costs as low as $108, or $6 per home game.

Nebraska fans have supported the basketball program, even though the product under Coach Tim Miles has sometimes been good, many times average, and occasionally mediocre. So far this year, Nebraska has sold about 14,000 season tickets, which is in line with previous years, Adam said. About 1,200 student tickets have been sold so far, also consistent with past seasons.

According to the official statement from the ticket office, “Nebraska athletics does not anticipate any single-game ticket availability for the Kansas game, so season tickets are the only way to guarantee a seat to see the Huskers take on the Jayhawks.”

Adam explained that the ticket office linked the Kansas game to a season ticket package largely because “we wanted to give season ticket holders an opportunity to obtain additional seats as a reward for supporting Husker basketball games.”

It is not uncommon for schools to hold off on single-game sales with a headliner basketball and football opponent because they want to fill the seats not only for the one big match-up but for the entire season.

Adam said Nebraska has employed this strategy before “for several of our sports which feature marquee games.”

Has the ticket office received any negative feedback on the ticket policy? No, she said.

“We have a wait list in the event any tickets open up at a later date,” she said.

Still, count Mark Zeligman among the disappointed after calling the Nebraska ticket office to ask about tickets for the Kansas game. The Kansas graduate from the Kansas City area wanted two tickets -- one for himself and one for his son, a Nebraska grad.

“I was told that separate Kansas tickets were being sold only in the season-ticket package,” Zeligman said.

While he acknowledged that shelling out a grand total of $108 for 18 games was a good deal, he wasn’t interested in having to unload tickets for the 17 other games.

Incidentally, $108 is about the same price as one ticket to one KU home game in Lawrence, based on StubHub listings.

But, if the weather’s nice in mid-December and the price is right, Zeligman said he might work the secondary market for tickets and make the three-hour drive to Lincoln.

As part of the two-game home-and-home arrangement between the schools, each school received about 200 tickets at the other team’s site.

“There’s no doubt that, between our team’s needs and our donors, those tickets went very quickly,” said Jim Marchiony, associate athletics director-public affairs at Kansas.

While legions of Nebraska fans are known for traveling great distances to support the football team for road games, the same is true for Kansas basketball fans.

“We arrange an allotment of tickets for every away game we play, and the tickets are always gobbled up quickly,” said Marchiony. “I can pretty much guarantee there will be more than 200 KU fans in the building when we play in Lincoln, although judging from the Nebraska ticket site, the KU game will be a hot ticket. KU fans are faithfully resourceful when it comes to getting tickets for road games.”

Regional ticket brokers who sell most of the Nebraska basketball tickets in the secondary market report a good deal of buzz among fans for the Kansas game.

Sales through StubHub, which partners with Nebraska’s ticket office, provides a good picture of supply and demand for the match-up. The data shows sales -- meaning the total cost that the buyer paid, including fees -- from August through late October.

For example, StubHub reported at least seven sales in the $200 to $300 per ticket range at various sections, one sale for $365 in section 204, and one sale for $308 in section 120.

On the other hand, StubHub also recorded seven sales of $100 and under, mostly in the upper reaches of Pinnacle.

SeatGeek listed tickets for sales at prices (before fees) ranging from $83 in section 321 to $288 in section 108, and $657 in section 117.

While those prices are impressive for a Nebraska basketball game, they don’t approach demand for other marquee games around the country.

While a Duke-North Carolina game might not be a true apples-to-apples comparison, tickets for that ACC rivalry are currently being offered at the starting price of $1,600 for a seat at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

SeatGeek’s Leyden said last year this company recorded more than 20 regular-season college basketball games with average resale prices above $200. So the Kansas-Nebraska game “is certainly near the top in terms of demand, but it’s not in the top tier,” he said.

Leyden said he expects ticket purchases to pick up as the game gets closer “although I also don’t think prices will move up a ton or maybe at all unless both teams come out of the gate really strong.”

Carr, at Ticket Express, agreed, but noted that Nebraska fans are “still in a football mindset and haven’t flipped the switch yet” to basketball.

Similar to the the 2014 Wisconsin game, he said, fans may decide at the last minute that “gosh I’ve got to be at that game” against Kansas.

Steve Rosen writes about the business of sports for HuskerOnline. Questions, comments, story ideas? Contact Steve at sbrosen1030@gmail.com.