The Masters Ticket Lottery Is Dumb
Good morning and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Be better than the vice president and learn how to handle a trophy today.
Sunday’s action at the Masters was perhaps the most engaging golf we’ve seen since Tiger’s amazing win in 2019. Hopefully it didn’t make you want to actually attend the tournament, though, because you’ll face long odds of getting in. We’ll discuss why, and we’ll also talk about the NCAA’s self-inflicted mess, some news about sports betting, and briefly touch on a pickleball documentary.
Locker Room Links
- There’s more money bet on table tennis than many big-name sports. Here’s a great breakdown that explains why.
- Even Ohio State’s beat writers are slimy (allegedly).
- The father of Red Sox third baseman Alex Bregman is running for New Mexico governor. Meanwhile, “Stephen A. Smith says he has ‘no choice’ but to contemplate a run for president.”
- President Donald Trump and several members of his administration attended Saturday night’s UFC fights, with Trump getting the walkout treatment.
- Paige Bueckers signed a deal to play in the Unrivaled 3-on-3 league, then went first overall in the WNBA Draft. (Guess which league will pay her more?)
- Congratulations to the Western Michigan Broncos on their first NCAA hockey national championship!
- Elsewhere in Reason: “Police Tried To Arrest a Paralyzed Man for Kicking Down a Woman’s Door“
- This joke is very specific to the kinds of people who subscribe to this newsletter.
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— Grant (@GrantMN3) April 10, 2025
The Masters Ticket Lottery Is Dumb
There are a lot of things the Masters can get away with that other sporting events can’t: cellphones are banned, concessions are super cheap, and there’s no advertising on the course. But one thing I can’t get behind is the Masters ticket lottery.
Getting tickets to the Masters is not as simple as buying a ticket online or scoping out secondary marketplaces for resale tickets. Aspiring “patrons” (as Augusta National Golf Club calls visitors) have to sign up for the annual ticket lottery in June. Estimates suggest your odds of winning in any given year are under 1 percent.
If you’re one of the lucky few and succeed in the ticket lottery, your single-day pass to the tournament is relatively cheap for a sporting event of Masters prestige: $140. If you don’t get access through the ticket lottery, and you don’t have $17,000 to spend on a premium hospitality ticket, you’re out of luck. You can try to pay through the nose for a pass on the secondary market, but Augusta National has a strict ban on resale tickets and might not let you in—so you risk spending $2,500 on a resale ticket, plus hundreds more on flights and lodging, just to get turned away.
This is not a great system for ensuring the people who most want to be there get in. Should a casual fan who can’t name any golfers besides Tiger Woods have the same chance as a die-hard who lives and breathes golf? If an aging man wants to cross the Masters off his bucket list, shouldn’t he have a better avenue than a lottery with such long odds? Prices, not lotteries, are a great mechanism for distributing scarce items like pass
Article from Reason.com
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