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If you’re a golf fan, or even just a diehard sports fan, getting tickets to The Masters is the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail. The event has an almost staggeringly long waiting list, and once you are off it, you have the option to buy tickets for life. Should you die, the only person who can acquire those tickets is a living spouse.
Each year, The Masters holds a lottery for daily tickets. But the number of tickets available is scant and winning the lottery is seemingly impossible. Which leads us to the secondary market, where tickets for the 2025 final round went for as much as $8,000, according to Cllct.
But now it appears that it’s going to become even more difficult to get tickets to golf’s premier event.
“It was a bloodbath,” a hospitality company executive told Front Office Sports about Masters officials cracking down on scalpers. “Several of our customers were interrogated on arrival, and about half of those badges were canceled. And here’s the worst part: A ticket that scanned with no problem Thursday and Friday would get targeted Saturday.” The executive added that some fans who had their badges confiscated received one-day passes to stay on the grounds.
Augusta National works directly with hospitality company On Location to control its ticket sales and distributions. In their view, there should not be a secondary market. The only people with tickets should be those who purchased them directly through The Masters.
Of course, that’s never going to happen. There will always be a secondary market. But Augusta National and The Masters are doing everything possible to eliminate it.
If a ifetime badge holder has been selling their passes, those passes get revoked. Front Office Sports reports that Augusta National watches local obituaries closely and when a patron with tickets dies, those tickets get canceled.
More or less, if you’re not rich or the luckiest human being on the planet, you’re not going to The Masters. So maybe start planning that trip to St. Andrews or Pebble Beach instead.