Pricey endeavor: Watching the Cougars play in Las Vegas might be costly

Looking to score Las Vegas Bowl tickets for the Dec. 21 game between BYU and a yet-to-be-determined Pac-10 opponent?

The gambling city's "Lost Wages" moniker also applies to the skyrocketing costs for the priciest, hardest-to-get BYU athletic ticket in memory — the average fan looking to pay well into the three-digit dollar amounts for tickets, many originally costing $20 to $30 apiece.

The game at Sam Boyd Stadium is a two-time sellout, the first 36,800 tickets gone before BYU had even received its official invitation as Mountain West Conference champion, while 4,100 more seats — most on temporary bleachers — disappeared in five hours.

As a participating team, BYU is responsible for selling 12,000 tickets. For the first time ever, all bowl tickets were sold at first offering in priority sales, sending the general public scrambling.

After the Cougars clinched the MWC title and earned the bowl invitation, tickets were sold to the most elite of Cougar Club members — first to Legacy Cougars (a one-time minimum donation of $10,000 and an annual re-up of $1,000) and Golden Cougars ($1,000 annually) and then to Silver Cougars ($500 annually).

Members of the three levels could purchase 12, eight and six tickets, respectively. In two days, all available tickets were sold, with a waiting list created for the same three Cougar Club levels.

"The demand this year is just absolutely through the roof," said Duff Tittle, BYU associate athletics director for communications.

BYU's tickets cost $70 each, including a $20 amount tacked on by the athletic department as "a premium per ticket to further re-establish BYU's national football tradition," according to BYU's ticket Web site.

An undisclosed number of BYU's tickets are reserved to accommodate player and team needs as well as to sell to students, faculty and staff. Officials declined to say when or how many tickets would be sold to the latter.

During the Cougars' Holiday Bowl era, tickets were plentiful because San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium seated more than 50,000. For the distant Motor City and Liberty bowls, the athletics department resorted to "creative ways to sell tickets to the fans in those areas" to avoid being saddled with unsold tickets from its allotment, Tittle said.

"We wish we could move the game up here (to Edwards Stadium) so we could sell more tickets," said BYU ticket manager Clark Livsey, adding that Cougar fans can pursue "alternative sources" — scalpers, classified ads, auctions or online brokers.