Part of Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters’ appeal is the back-in-time nature of the yearly spectacle — no phones, affordable food, the absence of fan-experience frills. It’s a combination that allows the course, players and tournament to remain focal.
However, an undercurrent of modernization has churned around the tournament’s ticketing process. It became most noticeable last year, when Augusta stripped visitors of resold Masters badges (tickets worn on the person of visitors) and generated national attention in the process.
The Masters has long held a policy against reselling badges that come from lifetime membership (purchased mostly in the 1960s and 1970s) or the yearly lottery process, but a robust ecosystem of ticket brokers emerged around one of the premier events in sports. On StubHub, for example, daily badges have been listed for $10,000-plus.
The elimination of resold badges — and the banning of some badge holders — goes beyond the tournament’s long-standing reputation for exclusivity.
“What I see the Masters doing is evolving over time, which all great events do,” said Greg Nortman, the CEO and founder of event strategy and operations firm Extra Point.
Nortman, formerly of Ticketmaster, Logitix and most recently On Location, sees two possible paths forward — partnering with a ticketing provider as an official sponsor or creating a white-label, Masters-branded ticketing platform that would allow Augusta to control fees and related ticketing costs.
It’s worth noting that the Masters took the latter path with its official hospitality program, which carries the Masters’ green-and-yellow branding but is operated by On Location.
An official platform of some kind, Nortman added, would be a boost to the club and its patrons, giving the Masters a steady hand over inventory while eliminating the ultra-high resale cost, speculative ticket listings and even shorting practices for quick profits by brokers. “I have been an advocate for rights holders. And they should be able to not have speculative assets selling against theirs on these exchanges,” he said.
Tony Knopp, CEO of TicketManager, personally knew double-digit badge holders who lost their access to the tournament. He likened last year’s badge thinning-out to the broken window theory, which says that small signs of disorder can lead to larger issues. This effort in the other direction by Augusta National, Knopp said, allowed for it to resonate with potential buyers in the future.
“The difference with the Masters is they can do it with a heavy hand,” Knopp said. “They’re not that worried about public criticism.”
Seemingly, it worked. SeatGeek announced early this year that it would not be supporting any Masters tickets, with a source adding that the added screening was not worth the headache.
Knopp pointed out that On Location, a spinoff of the NFL’s Super Bowl hospitality business, could be a crucial part of this maturation — and this would be much simpler, with inventory around one party (the golf club) instead of 32 NFL teams.
The buildout of the hospitality program around the Masters can offer what fans really want: a sure-fire path to be around the experiences.
“If security pulls you aside, and if they catch you lying, you will never get to another Masters again for the rest of your life,” Knopp said. “Or why don’t you go buy the Map & Flag from On Location? You don’t have to lie to anybody, and you get access. Seems like a simple choice to me.”
