USC-Ohio State tickets are hot commodity online

By the time the teams take the field, StubHub, USC's preferred online ticket reseller, will have brokered about 6,500 sales -- double to triple the number of transactions that the San Francisco company normally handles in advance of a big college football game.

At least a quarter of the tickets purchased early on were dispatched to Ohio ZIP Codes, StubHub reports, and even more are expected to end up in the hands of Buckeyes fans. "Ohio State University has a large, national fan base, and it's very likely that some of those tickets are going to some of its fans who are residing in California," said StubHub spokesman Sean Pate.

The company doesn't disclose the dollar value of resold tickets, but Saturday's game already has become the only non-professional sports contest or regular-season college contest to crack the company's top 10 sales list, which includes NFL and Major League Baseball games and the two most recent Bowl Championship Series title games.

The game bulled its way onto the list on sales volume rather than price alone.

The average resale price on StubHub for the two most recent BCS championship games, for example, topped $1,300, and the average price for a ticket to Michigan's upcoming game in Columbus already has risen to $700.

But the average price for a ticket to Saturday's Big Game on Thursday afternoon -- courtesy of the Coliseum's 93,000-plus seats and a seemingly ample supply of Trojans ticketholders looking to make a buck -- was $476 on TicketsNow, another online company, and $398 on StubHub.

That's not to say fans aren't paying a premium for good seats.

TicketsNow.com on Thursday offered a pair of tickets near the middle of the field for $5,439.15 -- and a close-in parking pass for $268. StubHub's most expensive ticket -- for a seat on the 35-yard-line -- went for $2,500.

But it's been harder for sellers to draw top dollar for seats in the vast Coliseum's far reaches. StubHub's lowest-priced ticket, for example, was $110 for a seat in an upper corner.

Columbus businessman Matthew Pontius, who early this month listed a pair of seats in the nosebleed section on EBay, happily let them go for $496. The tickets had been returned by a customer who wasn't able to use them. The Buckeyes fan canceled his trip to Los Angeles after becoming a father.

"It's fantastic that he has the new baby, but he had to give up tickets to the biggest game of the year, along with a reserved room at the downtown Marriott in L.A.," Pontius said. "I guess he did the right thing by sacrificing the game for the baby."

greg.johnson@latimes.com