The seats that were available on SK.com earlier today aren’t on Stubhub.
As of Saturday morning, there were a total of 292 seats on Stub Hub: 32 in the 100s, 93 in the 200s, and 171 in the 300s. 100 of those seats are in the 300 corner sections, including 45 in section 317.
I compared the tickets available on StubHub for tomorrow to the tickets for the Illinois game next month still available from Rutgers. My assumption is that tickets available through Rutgers for a game a month from now are not owned by season ticket holders (whether individual, corporate, or sponsor). There are 45 seats in the 300s unsold for Illinois and on StubHub for tomorrow, and 26 seats in the 200s. 16 of these seats are blocks in Sec 317 and 19 are blocks in Sec 302. Other than that, they are scattered around the 200 and 300 levels.
This suggests that the vast majority of seats available on StubHub for tomorrow's game are tickets which were owned by ticket holders and not unsold tickets that Rutgers dumped on StubHub. (And is suggests that it is probable that none of the tickets are unsold seats Rutgers dumped on StubHub.)
It is possible that some of the tickets on StubHub are owned by StubHub. StubHub is a sponsor of Rutgers Athletics, and like other sponsors, StubHub purchases athletic tickets as part of their sponsorship fee. And we know that StubHub owns at least the tickets in Section 105 where they seat the "StubHub Fans of the Game". But these are seat paid for by StubHub as part of their sponsorship fee. They are not unsold tickets dumped by Rutgers.
But a lot of tickets went off sale yesterday, raising the suspicions of Shrill and SetonHallTroll that something stinks like the noxious gasses emanating from their heads. That doesn't mean anything nefarious was going on.
A plausible explanation as to why so many tickets went off sale yesterday is they were assigned to RACpass holders. The RACpass guarantees the ticket holder to a seat for every game, but they don't know where that seat will be assigned. Rutgers needs to ensure that each RACpass holder has a seat, but they would want to assign those seats as late as possible, so the most desirable seats go to people willing to pay more. The only way the RACpass program can work is if the ticketing system sets thresholds at which RACpasses get assigned. Ideally the last RACpass seats would be assigned just as the game sells out. And the most plausible explanation is that is what happened yesterday.
