About 500 fans were turned down at the Louisiana Superdome ticket gates Monday for the BCS National Championship Game because of invalid tickets.
The false tickets would not scan at the door.
Bill Curl, spokesperson for the Superdome, said there is no way to track the origin of the tickets.
“I can’t explain how they get away with it,” Curl said.
Some of the fake tickets were bought from scalpers and off the Internet. “No one who bought the tickets through us had any problems,” said Tim Messa, assistant director of ticket operations at the LSU Ticket Office.
Messa said all calls about fake tickets were directed to the Sugar Bowl Ticket Office on the day of the game.
“They were the ones who could verify whether the tickets were legitimate or counterfeit,” Messa said. Messa said those who called in about fake tickets after Monday would need to contact the entity who sold them the tickets.
“There isn’t really any recourse that our office can take,” Messa said.
Messa said the LSU Ticket Office occasionally gets a regular season ticket that is invalid, but the problem has not been widespread.
“I think, in general, counterfeiting is an issue that happens at lots of different arenas and venues at lots of different events, not just football games,” Messa said.
Curl said fans can avoid purchasing fake tickets by buying only directly from the team or the event coordinator – in this case, the Allstate Sugar Bowl.
“We said that several times in the weeks leading up to the games,” Curl said.
On top of problems with fake tickets, there were at least two dozen arrests for scalpers on game day.
Curl said selling the tickets, even at face value, anywhere within 300 feet of Superdome property is illegal.
There were plain-clothes officers watching for scalpers Monday.
—-Contact Emily Holden at [email protected]