Officials warn of fake, pricey SEC Championship tickets

ATLANTA — Georgia and Alabama fans are scrambling to buy one of the hottest tickets in all of college football -- the SEC Championship game.  The game has been sold out for months, and if you are looking for a ticket it will cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars per ticket. 

There's no questioning Jim Clarke's allegiance in college football.  The Flowery Branch Alabama alum is frantically trying to find a ticket to the game on Saturday at the Georgia Dome. 

"I really want to go. This is a big game. Georgia versus Alabama," Clarke said.  "This is one of the hardest tickets I've seen in a long time."

Jason Kirksey works for the Georgia Dome.  He told Channel 2's John Bachman, because this game features two teams with huge local fan bases, and the fact that the game is essentially a play-in game for the BCS national championship game, ticket prices are skyrocketing.

"The tickets for this game are going to be as high and as expensive on the secondary market as the BCS National Championship is," Kirksey said.

Kirksey showed Bachman an authentic ticket for the club level with a face value of $175. An online ticket broker is selling the same type of ticket for a $1,000.

An authentic ticket has embedded security features including two hologram strips and a hologram graphic.  All of which show the SEC circle logo.  Those features, combined with the glossy feel, make it hard to fake, according to Kirksey.

He also advised checking the bar code number at the bottom.

"If you're buying three or four tickets and you see they all have the same bar code on them, there's a big red flag because every bar code is unique," Kirksey said.  "Any time you're dealing with a secondary market you need to use extreme caution."

The Georgia Dome and the SEC will set up a ticket validation window at the ticket office Saturday.  Fans looking to buy from scalpers outside the Dome can ask to bring the tickets to the window before paying.

WSBTV