During last year's AFC Championship game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Indianapolis Colts, Rick Harmon witnessed something pretty amazing. The Steelers had the game all but won, needing only to not give the Colts a shot at a last-minute score, and everything seemed set.
Then, now-retired Pittsburgh running back Jerome Bettis fumbled near the goal line.
"You should've seen our market," Harmon recalled.
Nearly every Steelers fan who'd purchased an advanced ticket for the Super Bowl on Harmon's internet service TicketRESERVE instantly began selling.
Then, as Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger made a miraculous shoe-string tackle to save the game half a field and about 15 seconds later, everything changed again.
It was quite a sight to see.
"From the time [the Colts] scooped up the fumble, through those first 50 or 60 yards, the Colts contract prices are going up," Harmon said. "The Steelers fans are dumping until Roethlisberger gets the tackle, then the whole thing reverses."
Though he sometimes speaks like one, Harmon is no power stockbroker. He's a venture capitalist who, after moving on from the ailing oil business in the late '70s and after getting his BBA and MBA from UT, founded TicketRESERVE, which, as the name implies, allows buyers to buy tickets for upcoming events.
But Harmon's business is much more than that. Users can buy, sell and trade their tickets in real time on the company's Web site, www.ticketreserve.com.
"Sometimes we talk about our platform as being kind of an entertainment medium," Harmon said. "It's got a little bit of fantasy sports in it. It's got auditing and trading in it. It's got a little bit of engagement in your team."
Through the business-to-business software Harmon purchased in the late 1990s, Harmon has developed a marketplace for buying and selling guarantees for future event tickets, which he refers to as "forward contracts."
Harmon's company has its own guaranteed contracts with organizations such as the BCS, NFL and NBA, which allows him to always come through on his ticket purchases.
"We don't go out and just buy tickets from John Doe," Harmon said. "We have a contract. It's guaranteed, and there's never any question about fulfillment."
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