The Nov. 4, 1909 NYT reports on high demand for Yale-Harvard tickets and the "problems" facing school officials in "allocating" tickets (as if the market couldn't do a better job) but the story admits, in the end, that the market is busy re-allocating some tickets to those who value them more but ignores the important question of why the teams aren't taking advantage of willingness to pay:

Yale and Harvard football officials are staggered at the demand for tickets to their annual football game at Cambridge on Nov. 20. Seats are being distributed under the application system. To-day applications closed, and the managers are at their wits end to devise means to accommodate the alumni of the two institutions, not counting the general public. Long ago it was seen that football lovers outside the Yale and Harvard graduates would have to hustle for seats. Now it is certain that, even if the alumni can be seated, they will have to greatly curtail their family parties....There are 34,500 seats in the Stadium. Yale takes half, and Harvard the remainder, but Yale has for several years gracefully turned back to Harvard from 3,000 to 5,000 of Yale's half in order that Harvard alumni might all be accommodated. To-day's rush for tickets here makes it certain that Yale men have more than applied for Yale's share of the seats in the Stadium, and that, for the first time, Yale cannot help Harvard in filling the demand of the Crimson after the Yale graduates have been satisfied.

Prices for tickets this year are sure to reach figures before unknown. Already $50 each is offered here by a Westerner for three tickets. There seems no room to doubt that blocks of three tickets will surely bring $100 apiece long before the day of the game.

$50 in 1909 is approximately $1,220.54 in 2008 dollars according to the good folks at EH.net. Today, prices on StubHub range from $18 to $67 apiece:

The early 1900s is before big-money sports existed, notwithstanding the increased popularity and demand for spectator sports. Even for-profit sports franchises have uniform pricing (baseball tickets were all $0.50). However, the economics of sports (entertainment) tickets was no different then as it is today, and yet the response by event promoters seems to be the same - allocate the tickets by lottery and then complain that the secondary market pops up with "high" prices.

This complaint has dropped off a bit in recent years as the technology for selling tickets has dramatically changed, especially with the on-line markets. This technology has had two distinct impacts. First, event promoters have lobbied to repeal anti-scalping laws as they find themselves in the position to act as the "scalper" using on-line technologies. Second, the secondary market has experienced a simultaneous increase in demand (as on-line markets make it practical for non-locals to participate in the market) and supply (as the costs of selling tickets falls dramatically). The impact on quantity is clear - the number of transactions seems to have increased in the secondary market - while the the impact on street price is ambiguous.