The Masters Ticket Resale Crackdown Continues

Tickets to the Masters, already one of the hardest things to obtain in sports, are even more difficult to come by this year—no matter how much golf fans are willing to pay.

The resale market for Masters tickets is shrinking further, as a result of Augusta National Golf Club’s ongoing crackdown on the secondary market, multiple sources in sports ticketing and hospitality tell Front Office Sports.

There are already significant public signs of the shift.

SeatGeek decided not to resell Masters tickets this year, due to Augusta National’s tightening restrictions and the significant on-site operational lift required to support Masters badges, a source previously confirmed to FOS.

StubHub, which sources say was hit hardest by last year’s crackdown, is still selling Masters tickets but warns on its landing page that it has extremely low availability. Some days show “only 1% of tickets left,” while others are listed as sold out or likely to sell out soon.

Other major ticket resellers including Vivid Seats and TickPick are still offering Masters passes, despite the stricter enforcement of Augusta National’s long-standing no-resale policy.

Badge Holders Punished 

The Masters does not release attendance figures, but it is estimated to allow between 40,000 and 50,000 fans into Augusta National each day of the tournament (including three days of practice rounds and four days of competition).

The annual Masters lottery is believed to garner upward of two million applicants each year. Winners are offered the chance to buy tickets to select days. (This year, the Masters raised ticket prices for all rounds of the tournament, including competition and practice rounds.)

There are also lifetime Masters Series Badges, which are weekly passes sold each year to a list of patrons who were grandfathered in to an old system that has not been open to new applications since 2000. If Augusta National learns a lifetime badge holder has been selling their passes, they revoke them; and those lifetime passes do not transfer within a family after a person dies. Augusta National members—there are only roughly 300—also receive a set of weekly Masters passes each year.

“As a reminder, Augusta National, Inc. is the only authorized source/seller of Masters^® Tickets,” the official Masters website reads. “The resale of any Masters Ticket is strictly prohibited. Holders of Tickets acquired from third parties, by whatever means, may be excluded from attendance to the Tournament.”

That language has been part of the Masters ticketing policy for years but was never as strictly enforced as last year, when Augusta National representatives pulled many ticketed fans aside to question them about where they got their ticket, and from whom. Many fans caught with resold tickets who could not prove a connection to the original badge holder had their weekly pass canceled (but were allowed to stay for the day). 

That created a trickle-down effect for ticket brokers planning to sell the badge to a different customer each day, and ultimately led to many secondary ticket-buyers getting locked out of the Masters.

In the months since last year’s tournament, some permanent badge holders who sold their passes last year have received letters from Augusta National informing them their passes have been voided—even those whose resold tickets did not get caught last year. FOS has obtained two such letters. 

The Challenge of Physical Passes

With no phones allowed at the tournament, all tickets at the Masters are physical badges—either lanyards or paper passes that must be displayed around a person’s neck or on their belt loop, wrist, etc. That means resold passes must be physically picked up by the buyer.

This year, many longtime ticket brokers in Augusta are opting not to sell their tickets in advance to national platforms like StubHub and others, sources say, and instead choosing to wait until the week of the Masters to sell their inventory directly.

“Paper tickets, there’s definitely some tradition, but it does create these problems,” Nate Liberman, VP of sports at live event marketplace Tixr, tells FOS. “One being you don’t have an understanding of the chain of custody. It obviously allows for the secondary market to exist outside of your ecosystem.”

Despite the resistance to digital ticketing, physical Masters tickets do have RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology, which allows Augusta National to track their location.

“Tickets provided by ANI contain Radio-frequency identification (‘RFID’) technology,” the Masters privacy statement, effective Feb. 23, 2025, reads. “In order to receive any Tickets offered by ANI, you consent to ANI tracking the location of the Tickets through RFID readers. ANI may link RFID serial numbers to Ticket serial numbers and ultimately in some instances to personal information that ANI may hold or obtain about you.”

Since Augusta National knows the original ticket holder for every pass, that location tracking allows the club to look for suspicious movement around nearby known ticket brokers. StubHub uses a nearby house in Augusta where it hand-delivers its Masters tickets to buyers, as do many other ticket and hospitality operations. Purchasers of weekly passes on the secondary market typically collect their pass in the morning and return it to the broker in person that evening.

Last year, Augusta National had people staking out the StubHub house, sources believed, to determine who was picking up tickets there before entering the tournament.

StubHub did not respond to a request for comment.

On Location’s Growing Role

This year’s Masters will mark Year 3 for Map & Flag, a two-story, 26,000-square-foot hospitality venue across Washington Road that in 2025 sold 2,500 weekly badges at roughly $17,000 each. Passes—acquired only by first requesting consideration to purchase—include grounds admissions at the Masters, plus all-inclusive food and beverage services at Map & Flag.

It is a poorly kept secret in the golf world that On Location, the TKO-owned sports hospitality giant, operates Map & Flag behind the scenes, as well as other official hospitality options from Augusta National like Berckmans Place (just off the 5th hole). On Location works with other premier sporting events like the Super Bowl, Olympics, and FIFA World Cup, among others. 

It is no coincidence that the Masters secondary ticketing crackdown comes as Augusta National expands its official hospitality offerings. And much like ticket resellers, longtime local hospitality operators in Augusta are being forced to pivot.

When reached for comment by FOS, an On Location spokesperson deferred to Augusta National, which declined to comment.