this actually brought to mind what I consider one of the most brilliant 'scams' in US sports -- the NCAA Final 4 lottery.
tickets are only sold for all three games at $210/book.
to apply for face-value tickets, you have to do so in May. you find out the following February if you won or not. during that intervening nine months, the NCAA keeps your money, earning interest in their account. if you lose, they take $20 for a processing fee and return $190.
Usually, only a small percent of tickets are put up to the lottery, the rest distributed through participating schools and sponsors.
If there are 10,000 seats available through the lottery, and 50,000 applications, that's 40,000 * $210 = $8.4M sitting in the NCAA's coffers for nine months for tickets they can't sell.