You don’t get away with any mistakes at Augusta National. Some patrons with resale tickets learned it the hard way last week. Just like the previous year, patrons were stripped of their resold badges, but this time with more severity.

Throughout the week, some patrons were stopped upon arrival for questioning. If a patron’s weekly badge scanned abnormally, they were held back. Security officers took them to a different building where patrons had to submit their badges and proof of identification. Some were lucky enough to get their badges back and watch the tournament. Others, not so much. They were taken inside the building.

Among the questions that were asked was how they acquired the tickets and how long they have held the passes. If the officials were satisfied with the answers, patrons went on to watch the round. If not, they were escorted out. A couple of them had their badges revoked and a lifetime ban enforced as well. Take the case of this veteran spectator who was kicked out this year.

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He has been coming to the Masters for years, but was stopped at the gate this time. After undergoing the procedure mentioned above, he was told that the badge he had been using was actually one from resale. Ironically, the veteran patron got the badge as a gift, but it was purchased from eBay. Unfortunately, the original seller posted the image of the entire badge with the unique identifying number. Augusta tracked it and blacklisted it.

However, rather than the questioning, patrons were more unhappy with something different: the waiting. One patron told Front Office Sports that the process took nearly an hour. But the majority of the time was spent waiting in the queue. The interrogation was merely 10 minutes. In the end, most of the cases turned out to be of a technical failure.

That possibly explains why only four patrons were asked to leave on Thursday. But how does the hallowed club so bent on maintaining tradition decide which tickets are original? Extensive surveillance, unorthodox technology, and location tracking.

Every Masters tickets contain RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) technology. The moment someone earns a ticket via lottery, they have to consent to Augusta National’s privacy policy, which includes a nifty clause: Augusta National can track the location of the ticket. The club links the RFID serial numbers with the serial numbers on the ticket. This serves a two-fold purpose.

Firstly, it’s easy to scan the ticket and let the patrons enter without any significant delay. Secondly, and most importantly, it lets the club track the tickets not just inside the course but in the vicinity of Augusta National. That is significant since resellers mainly use houses near Augusta National to hand over the tickets to spectators.

The usage of RFID technology offers Augusta National an edge. That’s a key reason why Masters tickets are so hard to find on resale, and some platforms flatly refuse to let anyone sell those badges. The crackdown on resale tickets has intensified in recent years.

“It was a bloodbath,” one hospitality company executive told Front Office Sports in 2025. “Several of our customers were interrogated on arrival, and about half of those badges were canceled. And here’s the worst part: A ticket that scanned with no problem Thursday and Friday would get targeted Saturday.”

The executive also said that some fans who had their badges confiscated received one-day passes to stay on the grounds. The badges usually come from lifetime membership, which was acquired mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, alongside the yearly lottery process. However, recently, badges have been found listed for $10,000 or more on StubHub, a leading online ticket marketplace and secondary broker.

Augusta National has banned original purchasers for life whose badges have been found on secondary marketplaces like StubHub, without listening to any appeals of the accused. As a result, families with years of long badge history have been expelled after resale instances. The club states it is the only authorized seller of Masters tickets, underscoring its intent to control all distribution.

Masters Shows a Radical Change in the Ticketing Process

The recent ban on ticket resale is just the reflection of Augusta National’s primary ideology of exclusivity. Not everyone gets to be a member at Augusta National. Similarly, it’s very difficult to get your hands on a Masters badge.

Greg Nortman, CEO of Extra Point, reiterated the importance of this measure by the club. He stated that this move was typical of premier events, and in the future, Augusta might end up partnering with a ticketing provider or create its own ticket platform.

“What I see the Masters doing is evolving over time, which all great events do,” said Greg Nortman. “I have been an advocate for rights holders. And they should be able to not have speculative assets selling against theirs on these exchanges,” he added.

According to Nortman, an official ticketing platform would lead to the protection of the Masters’ revenue flow and the effective cost management of the tickets. The resale factor would be dismissed completely, which caused the ticket prices to be extremely high. The change would lead to smooth transactions, control over the inventory, and prevention of price changes by brokers. Tony Knopp, CEO of TicketManager, personally knew double-digit badge holders who lost their access to the tournament.

“The difference with the Masters is they can do it with a heavy hand,” Knopp said. “They’re not that worried about public criticism.”

Moreover, SeatGeek, due to all the complexities, announced it would not support Masters tickets. The resale intricacies were also acting as a deterrent for them. The collaboration with ticketing platforms would help Augusta National in its aim for exclusivity for the Masters. Their finance and ticketing processes would also benefit from the new endeavor.