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Call dibs on a hotel room for the Bowl Championship Series finale

Your college team looks pretty good right now but can they go all the way to the championship? Now there is no need to gamble on a nonrefundable deposit on a hotel room in Florida to attend the Bowl Championship Series game on Jan. 8 only to lose your money when your team gets eliminated early.

The BCS ranks the top college teams and selects which teams play in the bowl games (the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl) and which teams play in the championship game.

A company called FirstDibz lets you call “dibs” on a room (for a $30 fee) at the Starwood Hotels and Resorts’ Sheraton Yankee Clipper in Ft. Lauderdale, only 13 miles from the site of the BCS game at Dolphin Stadium.

Here’s how it works:

If your team makes it to the BCS game, you have a reserved room, for which you pay the regular rate. (Room rates are $249 per night for a single/double, $264 for a triple and $279 for a quad.)

If your team gets knocked out of the championship race early, you lose only the $30 dib fee.

First Dibz has reserved 50 rooms at the hotel, 25 for each team, for this deal.

One of the benefits of this deal is that if your team makes it to the championship game, you are guaranteed a room and you won’t pay an inflated last-minute rate.

Since 2001, First Dibz has been offering similar deals for sporting event tickets for playoffs and championships, including the Super Bowl and the NBA championships. The deal for the BCS bowl marks the first time the company has offered the “dibs” option for hotel rooms.

– Hugo Martín, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo: Tight end Brandon Smith can't bear to watch as Ohio State loses to Louisiana State in January's Bowl Championship Series title game played in New Orleans; Associated Press]

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10, 2008 at 3:15 pm by Hugo Martin and is filed under Florida, Hotels, News, Tips & Advice, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

2 Comments on “Call dibs on a hotel room for the Bowl Championship Series finale”

Kyle Mitchell Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Hugo. We need your help! The LA times frequently has articles about first dibz so I thought you would like to hear this so you can warn fellow fans. We purchased superbowl dibz and just received this email from firstdibz…
FirstDIBZ is sending you this very important email because it has come to our attention that an individual uDIBZ seller has misused the FirstDIBZ website (in contravention and breach of the Sellers Agreement ). As a result, this individual has had their account suspended to protect the integrity of the overall uDIBZ marketplace.

During the seller’s misuse of our website, our records confirm that you have purchased DIBZ from this individual and as a result we will be refunding you 100% of the amount you paid for these DIBZ plus 100% of the transaction fees that were incurred. In addition, if you have sold any of these subsequent DIBZ, the funds received from these sales will be reversed. Please allow 48 hours for the credits to be funded in your FirstDIBZ wallet. Your DIBZ holdings associated with this uDIBZ seller have been removed from your account.

To ensure the continuing customer satisfaction and positive user experience which you have become accustomed to, we have temporarily suspended the ability for any new seller markets to launch in the Super Bowl XLIII uDIBZ marketplace. Existing Super Bowl uDIBZ markets are unaffected and still open for trading.

Thank you for your understanding and we look forward to seeing you again soon at http://www.FirstDIBZ.com

So basically the dibz that is supposed to be guaranteed is not! We invested in the eagles to go to the superbowl and now we dont get to go unless we pay the outrageous prices! firstdibz should be replacing the invalid options with valid ones. Options are now $500 plus instead of the $90 we paid. Tell your readers to stay away! Let me know if you have any contacts at firstdibz and can help influence.
Thanks!
CHRIS BOURGEOIS Says:
January 14th, 2009 at 3:45 am
I HAVE RECEIVED THE SAME E-MAIL FROM THESE PEOPLE. I INVESTED IN THE ARIZONA CARDINALS AND THEY TOLD ME THE SAME THING. THESE SCAM ARTIST NEED TO BE DEALT WITH, I DON’T WANT A REFUND I WANT MY RESERVES