I Need Two on the Aisle!

How is it that the worse the team whose game you are trying to get tickets for the harder it is to find good seats? Good seat without going through a scalper that is.

By far this is not the first time I’ve railed against scalpers. They are the lowest of the low who put their personal profit over the happiness of a young child getting to see his first ballgame or her first Wiggles concert because you’ve purchased a block of 12 tickets with the express intent of marking them up 150% and pricing out many parents.

I understand that I’m not a parent (unless you count the dog) and I can easily just visit the team’s website and purchase tickets but I know there are those of you out there who are going to get stuck with tickets on your hands and once that first pitch is thrown they are going to be worthless. It’s a kind of cosmic/karmic Montezuma’s Revenge that gets cast on these scum.

But never fear, much like the right reverend Billy Sol Hargus, I am here to heal your pain and grant you forgiveness. Sell me your 2 tickets to Thursday night’s Mets/Orioles game (field box seats) below face value. Sure you may take a $5 loss per seat but you’ll be gaining a warm sense of peace and understanding with the universe.

I'm Pulling for the Patriots? Am I F-in Crazy?

Actually, no. No I'm not. I am pulling for the Pats in their battle against ticket scalping. Here's the quick rundown. The Patriots sued Stubhub (and parent company e-bay) in order to secure the names of the approximately13,000 buyers and sellers of Patriot season and individual game tickets on the site. Yesterday's ruling in favor of the Pats was on an appeal from the lower court who also sided with the team. For full details here's the ESPN.com article.

What I'm most happy about here is not that the big, bad NFL team is trying to get a stranglehold on their ticket sales, but rather that they are cracking down on ticket scalping and allowing fans to buy tickets at reasonable prices. In the worst case example, a 50 yd line seat for the Pats/Jets game in December is posted on StubHub for $1,300. Oh by the way, the face value: $125. So not only is this "fan" trying to unload a ticket they aren't going to use, they're trying to cover the cost of their entire season ticket package! Oh and one more aside, if that fan really "couldn't" attend the game and wanted to sell the ticket so they didn't have to eat it, they could go to Ticketmaster who has a partnership with the club and buy the ticket for face value (and the $30 or so in fees that are legal under Massachusetts law). So would you pay $150 or $1300 for the same tickets? Humm...

I think all sports fans should pay close attention to this story as this could set the precedent for other franchises to go after these jackals (you know how I feel about ticket scalpers) who do nothing more then buy the season ticket plans and resell the tickets for huge profit. Oh and Stubhub of course gets their cut (the percentage of which is not clearly labeled on their site....another indication to buyers that you are getting ripped off).

A Money.CNN.com report earlier this month praised Stubhub and the sites like it for creating a "truly transparent secondary market for tickets." Really? Which part is transparent? That fans are getting ripped off or that scalpers are buying season tickets which real fans have been waiting for (the list for Green Bay Packers season tickets is still 20 years deep) and then selling them piecemeal for huge profits?

I think all sporting teams should take this route. It's not that I don't support a secondary market for tickets, because if you've read the earlier posts about trying to get Springsteen tickets (which arrived yesterday!!!) you'll know I certainly do, but you also know (from those posts) that I detest ticket scalpers who aren't just looking to make their money back on tickets they can't use but to actually turn a profit. And for that matter, where are the DC Police during Wizard and Caps games? How is it that scalpers can sell tickets right in the front of the building? Next time you "have" to buy from a scalper, negotiate and talk them down and above all...ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS see the ticket before buying it!!