The New England Patriots last week received the names of 13,000 people who bought or sold Pats tickets through StubHub. Season ticket holders are rightly concerned that the Pats may now revoke the subscriptions of those who circumvented the Pats’ own Ticketmaster-run system.
A Massachusetts judge ordered StubHub to release the names last year, a ruling that was affirmed last week by the state Appeals Court.
Diane, a season ticket holder who asked not to be identified for fear of being targeted by the Patriots, said she sold some of her seats on StubHub to help defray the cost of purchasing them.“It’s my ticket, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it,” she said.
The Patriots view their tickets as revocable licenses that they control. The team currently prohibits resales anywhere but on the team’s website, which is run by Ticketmaster and requires fans to sell their tickets at face value.
Mike, another season ticket holder who attempted to sell tickets on StubHub and requested anonymity, said he didn’t appreciate the Patriots going to court to obtain private information about him.
But other sports fans applauded the Patriots for trying to prevent season ticket holders from making enormous profits on their tickets.
“Whatever happened to buying tickets for the games you want to go to, rather than buying them so that you can resell them and essentially price the average blue collar fan out of going to a game,” said Sean Duke-Crocker of Brookline.
Do you agree with the team or the ticket holders? Tell us in the comments.
Patriots season ticket holders fear being put on hot seat [Boston Globe]
(Photo: Paul Keleher)
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Anyone who thinks that this has anything to do with the Patriots having a social conscience needs to grow up and maybe attend “reality school”!
Just to clear this up Gillette Stadium is privately financed by the Kraft family. The only help received was with road improvements which have are being repaid to the state with the parking fees charged at the site.
@GiselleBeardchen: Ironically from a Colts fan. Social conscience no, but fan conscience, I’d say yes.
The only realistic compromise that I can see in all of this is for the Pats to put a cap on the price of re-sold tickets, around 100%. That way resellers can make a tidy profit, yet average fans will somehow be able to see a game once in their lifetime.
The secondary market will always exist, it’s just a matter of reeling in those that go too far. Anyone found hawking over that limit, revoke the seating license and lifetime banishment from the stadium.
I also agree with the aforementioned thought about simply raising ticket prices to match what the market will bear in order to remove the incentive for scalping (sell every season ticket by auction to the highest bidder?), but that also defeats the purpose of making the game affordable for an average family. there has to be a middle ground somewhere, I’m just not smart enough to imagine it.
i just think its BS that people are asking 200-300 dollars for a ticket that cost them 75. its nonsense.
@Firstborn Dragon: So these people can go and buy their own tickets. They don’t HAVE to buy resale.
I’m assuming you’re from Toronto based on your mention from the Argos.
Like the Maple Leafs since WW2, the Patriots sell out every game within seconds of tickets going on sale. Patriots and Red Sox tickets are pretty much impossible to get.
@babaki: It’s not nonsense, it’s a free market economy. The only problem here is that the teams aren’t selling their tickets for the full market value. Since the tickets are artificially cheap for season ticket holders, there’s going to be situations in which season ticket holders leverage the arbitrage for profit.
If the tickets were actually too expensive, as people here claim, then noone would buy them. They sell for a mutually agreed upon price in a relatively open market.
tickets for pretty much any football game in US are impossible to get. Jets, Giants in NJ you cannot buy at the box office. they are gone. the only way to buy them is from someone. and like i said, you pay $300 for ticket that cost $75.
This is totally ridiculous.
I am speaking as a fan of the Washington Redskins who is holding tickets for next weeks game Redskins at Patriots game in his hands right now. I bought these tickets on e-bay and paid THE GOING MARKET RATE. It is called free market economics people. It is not our fault if event organizers create arbitrage opportunities by selling their tickets cheaper than what the market will bear.
The face value on these tickets was $125. I paid three times that. Why? Because I wanted to see the Redskins in freaking Boston and I was willing to pay market price to do that.
My friend and I go out of town to see a Redskins game every year. This is how we chose to spend our money, deal with it.
The only people I feel bad for are the ones that aren’t active resellers and only sold it because they couldn’t go that day. I believe the fans should have first crack at ALL tickets before anyone just trying to make a profit. I find it despicable that some people have season tickets for years and years and have never gone to a game. I’m sure there’s people with season tickets who don’t even live in the same state anymore, can’t go to the games, but keep the tickets so they can sell online each week. Those are the people the Pats don’t want to have tickets. I think it’s sad that whenever I want a ticket to a game, theatre, or concert, I have to go to ebay or stubhub first rather than the venue actually selling the tickets.
@tekkierich: i hope you spout the same rhetoric when gas prices are high. its the same concept. just because you choose to pay the higher price doesn’t make it right. @bravo369: i 100% agree.
@bravo369:
So, you’d be happier paying $300/ticket to the Pats than to StubHub?
@babaki: Yes I “spout the same rhetoric” as Milton Freedman and the Austrian school of economics.
Price is the best way to ration the limited supply of goods in a free society.
I would love to pay more for gas. It would reduce demand and spir innovation in alternate energy sources which over time will lower to cost of energy to the average consumer. How much does our current oil based economy currently cost us anyway? What chaos has oil wealth brought to the world?
Pro Football is the best game ever to watch ON TV!
Footballtards. Always good for a laugh.
I applaud this action. I have all but stopped going to professional sporting events because I cant afford to pay the scalpers prices.
Case in point, I was unable to purchase a $39 seat to the buffalo sabres game in the football stadium. Tickets were sold out 2 minutes after they went on sale. Within 15 minutes those tickets were listed on stub hub for $375-$1500. original pricing was $39-$90 for the seats listed.
How is that even remotely fair to te common person?
@JKinNYC:
No.
CD’s and books OUGHT to be treated like a purchased good, but try talking about the doctrine of first sale when buying them online.
My analogy to books and music is fine, and it holds.
We used to treat books and music as a good that we had the right to resell or trade after purchase, but companies (in the face of diminishing revenue streams) are more inclined to treat those purchases as licenses to listen to music (see an ebook vs. a regular book or an itunes album versus a cd at the store).
Why are we so willing to forgo first sale rights in the case of tickets to events?
@Secularsage:
You’re a business major, so I’ll forgive you your sins.
You aren’t right in dismissing the “free market” folks because you haven’t addressed our major claim.
Yes, the patriots have the right to hold ticket prices at whatever level they deem appropriate. Yes, they have a right to sell them under any terms and conditions that they can dream up.
The pats may do this for any reason, business, social or otherwise.
I don’t care.
My point is that as long as they are holding tickets below the equilibrium price, THEY GENERATE THE SHORTAGE at that price.
Period.
Scalpers don’t generate it when they buy the tickets in bulk. Season ticket holders don’t generate it when they but 13 games at a time. Businesses don’t generate it when they buy blocks of seats for executives and customers.
The Patriots generate it.
And speculation leads to market crashes empiricially? Are you a business major of an accredited school? How do you think the market (and yes of course it is a meeting of individuals) behaves without speculation when it isn’t in depression?
Speculation and resale are the heart of all of the financial markets in the world, and secondary ticket markets are no exception.
“3) “Free market economy” does not mean “let the rich prosper at the expense of everyone else.” People are buying season passes with the intention of selling some of their seats off at inflated prices to cover the costs of their purchase. This isn’t about supply and demand; it’s about speculators using their wealth to rip people off.”
this doesn’t even make any sense. For one, that is only one example of possible resale, and for another, you have just replaced one cliche term with a string of insults, not made an argument. If the price is held artificially low, and someone resells their ticket to another person, then that IS supply and demand.
Let’s try talking about it like this.
The introduction of scalpers may cause some negative externalities and may introduce large information costs into these transactions–just like ANY black or grey market intermediary. Arguably, tickets being resold by scalpers do not result in an efficient market.
I would argue that they are MORE efficient than a market with a large shortage. In the case of a market without resale, it is only a good outcome if you are first in line. If you are early enough in line to buy a ticket, you may have gotten a ticket for less than you would have been willing to part with. But for those who are later in line, then no amount of money will get them a ticket, large or small.
@tekkierich: i used gas as an example. not to get into political debate over oil. we all cant be rich like you must be and fork over 5x the original price for the sake of economics. ration the limited supply of goods? so what your saying is, tickets should go to the rich, and people who cant afford to be ripped off by thieves should just shut up and take it. @schiff: according to tekkierich, you should just shut up and pay the inflated prices because its good economics. forget whats fair to the consumer..which is what i thought this site was about.
What’s going to be interesting is seeing what the Patriots do with this list. Hopefully, they will simply look for people who are selling many tickets each and every week and “revoke” that license, while ignoring the people who have sold their tickets just once during the season.
I personally question how enforceable the “contract” on the back of the ticket is. Most contracts have to be explicitly agreed to by both parties to be enforceable. If I buy a ticket at face value without being given the opportunity to read the terms of the said contract, how have a I agreed to those terms? Once I get the ticket and read the terms, can I return it for a full refund if I don’t agree to those terms — probably not since refunds are also strictly prohibited.
@babaki:
what in the world are you talking about?
What is “the original price” of something?
Who is being ripped off by theives here?
stop using appeals to emotion and please make some sense.
do you understand that the economics he is talking about is the same thing that brings your groceries to market? That MESSING with those economics is why milk , soybeans and other crops that aren’t corn are so expensive?
This isn’t the case of “things going to the rich” this is a case of prices being allowed to float. Sometimes they float up, sometimes down. The outcome isn’t always great, but usually the solution isn’t to fix prices.
@whydidnt:
hopefully we will see some customers questioning how enforcable that contract is. For sales at the box office with no provision for refund, I could see a case being made, similar to the cases made against shrinkwrap contracts. if you buy it online, then you probably do have to click through a TOU/Contract.
@ulyssesmsu: Sadly, you paid it, so they’ll keep right on doing it …
@whydidnt: Do they make them available on the web site first?
@JustAGuy2: I don’t mind paying $300 to either stubhub or to the patriots…provided that the ticket being purchased is worth $300. I don’t want to pay $300 for a ticket that was purchased for $65. That’s not right.
The free market is working.
The reality is that outfits like StubHub, Ebay, or your local ticket broker are capitalizing on the fact that the Patriots and other teams/concert promoters, etc. have priced their tickets too low – their games are consistently sold out.
Nobody is being ripped off here, there’s only the unpleasant notion that someone else might be willing to pay considerably more than you for football tickets. And yes, I agree that a lot of these events are ultimately being priced out reach of regular folks. Try taking your kids to sporting event these days and watch the money fly out of your wallet.
Some of the other NFL teams have wisened up and elected to participate in these StubHub transactions in lieu of raising ticket prices. That’s smart!
@bravo369: If you don’t want to pay $300 for a ticket that was purchase for $65, then don’t buy it.
The decision is yours.
@babaki:
I hope you enjoy your socialist utopia. I am hardly rich by many definitions. I simply chose to spend my entertainment money for some things that you may not chose to spend it for. If a ticket to a football game is only worth $100 to you, then please only pay that much for the ticket. I however find value in buying good seats at a stadium 400 miles away from myself and I will pay a premium for that.
I do not find things such as 60″ plasma TV’s worth their price. I drive a basic 5 year old pickup truck. My home is well under 2000 square feet. Could I pay more and receive more house and car? Sure I could, but I don’t, and I do not demand that marketplaces be regulated so that I may buy more of any product.
Why do you want to insert yourself, or the power of government into my freely consented upon transaction between two parties? I wanted tickets and had cash, and the guy I bought them from had tickets and wanted cash.
People are misguided to want to regulate ticket resale markets. Just as they are misguided to regulate gasoline markets in a disaster.
If I own 50,000 gallons of 87 octane in the Northeast that I can sell at $2.50 a gallon locally, but also sell at $4.50 a gallon in a hurricane ravaged area, don’t you think I will trip over myself to get it to that market? Don’t you think that higher prices being a measure of strong demand will pull more supply into a market? In a disaster is that not what we want? People that do not understand these concepts baffle me.
@bravo369:
You probably buy a lot of things for more than they are “worth”. You give your money to a bank and they hand on to only a fraction of it, then charge other people for just BORROWING that money!
You probably bought a CD or DVD at some point that cost 50c to make in some foreign country.
A ticket is “worth” 300 dollars if it fetches 300 dollars on the market.
The reason that spread of 65 to 300 seems unfair to you is the difference between what the end user sees and what the Patriots charge. do you really think that the New England Patriots are the determinants of value for that ticket? what if they sucked? If they charged 65 dollars a ticket, no one would buy it. then would the tickets be worth 65 dollars?
Right now, if we assume that the pats dictate the value of the ticket, then they must have guessed that exactly 40000 (or however many the stadium can seat) people–no more, no less–want to pay 65 dollars to see a football game. The odds of that guess being correct are pretty low, and frankly, the existence of scalpers proves that the guess is wrong.
The market is dettermining the worth of that ticket as we speak, the patriots are just getting in the way.
@rbb: Bob Kraft built the stadium completely out of his own pocket.
@tekkierich: And every Redskins fan knows, scalping of their season tickets is a violation of Redskins’ policy too. Its that way for every team.
@Hyland: Clearly you have never bought season tickets.
Wow…everyone seemed to jump on me. From my original comments, i feel for the people who just happened to not be able to go that day. I would love to by tickets to an event…if I could actually get through. These resellers flood the lines and the event sells out in 6 minutes. 3 minutes later, half of the offered tickets seem to be on stubhub and ebay. This is what the Pats are trying to prevent. The way i look at it, the pats are looking out for the REAL fans. I’m sure there’s people out there who bought pats-colts tickets for $2000 each just to say they went.
And YES, the pats could sell these tickets at $300+ each and they’d probably still sell out but it’s at a price to let average fans and average families come out to the game. The resellers are preventing many people from going to the game. If you are a millionaire, then paying $65 for a ticket is very cheap for you but the way it’s being handled, a millionaire just goes on stubhub, offers $6000 for 1st row on 50 yard line and goes to the game. It took no effort whatsoever. I say everyone needs to wait in the same line and in the same queue over the phone. As someone else said, it would be best if they would just sell the ticket at the window the day of and you entered the game.
@zonk68: The rule is use them yourself, give them away or sell through the team. Free market is irrelevant. If you don’t want to use them, then why did you buy them? Because the team requires you to. That is causing a market failure. However, no one has problems finding someone to go in with them and split the tickets. More people see the a game, none get scalped. Why is that so difficult?
@tekkierich: Except you are not told you must buy 8 TVs and 3 small ones (preseason tickets) and that only 80K people in the area get to buy those TVs. And there is no government, its the Pat’ policy. If you don’t like the policy, don’t buy the damn tickets. Its a free market and your choice.
@Hyland: You are not entirely correct. As I said, the Pat’s policy of requiring you to buy 8 tix plus 3 pre-season tix is responsible for the shortage along with the demand, stadium size, team quality. If all tickets were sold only as individual games, this would not be such an issue. But that is the team’s policy. Just as its their policy that you can’t scalp the damn tickets. Don’t like it? Don’t buy them.
@mconfoy: I was unaware of any policy such as this when I bought my tickets. I also bought them from an individual in MA with about a 100 feedback on e-bay, so I doubt he was a institutional scalper, just a fan selling an item he can not use.
I will be PISSED if I hold the legit ticket for a game bought from the original purchaser and find out that my ticket is void.
How am I, as an out of town fan supposed to coax a ticket out of a home team’s fans hands? Cold hard cash works well. Who have I hurt?
I guess I have been fortunate in that I have attended several pro sports games without spending a single penny from my tightwad pockets…… the tickets were given to me. A friend of the family purchases season passes for several dozen seats for the local pro teams. He gives the tickets out as rewards to his customers and employees, and of course his kids and grandkids have access to the tickets and can share with their friends. Nice situation. I live next door to one of his kids and several years ago I got 5 tickets (for the W and kiddies) to a season finale.
I would hate to see the teams limit sales to customers. Some people really are buying bulk packages for their family or for legitimate business purposes.
At the same time I think a limit on bulk sales of season passes would really cramp the style of the professional scalpers and allow access to the everyman.
@mconfoy: Right, and the Redskins have also partnered up with StubHub (an official reseller for Redskins tickets) and I’ll hazard a guess and say that Dan Snyder gets a taste of the relevant transactions that take place.
Resale of season tickets might be “officially” taboo, but the Redskins certainly encourage use of StubHub: take a look at the banner ad link off of http://www.redskins.com
@mconfoy: Maybe I bought tickets for personal use, maybe I bought them to give to family/friends/customers, or maybe I bought them so I can profit off of them or better yet, lose money off of them (like all of the preseason games that NFL teams force season ticket holders to buy).
It’s my business as to what I do with the tickets. What’s so hard to understand about that? If someone wants to offer me above face for a pair of tickets, what’s the problem? Why isn’t it a crime when someone offers me below face?
@mconfoy:
the pat’s policy here is irrelevant. If there are 13000 people alone looking for ticket resales on ONE resale site, then there are bound to be plenty more who aren’t engaged in resale at that site.
If the tickets were sold individually at a rate not allowed to change with demand, then we would still ahve the same problem.
I don’t like your “solution” for first sale doctrine problems, even though I practice it. The “if you don’t like X, don’t participate” only goes so far and ignores the notion of path dependence. The more and more common these mini contracts become in items we are used to treating as property, the more accustomed we will be to this hemming in of rights.
Remember the fight about cookies on the internet? Remember the fight about wiretapping phone calls without a warrant? Remember when you could bring a bag into a movie theater? Those days aren’t coming back, and no manner of avoiding patronage of one establishment will change that.
We are at the turning point of how to define rights related to the first sale doctrine, and we’re messing it up.
@bravo369:
We are jumping on you because you just don’t get it.
Let’s pretend there aren’t professional resellers in the world. YAAAH!
Let’s also pretend that the Pats have some goal, selling tickets at a price the “average fan” can afford. Let’s say this price is 50 bucks.
Let’s ALSO say that the Pats are super popular and will more than sell out ever game this year at that price of 50 dollars.
Normally, those folks would have some variable willingness to part with that cash for tickets. Some people would only be willing to pay 5 dollars, or 15 dollars for a ticket. those people aren’t getting in. Some other people are willing to spend 1000 dollars for a ticket. They don’t need to, but they would be willing to.
As a matter of fact, there are more people willing to buy tickets at those prices than there are tickets at those prices.
So, the first people in line get those tickets. That’s an unfortunate consequence of not having enough tickets, but it’s fair enough. You get in line early, you get your tickets.
So those folks that bought the tickets, good Americans that they are, go home and discover thet their neighbor, Richie Rich, didn’t get up in time for that line. He wants to see the pats with his monocle, but can’t. He tells thoe loyal fans his predicament, and says, hey, how much do you value those tickets for? The fans go, well, we bought them for 65 dollars, but because we are such good fans, we would have paid 350 dollars.
Richie Rich says, well, maybe we are both in luck. I’ve got a mutually beneficial transaction in mind. I would like to go to the game, and you would like, say 250 dollars for those tickets, right?
Sure, says the family, happy to get money equivalent to what they thought the tickets were worth (they could have just as easily sold them for what Richie thought they were worth, which was evidently higher, but it works either way). they leave and go buy a new TV, or something.
And the first scalpers were born!
An opportunity for resale was created by the Patriots, because they didn’t offer tickets for sale at the market price. So those consumers who bought them didn’t have to part with the amount of money that the tickets were wroth to them. On TOP of this, since at that price there were more fans than at the price of 1000 dollars per ticket, plenty of people who would have gone couldn’t, because they weren’t available to pick those tickets up at the office before they sold out.
The Patriots created the shortage by selling the tickets at below the market price. SOMEONE will step in to resell them, always, even if you get rid of all the professionals and try again. You can’t get rid of the reselling until you get rid of the opportunity for resale.
It’s just how it works, sorry.
@mconfoy:
season tickets fall under long term contracts, made to obfuscate market functions and to ensure a hedge against volotilty.
I am well aware of plenty of schemes that are similar to season tickets, rebate programs, frequent flyer miles, cell phone contracts, etc.
That doesn’t mean that any of the underlying points are invalid. Season tickets may provide ANOTHER opportunity where tickets are sold at a price totally unhinged from the market, or where tickets that are less desirable are bundled with more desirable ones in order to ensure that season ticket holders don’t just pay for the option to go to the post season.
All of those cases may just be another example of where motivation exists to resell tickets.
I’ve already talked about your “don’t like it don’t buy it” admonition, but I want to say this.
whether I buy, or anyone else in thsi forum buys a resold ticket isn’t going to change the fact that the incentive for resale exists. As long as that incentive exists, people will resell tickets. The only way to change that is to eliminate the incentive for resale. IMO, the easiest way to do that, is to float the price of tickets, but there are other, more complicated ways.
@bravo369:
As for your solution, it only works if your time has no value to you.
Get tickets only on game day? What happens if you like 200 miles from the stadium? how much do you spend in gas to get there? What if you have a job that prevents you from being in line when the tickets are sold? do those people never get to go to sports games?
If your time has value, say a high value, it isn’t worth it to wait in line for tickets. If I had millions of dollars to blow, I might just decide to pay someone 6000 dollars to get me front row seats, as far as I’m concerned, that money is plenty of “effort” exerted to get those tickets.
And, I don’t think that the patriots touching concern for the fans has them clamping the ticket prices at 65 dollars. I suspect that it is a calculated choice between high revenues and bar PR that comes from high ticket prices. that’s why they go after scalpers, not because they care about fans, but because they don’t like the image of tickets going for thousands of dollars.
Why are they picking on their ‘loyal’ customers (the STH) and not the bastards at the ‘ticket broker’ companies who scalp more tickets in one game…
These companies with their own private numbers/websites for ticketbastard who buy up all the good seats as soon as they go on sale?
@Hyland: I know how a free market system works. And your scenario describes exactly who I feel for in this situation. The people are don’t necessarily resell tickets but just did for 1 game. It’s the habitual resellers the pats are trying to stop. Other people are just going to get into the mix. I know of the free market system and i know what it aims to achieve…but that doesn’t make it right. don’t buy a ticket if you aren’t going to the game. give other people a chance to get them.
@bravo369:
Your absolutely correct in saying that the free market system doesn’t make things right. It also won’t always result in outcomes that we like. For instance, if there were only 13 football games and tickets were sold at auction to the highest bidder, you and I would probably never be able to go to a football game.
All we are saying is that:
The reason there is a shortage ISN’T because of resellers. I know it seems this way, but it isn’t. Resellers trade on that shortage, but they can’t create it by themselves.
Habitual resellers will crop up given those conditions I showed you in the scenario, creating a distinction between one time resellers and bulk resellers doesn’t do anything-the pats certainly don’t make that distinction when they print the contract on the ticket.
@Buran: I have clashed with you on other topics before but like so many articles, this is a big who cares? The season ticket buyers agree to a contract prior to buying the tickets. If they don’t like it, I am sure there are quite a few people who would be more than willing to abide the contract and buy the tickets.
This is really a weak thread.
@Hyland: you keep saying that me and bravo dont get it, but we seem to think YOU are the one who doesnt get it. no one is talking about your neighbor who sells you a ticket cuz he cant go. we are talking about the people who buy as many tickets as they can and then go right to ebay, with no intention of going to a game, and sell them for 4x what they paid. this is what the pats are trying to stop.. also it doesnt matter if the team sucks or not. the jets suck and thier games have been sold out for years. @tekkierich: your scenario for selling gasoline, is illegal.
I’m saying that those two people are functionally the same. and if they aren’t functionally the same, one (the professional reseller) is an outgrowth of another.
You are saying that you would like to have your cake and eat it too. You want good folks who just buy a ticket and forget that they have to go to a dance recital on the same day to be able to resell that ticket, but you would rather the people who make a business of ticket resale be unable to do so.
I don’t know how much more plain I can make it. You can’t invent a policy that does that without eliminating the financial incentive for resale. You generate that financial incentive for resale through those price controls that TM/Patriots implement.
Why don’t we have the same problem with people buying and reselling honda civics? Because Honda isn’t trying to save face by holding Civic prices at 4000 dollars. if they were, and civics were in such high demand as to be valued at much more, people would buy them up in order to resell them later, with no intention of driving them.
when you respond to resale with abitrary restrictions on use (like needing an ID to match a ticket or including a contract to prevent resale), you impact fans as much as you impact resellers.
I don’t care where you line up on this debate as far as one time resale versus scalping. I wouldn’t assume anyone here would be FOR large scale resale via computer and hoarding until prices skyrocket. That’s like being for baby seal poaching while having a debate about resource management.
What we have been trying to say over and over again is that the ticket price policy of the patriots creates this problem, and until THAT policy changes, the problem will persist.
Your responses have been:
-Price controls good.
-Resellers are theives/criminals/etc.
-The “worth” of a ticket is its face value
-Only scalpers and season ticket policies create this shortage, without them, we would all be able to go to games at 50 dollars a pop.
This is where our insistence that you don’t understand things is coming from.