Total BS. Why?

1) IF the team is making a cut off of the tickets sold on the TM site (Or if the seller has to pay a fee) then I'd say that's wrong. They can take 50% of the profits or more, and the ticket holder can do nothing.

2) I think it's rather foolish about the comment that these resellers are forcing the normal person out of the stadium. If it's a popular game, maybe. But I don't buy the stories that season ticket holders get 100% of the tickets in a stadium. I know when my aunt had seasons tickets to the Argos, they were ordinary seats. Nice seats, yes. But they were still in the normal stadium area. So these people can go and buy their own tickets. They don't HAVE to buy resale.

3) SUPPLY AND DEMAND! Really, if these people can resale at the profit they're asking, then it's their business. Really, it;s no diffrent then someone ordering a block of tickets when the box office first opens and resales them. Only difference is you can go after the season ticket holders, you CAN'T go after the scalpers who buy blocks.

Bottom line? I really can't see any reason this matters. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the team gets a cut of every ticket resold using their system. So not ONLY do they make a profit off of the seasons ticket holder's original payment, they ALSO make a cut off of the ticket holder's resale.

I bet they make more money off of a by game price then a season's pass, and just want to push people into buying a ticket for a game rather then the seasons tickets.

Every day, the Patriots remind me more and more of the New York Yankees. And not in a good way.

Professional sports fans are suckers. The players, owners, corporations, and entertainment providers are all working together to turn professional sports into nothing but corporate entertainment while draining the fan dry. Someday we'll have a situation where a city will have to raise their sales taxes just to give a 1-year extension to A Rod.

I like the fact that the Patriots are trying to get rid of scum bag scalpers, online and in front of the stadium. However, I don't think they should be going after people in their own fan base. Send out a warning to all ticket owners.

I'm leaning on the ticketholders' side of the scale here. However I certainly don't condone the ridiculous scalping to tickets that occurs on Stubhub and other sites. If I'm an average fan and I can't go to a game, I should be able to resell my ticket. However I do think it should be limited to face value. The main reason I side with the ticketholders, though, is the Pats' required use of the Ticketmaster outlet. I cannot stand that company and their "convenience fees."

Besides the clauses about scalping, there's also a huge risk in reselling your tickets to random people. If the buyers happen to be obnoxious drunks and get themselves ejected from the game, you can find YOUR tickets being revoked. Most of the STH that I know for major sports end up purchasing a 'share' of a season ticket. They get so many games per season, and if they can't make one, they trade with another member of the share.

A steady erosion of ownership rights. Music with DRM linked to one device. Software that expires and also can be shut down remotely.

Now this. We really can't own anything. I'll just lease another car, plug in my ipod and boot up Vista. Wait-here's my credit card number so you can go ahead and charge me monthly in perpetuity.

I am really mixed on this one. Living in Dallas means that if I want to go to a game I have no choice but to go to a scalper as the Cowboys are perma-sold-out. So, I Tivo the games and FF through the commercials.

But to say that the tickets have to be kept reasonable for the average man is like say Mercedes has to lower the price of the SLR65 to $45K for the average man as well.

Yeah it sucks not being able to afford the events I might want to go to, but, at least for now we are still living in a free market based economy. Although Hillary is doing her best to change that. Hey, maybe stopping ticket scalping will be her socialist promise for next week :-) (Ducking for cover)

Fact of the matter is, these tickets are revocable licenses, as the Pats claim. The Pats aren't doing anything they, or any other team , are not allowed to do. Next time you go to a game, just flip your ticket over and read all of the other stuff the evil sports corporations won't let you do. I love (sarc) Stanfrombrooklyn's communist manifesto, but the pats are just doing what they, and every team, has every right to do. A fan doesn't lease the seat, and they can't sublease it for a greater amount. Other than that, I agree with everything else lonerider wrote.

@LoneRider: Went to the Cowboys-Patriots game last week. Paid $300 a ticket for the opportunity.

I think it is unfortunate that so much of today's ticket marketplace belongs to ticket brokers and people who purchase tickets with no other purpose but to scalp them. The recent stories about Hannah Montana tickets are shameful to read.

Still I agree that if a season ticket holder has tickets to a popular game and wants to sell them to the highest bidder, he should be allowed to do so. There are plenty of people who buy season tickets and sell the one big game to offset the cost of the entire season.

the fine folks at stubhub need to watch a certain DVD featuring carmelo anthony.

Living in Boston I for one applaud this effort by the Patriots. Patriots games are very popular and getting tickets at face value is virtually impossible. I would rather not be able to get tickets at all knowing that everyone who purchased them before me went to enjoy the game as opposed to having hundreds of assholes buying the tickets only to sell them at an enormous profit. I understand an occasional ticket sale in case you can't make it to the game, or even if you don't feel like it, but what's so wrong about selling them at face value just to make your money back?? If you don't want to sell it through the Patriots system, just ask around - there are plenty of people who would purchase the tickets at face or even slightly above the face value. But a 1000% profit is just a bit to ridiculous.

I hope that some people will lose their season tickets over this. That would make the 50,000 strong waiting list for the Patriots season tickets a bit shorter.

♦@Firstborn Dragon: It is impossible to get tickets to American football any other way. Your comparison is about as valid as comparing ticket sales to ManU games and LA Galaxy games. Different leagues, different games. The waiting list for season tickets for most teams stretches into the decades. If teams CAN sell season tickets, they do, rather than individual games.

The Pats are essentially saying "if you don't abide by the contract we have pertaining to these tickets, we'll give them to someone who will." They could abuse it, or they could use the info to go after ticket brokers and revoke their tickets. Their actions remain to be seen, but So far, all they have done is identify people that have willfully broken a contract with them.

Consider this text from the New York Jets website:
"How can I buy tickets to a home game?

The New York Jets are sold out a season ticket basis. There are no individual game tickets available. If you are not a season ticket holder, please consider joining our Waitlist. is an annual fee of $50 to join and remain on the waitlist. There are currently more than 10,000 people on our Waitlist."

In other words, no season tickets, no way to get to a game. Except for maybe 4-5 teams out of 32, this is what you'd find. The Pats may actually be doing this to protect their fans from scalpers here. Not unreasonable. We will see.

It was just coincidental that a large number of the names released belonged to the players on the teams the Patriots will play later on this season, including every member of the Jets & Colts.

Well, send in the Pinkertons with billy clubs to bash the guilty's heads.

@JKinNYC: An annual fee of $50 to be on the waitlist? Wow. So, 10K people x $50 per person = $500K per year from people who don't get to actually go to the games? I am clearly in the wrong business. Hey, everybody, I can put you on a waitlist with the exact same benefits for only $20 a year. You can make the check out to me personally.

@LoneRider:

You can't whine about the free market and then praise the free market with the same breath.

@JKinNYC:

So they make $500,000 every year for utterly no work whatsoever. Now that's healthy.

--------------------

Seriously, the problem here is simple: If you don't want fans scalping your tickets, don't make them ridiculously expensive in the first place, or don't offer season tickets at all.

Better idea: No season tickets at all, and limits on tickets to one per person, per name, IDs checked at the gate (except on children, obviously), with refunds and transfers available to those who can't make the game.

Best idea: Sell tickets at the gate, and only at the gate. You buy a ticket, you enter the stadium.

But then, of course, they couldn't overbook, charge money for "waiting lists," or set up their own ticket resale sites to screw the consumer. Not to mention the non-refundable tickets and laws against scalping - imagine that, a law forbidding you from selling your property, ever, under any circumstances, for more than you paid.

Hell, at least if we passed that as a general law, I might be able to buy two or three dozen classic cars!

@magic8ball: Yeah that's crazy. But "supposedly" it has reduced the waiting list to ~10 years from about $30. I don't think the Giants charge. But they DO require you to be on the list to buy tickets through their official site.

@RvLeshrac: "If you don't want fans scalping your tickets, don't make them ridiculously expensive in the first place,"

Um. You don't understand supply and demand at all. THere are ONLY 8 home games every year. For most teams, they are ALWAYS sold out. Always. Far more people want tickets than there are available (This is why preseason games even sell out). If tickets were cheaper, there would be even MORE profit motive to scalp. To stop scalping by changing the price, you'd actually have to increase price to the point that demand matched available seats.

The toughest NFL line? These waiting lists
[www.msnbc.msn.com]

Yes, it is clear that some folks are not aware of just how hard it is (impossible, actually) to get tickets for some teams. Several years ago, I read a report of someone on the Redskins list actually moving down one year. Nobody ever had an explanation for how that happened.

I had not heard that some teams charged annual fees. That seems quite over the top, even if they apply that money to your future purchase, they are making a ton of money on the interest alone.

@RvLeshrac: Oh, and one other thing. Next time you have tickets to an event, any event, read the fine print. You have no "property" other than a piece of paper that signifies a contract between you and the seller. This contract says that if both of you follow the rules therein, you get to see that event.

@TPK: From that article:
"But in 2003, things changed for Jets waitlisters. The team decided to impose a fee of $50 a year for those on the lists. Lieb said he saw his place improve from 3,503 to 1,004 within four months of the announcement."

If that percentage holds throughout, ~70% of all people on the waiting list dropped off, meaning people who really did care, would stay on (of course scalpers would just pay it). I wonder if the Jets will want StubHub names too.

The advertised idea was to reduce the waiting list for those who really cared. Obviously, the $500k is a nice cash grab, but it made the list take far less time for the people who cared.

/For what it's worth, I'm a Giants fan, and think the Jets ownership is pretty classless for other reasons. That said, there seems to be some logic to the move other than a cash grab.

You agreed to not resell the tickets. Why're you complaining about getting in trouble for doing just that? No sympathy from me.

@Buran: Wow. I need to move you lower on the list of users I constantly disagree with. Your post is the answer to this story in a nutshell.

Exactly, you agree to the contract and then complain because you broke the contract? You, are a moron.

Now, the Patriots do not forbid the resale of their tickets. However, they do forbid the resale of their tickets online AND they put a price limit on the sale of said ticket. The reason they operate their online system is so that season ticket holders who have something come up and need to sell their tickets for a week can do so without losing money.

As a Sabres fan, it disgusts me that the season ticket holders routinely sell their tickets to the Maple Leaf fans who can't get a ticket in their market. So when the Sabres play the Leafs it's almost a 50/50 crowd and you see Leaf fans sitting in the front row. If the season ticket holders were discouraged more from selling this to recover their "season" cost then it wouldn't be so damn insulting to the team you paid to support that you are putting the other team's fans in the building.

@ RVLESRHAC,

"Seriously, the problem here is simple: If you don't want fans scalping your tickets, don't make them ridiculously expensive in the first place, or don't offer season tickets at all."

You need to UNDERSTAND the free market. If the pats were overpricing tickets, then it would be impossible to scalp them. If the pats hold ticket prices above the theoretical market price, than any attempt to resell them will result in a price below the original sale price.

thanks for play, please try again.

The problem here is very, very simple. There is a limited number of games each year, which the suppliers can't control, so the number of tickets is constant. If TM/Patriots fix the value of the ticket price, there will be a shortage AT that price. in other words, at 40 dollars a seat, FAR more buyers exist than sellers. If the price were allowed to rise to meet demand, then eventually there would be no shortage. the number of people willing to pay 500 dollars to see the pats play a game would be progressively smaller and smaller, until the last ticket would be sold at a price only one buyer would be willing to pay.

econ 101.

Since the pats don't want to LOOK like they are fleecing fans, they cap the price. What happens? WAY, WAY more people are willing to go at that price than can be accommodated.

what happens if you buy a ticket at 40 dollars then realize that you can resell it for 500 dollars? You figure that you can better use that 460 dollars than you can use the seat at the game, and the buyer figures that seat is worth 500 dollars to him.

Mutually beneficial transactions happen, whether you want them to or not. You can't beat the market like this. You can make contracts, get mad at scalping services, but that won't stop the fact that there are beneficial exchanges that could occur.

Do scalpers make the problem worse? Sure. They aren't necessary, they add a layer of informational fog, and they might attempt to buy tickets in bulk in order to leverage that larger number. But that isn't the crux of it.

REPEAT AFTER ME:

If the Patriots sold the tickets by auction, for the market price, the price that scalpers resell tickers for would be very, very close to that.

I think that Mass is one of those states where ticket scalping is illegal, you are only supposed to be able to resell your tix for a few bucks above face so the Pats are not really being outrageous here asking that if you want to sell your tix you do so at face value.

As someone who refuses to do business with scalpers, it means I don't get to go to a lot of converets. I'm hoping that the 'think of the children' outcry over Hannah Montana will get the states to actually enforce the scalping laws on the books and shut down the resellers. They may have been more convenient 20 years ago when you had to go directly to the venue for the tix, but now you can buy the on the phone or online and don't need the "help" of the scalpers.

Also, to the reactionary folks saying "the ticket is a 'revocable license' to be permitted to watch a game, please, please come join us fighting for the consumer.

Is a CD a license to listen to music once? Is a book a license to read once? Can you loan a book to a friend? Can you make a copy of a CD?

What motivation is there for rational people to change the notion of a ticket from:

the right to be let in at the door for the bearer.

to:

A non transferrable, revocable license to sit down and behave at one sports event.

There is no reason we would agree to that. If I buy movie tickets, I should be able to give them to a friend. If I buy plane tickets, I should be able to let someone else fly instead (I can't, but that is neither here nor there).

what purpose does limiting transferability serve? It obviously doesn't stop resale.

Do you want us to show ID to get into sports events and concerts? Provide a credit history, perhaps?

How much are you willing to screw over the rest of us in order to make sure that someone isn't making money from resale of an item?

@Hyland: You can give them to a friend. If the friend gets kicked out, you loose your season tickets.

Screw the scalpers. Patriots are not the only team that does this. Most try and limit scalpers now. Since the Red Sox sell out every game, they let you return your tickets for face value. If you get busted scalping, too bad. If you don't want to go to the games, don't buy the tickets or do what most people do. Buy them as a group and divide up the games. Yank their season tickets. Have no mercy on these fools.

@stanfrombrooklyn: you mean like the city of Arlington raising taxes 1.5% to fund the new Cowboys stadium that's going to cost OVER A BILLION DOLLARS!!!

[en.wikipedia.org]

This year we went to a St. Louis Cardinals game with tickets we purchased on StubHub. We paid 2x the face value of the tickets, because they were someone's season's ticket seats. So, did we get screwed?

Yes. Let them sell back their unused tickets to the parent organization for what they paid for them. Let them recoup their costs, but do not let them gouge or scalp someone else.

The Patriots are right.

@JKinNYC: Damn...so they make half a mil off people who WISH they were at the game?!?!

Ticketmaster are a-holes. Sorry but I need to say that.

I say only sell season tickets to people who live near the team. Every time I have purchased tickets from someone who had season tickets off of eBay, they either lived in Canada or near New York. Like some asshat in Canada is going to fly down here for every Cowboys game.

Both buying and selling tickets in the secondary market can be risky. I'd love to see season tickets go away completely. Teams could even raise individual ticket prices in most of the perpetually sold out sports markets and make still more money--but at least regular people willing to pay the price`might actually get a shot to be able to see one game a year!.

I'm a business major, so you armchair "free economy" folks, sit down. Half of you don't know what you're talking about.

Anyone who claims to believe in the free market should recognize:

1) Inflating prices of limited supply based on speculation is a very, very bad thing. In fact, it was one of the factors that caused the stock market to crash in 1929. Study up on Game Theory and you'll see that this sort of speculation causes all sorts of economic problems. It's a bad thing that the market eventually has to adjust for. And remember that "the market" is not some invisible force with a mind of its own; it's controlled both directly and indirectly by the responses of real people who participate in it.

2) The Patriots own the stadium, the seats and the right to call the shots. If they want to get rid of season passes on a whim and just charge people to visit the stadium on a first-come, first-served basis for $1000 a head, they have the right to do it. They're not government, and they're not a public service organization. They're a business, and they're free to do whatever they want with their private property and services.

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.

4) The Patriots are saying that they don't like this practice and they want it to stop. They also have the right to allow the practice to continue, so long as it doesn't violate the law. They're choosing the side of the middle-class consumer (who can't afford the inflated prices of scalped tickets) and not of the wealthy ticket holders (who are inflating prices for their own gain).

5. I'm sure their ulterior motive is that people who spend less on tickets spend more on concessions and souvenirs. But that's good for everyone involved, since those purchases are voluntary, not compulsory. They also create extra jobs in the community.

Personally, I think it's great that the Patriots have a social conscience here. They're still allowing season ticket holders to sell their tickets, but they're requiring the ticket holders to sell the tickets at face value. This allows everyone to win; nobody is losing anything. There's not even an opportunity cost to worry about. It's a great system.

Some of you folks seem to object to any business practice that doesn't fit your narrow view of "consumer rights." Grow up. Seriously. Consumers have tons of rights - chief among them the right to not spend their money on goods and services for any reason at all. If you don't like a business's practices, and they're not doing anything illegal, don't give them your money. It's that simple.

And on a side note, those 13,000 people who got outed by Stub Hub? All 13,000 of them signed a Terms of Use Agreement when they signed up. Guess what it says about releasing information to other parties?

"Legal Disclaimer:
Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may disclose personal information when required by law or under the good-faith belief that such action is necessary under applicable law. We may disclose personal information in order to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims. We also share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, to protect our property or interests or that of our agents and employees, and to protect personal safety or the public."

SOURCE: [www.stubhub.com]

/No, I don't work for any of the aforementioned companies.

Entertainment tickets--and that includes sports--are luxuries, not necessities. I don't see the need for government regulation of how they are allocated. I'd rather have tickets sold to the highest bidder--so teams could stop taking public money.

If these businesses sell their products at fixed prices, with conditions--and people choose to buy them--why complain when the conditions are enforced?

I choose not to buy things--like itunes or windows vista--where the manufacturer has the right to tell you that you can only use the product on odd-numbered Wednesdays. But if other consumers are mindless sheep, they will eat what they are fed.

I'd agree with the whole capitalist view that the tickets should be able to be resold at whatever they can get, except for three reasons:

1. The whole agreement, contract thing as mentioned above.

2. I'm pretty sure the stadium is subsidized in part by residents and local businesses through taxes, so ticket prices should be kept at as reasonable a level as possible so allow most people to be able to afford to see a game.

3. The games stadium, game, and team is also in large part paid via sponsors and ads placed throughout the venue that are geared towards ticket goers from a wide demographic - and not just the upper class, or nutjob fans willing to mortgage their homes for a seat.
Whats a shame, though, is that Ticketmaster continues to be a beneficiary of all this, no matter what.

@LTS!: While I see what you're saying, I have to wonder why it's so bad for there to be fans of both teams at the game. Surely, that makes it more fun for both the fans and the players; and why should your choice of team bar you from sitting whereever you like - assuming you got your ticket 'legally'?

@Hyland: You miss the point entirely and your analogy fails completely A ticket is for a ONE-TIME EVENT. Books and CDs are reusable mediums. IF books and cd's self-destructed after one use, then the comparison works. (The tried that, Divx, and it bombed).

The point here is that the contract is thereto protect fans. The Pats don't make more money by enforcing it because they can't sell any more tickets than they do. They can, however, make sure that it is real fans who have waited on a list for years get the tickets instead of scalpers. This very well could be PROTECTING THE CONSUMERS.

Also, it does nothing to take the "consumer side" blindly, when sometimes the company is right. All it does is make your side look stupid for not seeing that sometimes either side can be wrong. Look at all the politicians for that. It's not ALWAYS us vs. them.

Sounds like I'm going to be getting my season tickets a year or two earlier.

If the Pats are worried about scalpers, they can solve that problem in an instant: just raise the ticket prices. The fact that there are scalpers indicates that the face value is set too low. Raise the ticket prices until the market clears. That (a) gets rid of the scalpers, and (b) raises more revenue for the Pats. Easy peasey.

First Ticketmaster basically scalps tickets to consumers. I heard that something like close to 40% on some tickets are delivery fees for the tickets.

When you have people buying tickets as investments you have a problem. It restricts access to the event unless you pay some third party holding tickets hostage. Since most arenas and most professional sports teams have a large amount of taxpayer money invested in them having someone from out of state or out of the country buying up all the tickets and jacking the price is a problem. People in a local area get together to build an event center or have a local team and then they can't use it unless they pay off someone living in another state that grabbed all the tickets.

Pro sports: The teams are owned by billionaires. The teams composed of millionaires who play a game for children. The venue where the game is played is financed by the taxpayers, of which the majority cannot afford tickets to the game.

If the tickets were sold at or below face value, I side with the ticket holders. If they were sold above face value, I side with the team.
Oh, and just for the record, the Patriots don't play in a stadium that was financed by taxpayers.

Most people are very much in favor of the free market on things, but the scalpers have proven themselves to be so underhanded on the whole process that it's hard to support them at all. I work next to Fenway Park and this next week the scalpers will be hanging off light posts. I'll get asked if I have tickets a dozen times a day ("Well, let me check my other pocket to make sure I don't have any...")

How would you like to run a business where other people get to take advantage of market forces but you can't? You spend lots of money to put a winning team on the field, and opportunists make 2-20 x the revenue you get because you win and there's more demand than supply.

@JustAGuy2: Which prices lots of fans out of the seats altogether. The vast majority of revenue for the NFL is not ticket sales, it is TV, merchandise, and advertising. The teams price tickets where they are for a reason.

hey, thems the risks you take...

as a student at penn state, we used to sell our tickets all the time. according to the "contract", the most we could get is 10% over face value. they used to crack down on students to prove a point...especially around homecoming.

that's when you start to see the funny ads on the ad boards: quality pre-owned pencil ONLY $300!!!1!! (includes free ticket to penn state/ohio state game). i don't think that isolates you from anything, but it was still funny as hell to read. =P

my parents always had 4 season tickets & we never sold them...if we couldn't make a game, my dad always found someone who was willing to make the trip. i don't think season ticket holders should be using the tickets as a revenue source.

This thread reminds me why I and my family have no interest in professional sports. I had tickets to an MLB game back in 2000... the seats were so far back that I needed opera glasses and the game was forgettable. I'm glad it was on my brother-in-law's company's dime.

I think that if Ticketmaster believes that the government should, in essence, enforce pricing regulation on the ticketholders, then the government should enforce pricing regulation on Ticketmaster.

I'm sure they'd cry free market capitalism if that happened.