Sunday, January 29, 2012

Huge

I was on va-fun-tion last week (as you could probably tell by the sparse posting) so I didn't see this press release until last night. The Red Sox (and supposedly all the teams) will finally be offering a scalper-killing type of ticket. You buy the ticket with a credit card, and when you get to the ballpark, you show the credit card you used to get in. For now, this will be done only with upper bleacher seats for select games.

This is a big deal as far as I'm concerned. I remember writing about doing it like this, and wondering if it was possible to maybe have people show ID at the gate. This seemed like it would just make everybody have to wait longer, but if you can just swipe a credit card, it shouldn't take too much extra time.

And I love that they're doing this with my ticket of choice, the $12 upper bleacher. (These seats will go on sale February 1st.) Because if you haven't noticed, the BASTARDS at FuckHub have it set up so that all the bleachers tickets appear to be one section. So people sell the $12 seats as if they were $28 seats, and then raise them soul-lessly from there. An entire generation of people already thinks tickets originate from ShitHub--so they don't even know that the face value of the tickets they're buying could be $12 as opposed to $28. (Look closely on their seating map and you can actually see the line dividing bleacher from upper bleacher, yet they group them all into the "bleacher" category.)

So I wonder, if the teams really go through with this and end up doing this for all seats for all games, is the secondary market history? How sweet it would be. And what does this mean for the FecesHub/MLB partnership? Is the Hub pissed, or have they worked it out so they're still in on the take? There's still a link in the redsox.com ticketing area for SH, telling you how great it is, while out of the other side of their mouth they preach the evils of gauging. It's like, Hellloooo, you're the ones that allowed this shit to happen in the first place. Go all out on this and say "fuck the secondary market" or don't do it at all.

Of course there's also the question of: What if I want to buy tickets and then give them to someone else? If I buy a $100 ticket and then Aunt Gilligan dies the day before the game and I have to fly to Seattle that day, I'd just lose the $100. There needs to be a way you can give your ticket away (or sell it for face value or less). As Robert McKee said, Do that, MLB, and you'll be fine.

Comments:
"Of course there's also the question of: What if I want to buy tickets and then give them to someone else? If I buy a $100 ticket and then Aunt Gilligan dies the day before the game and I have to fly to Seattle that day, I'd just lose the $100. There needs to be a way you can give your ticket away (or sell it for face value or less). As Robert McKee said, Do that, MLB, and you'll be fine."

I think the nice thing about this is that they're doing it only with the cheapest seats. Most people don't complain that the $95 Loge Seats are priced up by scalpers. The problem is when the cheapest seats in the park are jacked up from $12 to $40 and it prices out people who can't afford a $40-$50 ticket. Those people wouldn't be in the market for the $95 Loge seats anyway.

If StubHub is limited to the $50+ market, it solves a lot of problems.
 
I agree, except I'll gladly complain about loge seats being raised by scalpers. For people who can't afford big prices but want to go to one game a year and sit in a good seat, it would be nice if they could actually get a $95 seat for their $95.
 
Saw this on the page about digital ticketing:

"Manage your inventory electronically
Send your tickets to your family and friends via email"

So you can transfer!
 

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