Posted on 02/01/2014 8:33:09 AM PST by Theoria
Josh Finkelman’s quest for Super Bowl justice began on a Monday in December with the click of a computer mouse. The day before, a busy football Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks had demolished the St. Louis Rams and the sport’s postseason landscape was finally shaping up.
Mr. Finkelman, who is from New Jersey, was entertaining friends that night at his home in New Brunswick, a 40-minute drive from the site of the approaching championship game: MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. It was, as he remembered, your basic guys’ night in — beers and ESPN.
“We were talking about the Super Bowl,” he said the other day, “and how I really wanted a ticket. One of my buddies said, ‘Don’t waste your time — they’re too expensive.’ But at some point, you have to commit to the decision. You have to say, ‘I really want to go.’ ”
And so he switched on his computer and did what thousands of sports fans did in recent weeks: He went to the National Football League’s website and embarked upon a hunt. The site referred him to Ticketmaster, the league’s official broker, where he found to his chagrin that his friend was right: Even “cheap” seats for the game were already selling at astronomical prices. Logging on to StubHub.com, he discovered much the same.
Mr. Finkelman, 28 and the president of a warehouse business in Dayton, N.J., described himself as “a pretty good online shopper,” but it was not until he tried his third or fourth service, GotTheTicket.com, that he finally found a deal that he could live with: a pair of nosebleed seats, in a lonesome upper deck, for $2,000 apiece.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
'Section 56:8-35.1 of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act reads:
“It shall be an unlawful practice for a person, who has access to tickets to an event prior to the tickets’ release for sale to the general public, to withhold those tickets from sale to the general public in an amount exceeding 5 percent of all available seating for the event.”
While certainly a mouthful, to Mr. Finkelman and Mr. Nagel this passage from the law explicitly forbids the N.F.L.’s practice of providing only 1 percent of Super Bowl tickets for sale to the public. In fact, it would seem to dictate that 95 percent of the seats must be sold that way. '
$2000 for a cheap seat ticket to watch millionaires chase an elongated ball in a billion dollar stadium built with taxpayer money...
What a state.
The Super Bowl lasts only a few hours, but he'll be subscribed to Rolling Stone for the rest of his life.
Whle I agree with him that “the law” is not being followed, I disagree that the government should “do something about it”.
If the free market dictates that there are people willing to pay $2000 for a rare item then so be it.
What this shows to me is the failure, once again, of The Government in trying to impart a solution, as all government solutions that try to change the natural laws of supply and demand are doomed to be.
(like in health care)
Not sure how I feel about this. If they go on sale to the general public then there will be brokers who will buy up tons of tickets at face value and then turn around and scalp them. You’re in the same boat but now you’re dealing with those who might not be as well regulated. I guess you can put limits on how many tickets one person can buy but then people will have surrogates, etc. etc.
Not sure how I feel about this. If they go on sale to the general public then there will be brokers who will buy up tons of tickets at face value and then turn around and scalp them. You’re in the same boat but now you’re dealing with those who might not be as well regulated. I guess you can put limits on how many tickets one person can buy but then people will have surrogates, etc. etc.
Homeland security can get on this after they round up all the knock off jerseys.
Allow the person the chance to purchase the ticket at face value, if not he can purchase it at the value someone else is willing to sell it at. But, as of now, he never had the chance to do that[face value].
He should have waited to make his purchase since the average ticket price is now about $1,100 which is only a few hundred more than what season ticket holders are paying.
“...the N.F.L.’s practice of providing only 1 percent of Super Bowl tickets for sale to the public.”
Holy cow. I guess you can get away with this when you hold your ultimate game in a location where the majority of the people living there don’t usually have a vested interest in either team?
Freegards
You're actually arguing that the law itself is illegitimate, rather than the NFL's behavior, right? That's the only way I see to parse what you said.
Good God! Why should any buyer or seller of any ticket to any sporting event ever be regulated in any way whatsoever?
I get better seats in my house and it doesn’t cost 2000 dollars.
The beer is cheaper, the food is better and no lines for the bathrooms.
Plus you have bed handy.
1470 currently available on StubHub
The good seats for events are rarely ever in the computer, even before any “pre-sale password” sales have occurred.
In the old days, they would be set aside as “promotional” and sold on the sly from persons working within the front office.
Now Ticketmaster owns their own ticket scalping agency. As if having the exclusive contract on the civic venues (through Live Nation), etc wasn’t enough of an edge in business dealings.
They are government owned venues funded by taxpayers. That is why there should be accountablity.
HLS has to tackle (get it?) those posting unlicensed Super Bowl(TM) images online first.
Hold on, someone's at the door...
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