things kevin hates

So there’s this little football game that takes place every year and it’s kind of a big deal and millions of people watch it on TV. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Maybe you just watch for the commercials or the wardrobe malfunctions? It’s the Super Bowl. And this year our beloved Black & Gold Boys are in it, so New Orleans is in a state of giddy delirium. But if you want to go, you pretty much have to pay through the nose, since the powers that be only see fit to distribute a few thousand tickets (at the merely eye-popping price of $800) to actual fans of the two teams involved.

Now, for what it’s worth I want to state that there’s not a chance I’d actually go to the Super Bowl at $800 a ticket plus all the travel expenses involved—that’s a lot of money, and besides, we still have two performances of Footloose this weekend (though we canceled our Sunday show, natch), so I’m a little too busy anyway. So I’m not that personally involved. But I’m sure my parents, lifelong Saints fans—my mother grew up going to games in Tulane Stadium with her father, and even attended a Super Bowl many years ago—would jump at the opportunity. It’s just that when the price goes from $800 to $1400 or $1600 or $1800 that things start getting a little too unaffordable. And it’s utterly ridiculous that out of 76,500 seats only a few go to actual fans getting tickets directly from the teams. The Saints sold 4,600 tickets to season ticket holders who were chosen in a weighted lottery, with the Colts likely offering 6,000 or so to their season ticket holders (I saw that 6k number on a Saints message board but was unable to confirm it). That’s out of something like 13,000-14,000 tickets each of the two teams received. Everything else went out to corporate sponsors, employees, and the like. I realize the NFL is a business* but why do the league and its teams give so few tickets to actual fans? Not to mention that only a third or so of the tickets go to the two teams involved—the majority of tickets go to the NFL and its sponsors and affiliates, or to the other 30 NFL teams.

The thing is, the resale market for the Super Bowl is ginormous. Scalping happens when tickets are sold at below-market prices to people who don’t particularly want them, and wouldn’t pay the market value for them, but are happy to resell them at a handsome profit. And judging by what I’ve seen on TV during past Super Bowls, and what the media are reporting about fans from Indianapolis and New Orleans buying tickets, the vast majority of tickets given to the team and league sponsors find their way to the fans after a big markup.

As I mentioned, to have scalpers for anything, you need two things:
1) Tickets originally selling for less than the market price.
2) People who would like to resell the tickets acquiring tickets below market price.

More and more teams/concert promoters/Broadway producers/etc. are realizing that if people are going to make money on the secondary market, they might as well cash in on as much of that action as possible. That’s why we have Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange, where season ticket holders can resell their tickets.** And that’s why the Yankees were selling top-notch tickets for $2500 a game or whatever it was. And it’s why teams charge for personal seat licenses and the like. But jack up the prices too much and you won’t sell enough tickets, or you’ll create a PR nightmare. The market price for Super Bowl tickets varies, but the NFL could just jack up the face value of the tickets. (Presumably an increase in face value would lead to an increase in resale value because people’s notions of the fair price is partly dictated by the face value of the tickets, but I think it’s safe to assume that the increase in market value would not be as large as the increase in face value.) Obviously it’s not a great solution for the fans, who’d still end up paying similar prices, but at least the NFL would fuck over the sponsors who resell its tickets.

Or the NFL can just see to it that the majority of Super Bowl tickets go to fans of the teams involved. There are 60,000+ season ticket holders for this year’s Super Bowl teams, so no stadium would have enough seats for everyone, and the travel is still prohibitively expensive for many, but surely the NFL could arrange it so that each team could give 20,000 seats to season ticket holders. They could still sell the tickets for $800 or $1000 a piece, but this would give tickets to actual fans instead of corporate bigwigs who resell their tickets to actual fans. And there would still be 30,000 or more tickets to distribute to everyone else.

I’m as much in favor of ruthless capitalism as anyone, but this shit is just ridiculous. The NFL makes something like $3.7 billion a year in TV revenue; I think they can afford to sell their tickets to actual fans instead of lining sponsors’ pockets.

* Personally, I think we’d be better off if more teams were community-owned a la the Green Bay Packers. But I digress. And technically, while the teams (save Green Bay) are for-profit entities, the NFL itself is a non-profit. Go figure.

** Ticketmaster takes their fees, of course. And they take FIFTEEN PERCENT of the ticket price, no matter how high it is. I thought we had antitrust legislation in the US, but I guess not.