So sitting in the upper deck for the 1st quarter of the Redskins/Steelers game, out of my row of 30 seats, 25 were Steelers fans. And that was pretty much par for the stadium. Monday night games are a BIG treat for any true fan, so why would so many Skins "fans" want to sell their tickets? The weather was awesome and the team is competing for first place!! Who are these people?
I did a quick check on ebay to see how many tickets are for sale for the MUCH anticipated Cowboys game this Sunday night. How many pairs of tickets would you guess?
A whopping 300 pairs!!! And that's just the currently active ones. Searching the completed (sold) ones shows 500 pairs!!! So with ebay alone that is an entire section of Fedex. WTF?
So what about the other ticket sites?
Craigslist DC (active only): 290 pairs.
Stubhub (active only): 1498 pairs.
TicketsNow.com (active only): 501 pairs.
GreatSeats.com (active only): 523 pairs.
Total of approx 7,300 tix currently. That's 1/13th of Fedex thats up for grabs right now. And when you tack on all the ticket broker sites I missed, and the ones already sold on CraigsList...we're easily at 1/10th of capacity.
Not only that...LOADS of parking passes as well. As we all know, Snyder signed a deal with Stubhub that made it SUPER easy for Skins fans to sell their tix via that site (and he of course gets a cut off that ticket price too). Having a vehicle that makes it so easy for fans to unload tickets is defintely a problem. As a quick comparison, for the Ravens game in Baltimore, there is only 50 pairs of tickets active on ebay and 105 already purchased. That is a BIG difference.
It's the same story with Wizards and Nationals games as well. But lets be real here, NFL is the ultimate in fan loyalty, and it should never get as bad as it did for the Monday night game. So amongst all this babbling...if you're not going to ever go to the Skins game, give up your season tickets so real fans can go.
I found a forum posting on extremeskins.com from 2006 where people complained about Fedex, the pricing, the fans, etc...and how they'd rather just keep their tix and sell. One poster even called it:
"There a lot of people who have contemplated selling their tickets (if they haven't already). Well, it doesn't matter to Snyder . . . because again, he is getting his money. Snyder is testing the loyalty of Redskins fans...He is in a bet that he knows he can win, because people (regardless of what uniform they wear) will still show up to games. But sooner or later, this will catch up to him...And I would not be surprised to see many of our 'fans' turn to Baltimore in a few years."
I have always been vocal to how Synder puts money above everything, and the fans notice it and feel it. Why not get some of the money back scalping? Well, the reason is by doing that you ruin it for all the fans who do care.
7 comments:
the true hit fans take from stubhub goes far beyond having to sit next to some out of town jackass. stubhub creates a false market value for the tickets. a ticket is worth 80 bucks when it is one of ninety thousand being sold. (and when you have to buy ten of them for the season.) but when only a few hundred are availble via these sites, that ticket can be worth several times more. this is the justification owners need to continue to jack prices on real fans. why should some ebay slob get 300 bucks for a ticket i only got 80 bucks for, the owner reasons, while i'm absorbing all the overhead and risk. it should be little wonder why leagues like the NFL and MLB are partnering with stubhub. also, skins fans suck. tim
Redskins fans are fine but the redskins ticketholders suckkk and it is obvious that not all the ticketholders are fans....
I am a die-hard Skins fans so I am exaggerating when I say they suck. We are good fans, but its true we don't bring the intensity of other fans (Philly, PIT, CHI). And since season ticket holders have to pay FULL price for the pre-season games and jacked-up parking, it makes sense fans want to unload 1 or 2 games a year to help the cost. I think it was bad timing it fell on the PIT game...if we were playing CIN or some other team, it would have been more cost effective to go to the game.
From his open owner's suite, Dan Snyder had to look out on the crowd of Steelers' fans and live with it. He created the perfect scenario for just something like this to happen and I have a real hard time wondering if he truly cares. From my seat--that I have sat in faithfully for 9 years--it was a hard pill to swallow to see that much Black and Yellow. But all Dan Snyder saw was green.
I believe that when they moved the stadium to MD they lost ALOT of true DC fans not only because of the cost but the ease of a commute as well.
"Redskins fans are fine but the redskins ticketholders suckkk and it is obvious that not all the ticketholders are fans...."
...nice bold statement Mr. Anonymous !..im glad you can speak so accurately about the season ticketholders !
"From his open owner's suite, Dan Snyder had to look out on the crowd of Steelers' fans and live with it. He created the perfect scenario for just something like this to happen and I have a real hard time wondering if he truly cares. From my seat--that I have sat in faithfully for 9 years--it was a hard pill to swallow to see that much Black and Yellow. But all Dan Snyder saw was green."
Isn't it clear to you that the NFL was created with "green" in mind? I mean, yeah, there are true fans out there who care about rooting for their team, but capitalism teaches us that franchise sports are profit-oriented organizations. You aren't a true fan if you can't come to the realization that money is what your sport was born out of. Just sit back, buy another five rounds of ten-dollar beers and watch the gotdang game.
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