“Why don’t you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?” — Groucho Marx as
Prof. Wagstaff in the 1932
movie “Horse Feathers.”
THERE is no rise in unem ployment, no hard times, no worries. What reces sion? In fact, things have never been better. There’s no better time for a big league team owner to continue to act on the conditioned notion that the only patrons worth having are the wealthy foolish. Everyone else can get lost, and stay there.
And, as always, it sure helps if the commissioner of your sport actually serves as your CFO/agent/rubber stamp, a fellow happy to enable you to do anything in the pursuit of money.
There’s really no great difference between Bud Selig and Roger Goodell. Both have demonstrated, through countless look-away passes, that the “steal sign” is always on, no need to step out of the box to look down for signals.
The Kansas City Chiefs this week announced that those wishing to purchase single-game tickets to the team’s biggest-draw home games this season — against the Cowboys and Steelers — must be victims of an extortion. They must buy an equal number of same-priced tickets to one of the Chiefs’ two preseason home “games,” one against the Seahawks, the other against the Texans.
None of the Chiefs’ six other home games will be attached to such a fleecing.
In other words, for two regular-season games the Chiefs are charging double. And that’s cool with Commissioner Goodell. Yep, if there’s any scalping to be done, the commissioners — the Guardians of the Games — now grant first crack to the team owners.
But if Goodell claims that the PSL stickups that are driving generations of Giants and Jets fans out of their seats and out of the new, never-wanted-nor-needed, luxury box-lined stadium are “a good investment” — pure nonsense — why would he put the stop to a comparative petty larceny in Kansas City?
In the Giants’ case, the annual boost in ticket and parking costs is not enough, thus a 20-year ticket waitlist was wiped out in a few months. And the wait-listed were forced to reject an opportunity they had awaited for years. And that, too, meets with Goodell’s approval.
Sure, such “marketing strategies” — ripoffs — are nothing new. Why should a calamitous recession make anyone more sensitive to a customer base that’s too devoted for its own good, but finally wising up. Economic Darwinism — survival of the wealthiest — can last only so long before such “marketing strategies” do what no business can afford to do to its customers: teach them — force them — to live without you.
In the meantime, when Goodell wants to impress upon us the NFL’s civil side he’ll meet with Michael Vick, let him and us know that certain conduct will not be tolerated. But, even in the worst of times, if team owners want to make idiots of NFL customers, well, go baby, go.
To that end, the Bud Selig brand of commissionership was on display Thursday, when the A’s-Yankees, scheduled for 7 p.m., began a few minutes before 10 — while it still was raining — and ended near 1 a.m. — while it was raining. Again, what was once out of the question as matter of common sense and common decency has become the standard. You buy a ticket — 37 bucks or $375 — and you now buy a chance, a good chance, to be mugged. And you simultaneously can teach your kids what big league sports are all about.
How much easier would this have been to indulge if mid-range tickets this year hadn’t been greed-bumped to roughly $250? Given that tickets to the new, fewer-seats Yankee Stadium were so obscenely priced that the club now can’t come close to a sellout, there are fewer victims to tell that tale. Many diminishing returns!
If or when the Yankees make the playoffs, ticket pricing will have to be reduced or the first sellout in Yankee Stadium will be the Army-Notre Dame game.
I don’t want to get personal here, but how well would the Selig and Goodell families, as paying customers, have suffered Thursday night’s/Friday morning’s Yankees game?
Then again, the NFL, having invented its own TV network, now plays Thursday night games in addition to Sunday nights and Monday nights — outdoors in cold climates in December. Only the NFL’s worst teams are now allowed to play all their home games at what the NFL long ago established as the most patron-friendly, sensible and civil time — 1 p.m. on Sundays.
And now, on nearly every national MLB telecast — showcase games scheduled for ESPN, Fox and TBS — we see the best seats, first base around to third, in large part empty. How would Selig explain that to Goodell? Why are the best customers missing?
Do unto others? OK. Goodell needs to be on that 7:30 a.m. flight to Los Angeles; it’s imperative. And so the ticket agent, recognizing Goodell and his plight, says, “I’ll sell you a seat, but you also have to buy a ticket, same price, to Tulsa, for, let’s see, the night of Aug. 15th. Take it or leave it.”
“But I don’t want to go to Tulsa.”
“Mr. Goodell, I’m a football fan from Kansas City, and I didn’t want to go to that Aug. 15th exhibition game against the Texans.”