Post#2 » by dagger » Thu Mar 29, 2018 1:49 pm
Listen, let's be blunt. This is the way of the world. The people posting tickets on Stubhub or others, are mainly fans. They are consumers to begin with. There are 45,000-plus seats at the Rogers Centre, 20,000 at the Air Canada Centre. Season seats are expensive. I am a Raptors season seatholder. If the Raptors played the maximum number of playoff games - 16 - my upper bowl seats would cost over $8,500 dollars. I can't afford that. So maybe I will go to 3-4 games myself, and post the rest. I will have no trouble making small profits on what I resell, the market is enormous. I already offered playoff games to my biggest regular season buyers, told them the cost to me is up a lot this season, thought they would be scared off, but no one blinked. One guy even told me the prices were reasonable.
Most of my selling is at cost price to a handful of regulars that are almost like partners (though I haven't met most of them in person; I have visited one of their Facebook pages, and judging by their names, they are a microcosm of the New Toronto - a lot of successful young professionals and artists from multi-cultural backgrounds.) No one is getting screwed. No one is forced to buy. If someone puts playoff tickets up for sale, they are transparent on the various web sites. Buyers can cruise the arena seat map on Ticketmaster and find seats available at a range of prices. If someone asks too much for a pair, they will go unsold, or the seller will lower his or her price.
The secondary market exists because the games are expensive to begin with and becoming more and more expensive. But it also exists because of strong demand. I don't consider any of this "unethical".
The issue for me is what the teams do with their big profits. The Jays should soon be a major market payroll team, rather than a mid-market. The Raptors should be a tax paying team when it warrants keeping a good group together, as I believe it will through the current contract cycle. MLSE has it good with the Leafs and a hard cap, but I expect them to put every legal dollar possible into keeping up the talent level, whether it's signing overseas free agents to re-stock the development stream, or maintaining the best coaching and front office staff on the planet.
The rest is self-adjusting. If the teams suck, the secondary market disappears. If the teams win, the fans are happy, inside or outside the arena or stadium.
I'd rather have a secondary market and a parade than cheap seats and a team run by Good Ash or Rob Babcock.
2019 will never be forgotten because FLAGS FLY FOREVER