Thread: Price gouging for opening night tickets

Originally Posted by jt

I'm not gonna argue economics or supply and demand because the argument has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the goodwill of the fans. If the Kings want to become just another supply and demand business that doesn't care about the (irrational) emotional connection fans have with the game then that's their right. But the consequence is that they'll end up with more people arriving half way thru the first period...sitting on their hands at games...texting during the PP...and leaving at 9:30 to avoid post-game traffic. Like I said, that's their right but when these other things happen I don't want to hear complaining about why the fans at Staples suck...because they won't be "fans", they'll be "people who rich people know and invited to watch a hockey game they don't know anything about."

Because it prices out fans who can't afford it. I don't understand why that's hard to understand.

Again, if the tickets being sold at low face value were actually ending up in the hands of real fans, I'd be with you 100% on all of this. And sure, a few fans that can't afford tickets at current prices (or understandably don't want to fork over a big percentage of their monthly pay to go to one game) would be able to get in at legitimate prices, and that is great.

Having said that, these working-class real fans you are talking about don't all tend to be able to be signed in on Ticketmaster the minute the ticket drop or pre-sale is happening, considering that many are WORKING or taking kids to school or whatever else. Meanwhile, these ticket reselling behemoths are all stationed on multiple computers mass-refreshing so that the second the tickets drop to these super-desired events they can scoop up entire rows and sections to re-sell to whoever can afford their prices, no "real fan test" required.

I actually worked for one of these companies (a ticket re-seller) and it really opened my eyes to the business. Sometimes it sucks majorly for the consumer, like it does in a game like this. In many other cases, it actually helps the consumer; when these re-sellers over-commit to a game/event and supply outweighs demand, ticket prices plummet. You can easily get tickets for well-under face value on many nights for this very reason.

Many teams and concerts have tried rolling out ticket sales in which buyers must be the ones to pick up their tickets at will call with photo id on the day of the event (to combat second market resale) and this is almost universally hated by everyone. What if you can't go and want to give your tickets to a friend or re-sell them yourself? People don't like being powerless over their own property.

"Goodwill"? More like bad business. Why sell tickets at 10% of their second market value knowing full well that MOST are just going to get scooped up by those second market sellers anyway? "I'm not gonna argue economics or supply and demand because the argument has nothing to do with that." Really? You are much smarter than this. I agree with you that non-STH shouldn't be considered second-rate fans, and I also agree with you that it sucks that some true fans will be priced out. But your solution is to ignore economics completely and pretend like re-selling and second market gouging to major events isn't happening?