American football power nabs phone numbers for 13,000 StubHubers First, the New England Patriots used surveillance equipment to spy on the New York Jets. And now they've used a Massachusetts state court to spy on up to 13,000 people who use StubHub.com. After repeated pleas from the American football franchise - winner of three of the last six Super Bowls - Massachusetts Superior Court Judge …
I commend the Patriots for going after scalpers. Personally some ticket prices have gotten out of hand. Although I don't agree that they should get everyone that is selling a ticket on the site's information, just the ones that acted in bad faith. I do believe in fair market value but there has to be a cap at some point. I mean come on how many people out there can afford a $1500 US ticket for one person to watch a REGULAR season game. Now if its playoffs or the Super Bowl those are different games and will be dictated a such. Just look at the recent Hannah Montana issue that scalpers were using software to purchase all the tickets within minutes of them going on sale and now are reposting them for sale at double, triple or more of the face value. What's not to say that scalplers aren't using the same programs to auto inflate the price people are paying for the football tickets. Yes im ranting but at some point the common fan is going to be driven out of the market.
Rick said "at some point the common fan is going to be driven out of the market".
That's not really true. As much as you or I might hate it, the price for tickets in a free market is whatever that market will bear. Whether or not the market should be free is a matter for discussion. The Pats have scarcity power, and presumably they don't want the scalpers profiting from the margin of their scarcity power they're not using (i.e. the difference between the price the Pats charge and that people buying resold tickets are willing to pay). If the team could get away with it, I don't doubt that they'd charge the same as the scalpers.
The people driven out of the market are those with less money. That's a shame, but it's the way it is.
This is about as far away from a free market as it could possibly be. I've bought several sets of tickets from StubHub, and their failure to stand up to the courts will prevent me from ever purchasing again. The Pats, StubHub, eBay, and the communist judge that made this ruling can lick the back side of planet scrotum and go straight to hell.
I live twenty minutes away from Foxborough, MA (Where the Patriots play) and am familiar with this issue so here are my thoughts:
1. Massachusetts law says you cannot charge more than $2 over face (as stated) and Stub Hub, and others, charge ridiculous fees that often brings up the price to $500-$1000+. The same thing happens with the Boston Red Sox (Baseball team), 5 years of sold out games means tickets are hard to come by. Sox fans find it cheaper to go to away games in Tampa Bay, FL and Baltimore, MD than see a game at Fenway Park in Boston. Scalpers and scalper sites make life a pain for people like me.
2. The Patriots policy, which is a contract you agree to when you purchase the tickets, is that they can only be resold for the face price on the NFL\Patriots website. No additional profit is made by the team. You sell them through a third party and you have violated contract law, and are subject to penalties set forth in the contract and any legal ramifications that come with the violations.
3. The Judge was plain wrong in regards to those who only bid for tickets. Only those who committed a crime of scalping or sold the tickets in violation of the policies regarding the tickets, including those who unsuccessfully attempted to sell, should have been gone after. Everyone else committed no crime.
4. American Football is a $50b business (with stadiums, ad revenue, TV rights and actual team values), so allot of people care. Some European principalities are worth less.
Jeremy
1. I have never gone to see the Patriots play their game. And now, with this behavior, they have assured themselves that I never will.
2. You forgot to mention what they'll most likely use this information for -- spamming these people.
3. The court had no right to force StubHub to release the information of the people who did not break the law, and who could not have been thought by a reasonable person to have broken the law. Sadly, this is the U.S. and I'm not surprised in the least. Ashamed, but not surprised.
4. Ticket prices have gotten ridiculously out of hand even without scalpers. Why? So the teams (from the owners down to the players) can get ridiculous amounts of money while the people paying hard-earned money to see the game will never see as much money in ten lifetimes as these guys do in one year (OK, that's more true for baseball, but the basic premise still stands). And before anyone points it out, yes, I realize that broadcast rights, advertising, etc contribute to that as well.
5. In the event that scalpers routinely purchase all the tickets, making it so that people cannot afford the tickets, the tickets will remain unsold. As such, the tickets will lose (or not attain the desired) market value. As a result, the scalpers will either stop or will sell the tickets for less. This is how the free market operates. The ticket agency is perfectly capable of doing this as well, but they choose not to. In this case, they're jealous because the scalpers are making money instead of the ticket agency getting the extra.
6. I must disagree with Jeremy about the contract issue. If I was to purchase a ticket to any sports event, I am not entering a contract. I have not signed anything, therefor there is no contract. A policy that states "you agree that by purchasing this ticket, you are restricted from doing x, y, and z" is (in my eyes) the same as a click-through EULA. To my knowledge, no such license or policy has been tried in the courts, so no one can say which way it would go. My feeling is that unless I have signed something, I have not formally agreed to it.
7. And finally, $2 was worth a lot more 83 years years ago than today. Heck, it was worth a lot more 10 years ago. Even as short as 50 years ago, products were 10 to 20 times cheaper than they are now. The point is, the value has changed drastically, so the law should be updated to reflect that. In closing, I find it ironic that I can go into any store, purchase as many items as I want (including limited edition items which have a limited quantity), and then resell them for a profit, but I cannot do the same with tickets.
"This is about as far away from a free market as it could possibly be. I've bought several sets of tickets from StubHub, and their failure to stand up to the courts will prevent me from ever purchasing again. The Pats, StubHub, eBay, and the communist judge that made this ruling can lick the back side of planet scrotum and go straight to hell."
What? How could you possibly describe what the judge did as communist? Wrong? Certainly. Pandering to big business? Most definitely, but communist? Not under any definition that I'm familiar with - unless the judge claims that doing this is somehow going to free the disenfranchised proletariat. The addition of that one word changed your comment from 'completely reasonable' to 'knee-jerk reactionary'.
I hate to break it to you, but America is not a free market - there are as many truly free markets as there are truly communist states. Hint: it's a whole number that's less than one.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
