I'm watching Jason Frasor do his best Mitch Williams impression as I type this. Hopefully by the time I'm finished the post, the Jays will have put their first victory of 2010 in the books.
Anywho, on with it... Golden Arm, long ago, in early March, sent out an inter office memo to the folks at 1bluejaysway, looking for all those interested in making an outing of the Jays April 12th home opener vs. Rios and the White Sox. He even went as so far to throw his own credit card down and stump up for the tickets. At the time, I was too occupied with my pending trip to Florida and the ensuing Grapefruit League play to fully commit to purchasing tickets and to be quite honest, you need to be in a special frame of mind to attend a baseball game with him, and I was not sure I would be, a month in advance. So I passed...
Fast forward to April. It had occured to me that I still had not secured ducats for said home opener and decided to have a look on the ole bluejays.com. I needed 4 tickets, since my sister decided that her and a friend wanted to decend on the concrete convertable to take in the festivities, along with me and Mrs. Last Row 500's. Section 514, Row 31, Seats 11-14. Row 31? If you are wondering where those shadow puppets in centre field are coming from, that would be me, sitting up near the lights on the 1st base side, 500 level.
Now, my handle here, Last Row 500's, is more of an hommage to my grass roots, die hard fandom, as opposed to my preference of seating location. For the record, I prefer nice and close. Having said that, I decided to peruse my favourite ticket market place website. I've used it many times before for tickets at Yankee Stadium, Rogers Centre and even Dunedin Stadium.
But something funny happend to me this time, on my way to opening day. As I was perusing the available tickets I found an anonomaly. In my selected section there were 148 tickets available. 148!! One hundred forty eight!!!! My first thought was, "who the hell bought 148 tickets only to turn around and sell them here?" My naiivety got the best of me. I simply passed it off as a shrewd business plan on the part of some ticket re-sellers for the hottest ticket of the Jays season.
Then, strange fact #2. The tickets were at face value!! I'm by no means, an experienced ticket re-seller, but, I do know that in order for these folks to make some money the tickets are usually sold at a higher than face value price. Makes sense, no? Are you following yet? See where I'm going here? Hold on... Perhaps now, you're exploring the same theory as I was at the moment.....Would the Blue Jays sell a block of tickets on this re-selling website to artificially create the impression of a sell out? Nahhh!
OR would they?
I tried to downplay it in my mind. Maybe that aforementioned shrewd business person bought a block of tickets under the guise of a group sale, and then in turn, placed them for resale. But the face value argument trumped that in my mind.
But then.....
Just a few days ago, I received an email from the Blue Jays. A marketing email, encouraging me to support my Blue Jays by purchasing tickets to the upcoming homestands versus the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of California of USA, and the Royals and of course Yankees and Red Sox. Benign in nature this type of email usually.
However, it included the following: "Thank you for your recent purchase and we'll see you on April 12th."
What? But sir, I did not purchase these tickets from you, I purchased them from a re-selling website. Or did I? How would the Rogers Blue Jays Baseball Partnership know I bought these tickets?
Hmmmm. I look forward to comments on this...
That's my view from the Last Row 500's. Oh by the way, Frasor nailed it down with 2 K's and a feeble ground out to short. More on that in another post.
Anywho, on with it... Golden Arm, long ago, in early March, sent out an inter office memo to the folks at 1bluejaysway, looking for all those interested in making an outing of the Jays April 12th home opener vs. Rios and the White Sox. He even went as so far to throw his own credit card down and stump up for the tickets. At the time, I was too occupied with my pending trip to Florida and the ensuing Grapefruit League play to fully commit to purchasing tickets and to be quite honest, you need to be in a special frame of mind to attend a baseball game with him, and I was not sure I would be, a month in advance. So I passed...
Fast forward to April. It had occured to me that I still had not secured ducats for said home opener and decided to have a look on the ole bluejays.com. I needed 4 tickets, since my sister decided that her and a friend wanted to decend on the concrete convertable to take in the festivities, along with me and Mrs. Last Row 500's. Section 514, Row 31, Seats 11-14. Row 31? If you are wondering where those shadow puppets in centre field are coming from, that would be me, sitting up near the lights on the 1st base side, 500 level.
Now, my handle here, Last Row 500's, is more of an hommage to my grass roots, die hard fandom, as opposed to my preference of seating location. For the record, I prefer nice and close. Having said that, I decided to peruse my favourite ticket market place website. I've used it many times before for tickets at Yankee Stadium, Rogers Centre and even Dunedin Stadium.
But something funny happend to me this time, on my way to opening day. As I was perusing the available tickets I found an anonomaly. In my selected section there were 148 tickets available. 148!! One hundred forty eight!!!! My first thought was, "who the hell bought 148 tickets only to turn around and sell them here?" My naiivety got the best of me. I simply passed it off as a shrewd business plan on the part of some ticket re-sellers for the hottest ticket of the Jays season.
Then, strange fact #2. The tickets were at face value!! I'm by no means, an experienced ticket re-seller, but, I do know that in order for these folks to make some money the tickets are usually sold at a higher than face value price. Makes sense, no? Are you following yet? See where I'm going here? Hold on... Perhaps now, you're exploring the same theory as I was at the moment.....Would the Blue Jays sell a block of tickets on this re-selling website to artificially create the impression of a sell out? Nahhh!
OR would they?
I tried to downplay it in my mind. Maybe that aforementioned shrewd business person bought a block of tickets under the guise of a group sale, and then in turn, placed them for resale. But the face value argument trumped that in my mind.
But then.....
Just a few days ago, I received an email from the Blue Jays. A marketing email, encouraging me to support my Blue Jays by purchasing tickets to the upcoming homestands versus the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of California of USA, and the Royals and of course Yankees and Red Sox. Benign in nature this type of email usually.
However, it included the following: "Thank you for your recent purchase and we'll see you on April 12th."
What? But sir, I did not purchase these tickets from you, I purchased them from a re-selling website. Or did I? How would the Rogers Blue Jays Baseball Partnership know I bought these tickets?
Hmmmm. I look forward to comments on this...
That's my view from the Last Row 500's. Oh by the way, Frasor nailed it down with 2 K's and a feeble ground out to short. More on that in another post.
I am a little disturbed by this.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how often these types of business practices go on, in all markets?
Clearly it would be an embarrasement for the Jays to not have a sell out on Opening Day.
But I have to guess that by artifically deflating supply, they in turn create the illusion of demand.....
Somebody "in the know" has got to explain this to me.
Hmmmm ... very interesting. I know they are calling it a virtual "sell-out", but I highly doubt it actually did.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are websites out there who bought up huge blocks of tickets, just to turn them at a profit. But it's very strange that you received that email ... maybe Rogers is controlling it after all?