Something about this story doesn’t feel right. The Toronto Blue Jays played their home opener yesterday at Rogers Centre. A CBC/Toronto Star investigation revealed more than 20,000 of the tickets for the game ended up on resale websites like StubHub, and most were listed for well above face value.
Via CBC:
Thousands of tickets for today’s Toronto Blue Jays home opener found their way onto resale sites with massive markups, but a CBC/Toronto Star investigation has discovered scalpers aren’t the only players cashing in.Ticket giant StubHub confirmed it has an arrangement with the Jays that gives the team a cut of every single ticket resold on its site, helping the baseball club to profit from the scalping of its own tickets
Glenn Lehrman, StubHub’s global head of communications, declined to provide financial details of the deal but said this of the company’s revenue sharing with the Jays and other Major League Baseball teams: “They do very well. Let’s put it that way.”Especially with a big event like opening day at Rogers Centre.”They’re going to sell out their game regardless,” he said, “and now they’re benefiting from whatever sales that we do on top of that.”
Today’s game technically sold out days before the event with only single seats and seats with obstructed views available on Ticketmaster. But 4,698 tickets were still available on resale websites 24 hours before Thursday’s opening pitch at 3:37 p.m. as some sellers started slashing their prices.
“It seems wrong, doesn’t it? I know the team wants to maximize their profits in any way they can … but this just seems off somehow,” said Tom Dakers, a lifelong fan who writes the popular blog Bluebird Banter.
Everyone wants a piece of the pie, and if others are taking that piece, you might as well try to work with them rather than against them. That being said, the ultimate losers are the fans, who have to pay thru the nose to see their team play a baseball game. Greed isn’t good when it comes to the fans paying the price.
