By Blaidd Drwg
The Boston Globe printed an article about how the scalpers at Fenway Park are not making money on reselling Red Sox tickets this season. Maybe I am being insensitive, but am I supposed to feel sorry for these guys?
One of my favorite parts of this article:
Rich wistfully talks about the pre-championship Red Sox and laments the way things are now. Back then, a $50 ticket went for $200, easy, he says. Now there are days where he struggles to get 50 percent above face value.
OK, I am sorry but these guys are still gouging the hell out of the ticket prices. How bad are things for the scalpers? Here you go:
Rich claims he made about $100,000 in his first year re-selling tickets to NASCAR events and Sox games. This year, though, he says he’ll be lucky to bring in one-third of that.
WTF, this guy is making $30,000 this year for a couple hours of work a day, 82 days a year. I don’t feel sorry for them.
These guys are the scum of the earth. They are shady, arrogant and really not bright. They would rather not sell a ticket than sell a ticket for less than they want, even after the game has started.
Another gem:
Now, it’s the middle of the first inning, and he’s one of several sellers occupying the corner off Brookline Ave. The game has started but his price remains fixed. His field box seats, with a face value of $52 apiece, are going for $150.
Like many of his colleagues, he is having trouble moving the seats. To a casual onlooker, the solution seems simple. Drop the price. But when the idea is brought up, the man in the gray cotton T-shirt quickly shoots it down.
“Let me ask you something,’’ he says. “If you owned a store, and you sold milk, and all your milk was about to go bad, and everyone held out until the last minute to buy your milk, and you dropped the price, what would happen?’’
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He explains that no one would be willing to buy milk at full price. The integrity of the product would be compromised.
Integrity of the product? Please. These guys are selling baseball tickets, not life saving medicine. Actually, if I knew a product was going to go stale and I was faced with selling at a loss or not selling at all, I am going to sell at a loss (and have done that with tickets – I figure $20 for a $40 ticket is better than $0 for a $40 ticket I can’t use). This guy has probably never seen fresh food in his life – stores regularly discount products that are about to expire or go bad and yet, people still buy the regularly priced product too.
My scalper story – back in 2004 before the Sox won the World Series, I tried to go to a game at Fenway with a friend of mine. We did not have tickets and it was a July game against the Rangers with Tim Wakefield pitching. The cheapest tickets I could get from a scalper were bleachers (which I believe were $20 face value) for $100 EACH. This was before the game, so we decided to go to a bar, have a few drinks and come back after the game started. We came back to where the scalpers were hanging out, it was the 3rd inning and the Sox were down 3-0. The ticket prices had barely moved – including the moron who wanted $100 each for bleacher tickets. I offered $100 for any pair of tickets that any of the scalpers were willing to sell and got no takers, so we went back to the bar. I never understood that – it is not like there are that many people who are willing to pay that kind of money to see 6 innings of a baseball game anyway. I refuse to ever buy or sell a ticket from a Fenway scalper because of that.
FlatbreadGarden 