Economy Not Stopping Ticket Price Increase

By Scott Kornberg

Even with the country in its worst recession since the Great Depression, 18 NFL teams have increased ticket prices for the upcoming season. While USA Today proposes that the main motivation of ticket price increases is for teams to stay competitive, it shows that teams continue to overlook the needs of their blue-collar fans.  The economy may be slightly better than it was last year, but its still not enough for sports fans to rationalize spending such a large portion of their income on football tickets.

A perfect example of a team misunderstanding their blue-collar fans is the Minnesota Vikings. While they continue to sell the league’s cheapest nosebleeds at $15, the Vikings raised prices on 85% of their tickets, and are raising ticket prices for the second time in three seasons.

The Houston Texans and Pittsburgh Steelers are also raising prices heavily on tickets, with an average increase of 6.67% and 7%, respectively. Both teams, with rabid fan bases that routinely sell out games, are banking on the fact that fans will pony up extra money in the recession to watch football. Both teams do not understand that to raise prices in this unstable economic climate, they are pricing out some of their blue-collar fans.

The only way for teams in the NFL to stay competitive is to create as much revenue for themselves as they can. However, when teams attempt to increase revenue at the expense of fans, it shows that teams do not understand the economic issues that many of their fans face. As teams continue to raise prices every two to three years, they continue to price out more and more of their working class fans. As a non-profit entity with anti-trust exempt status, the NFL should own up to its responsibility to the public and provide affordable seats for their blue-collar, low-income tax-paying fans.

Scott Kornberg is a sportscaster for WMUC Sports (www.wmucsports.com). He hosts his own sports talk show, and announces baseball and softball games for the University of Maryland. He covers Maryland’s football and basketball writing for www.turtlesportsreport.com part of the scout.com network.

NFLPA Fires First Shot 

by Scott Weiss

The NFLPA fired the first shot to start their new war with the NFL over TV revenues and the potential impact on the upcoming labor negotiations.  The NFLPA filed a complaint charging that the NFL did not try to maximize TV revenue during the past two seasons because they knew they would have to share profits with the players, and also that the NFL will stand to make $4 Billion from the new TV contract even if there is a work stoppage in 2011.  So, how does this all impact sports fans?

On the first part of the complaint regarding the charge that the NFL did not try to maximize revenue over the past two seasons, I take the side of neither the owners nor players.  I truly do not care how these two rich kids split up the billions in question.  However, point two should be critically important to all sports fans.  What kind of motivation will the owners have if they will be receiving $4 Billion even if there is not a season played in 2011?  Is there any way that there will be a sense of urgency from the owner’s side if they know that they have the TV revenue safety net to fall back on?  On this front, I agree with the players that the owners are playing dirty pool.

Once again, it would be the loyal football fans who get the short end of the stick in this high stakes poker game.  It is important to remind people that the NFL collective bargaining agreement expires in March 2011.  If unchecked by sports fans as represented by SFC, the NFL and NFLPA will drag us through the mud over the next nine months to either come to a new collective bargaining agreement at the 11^th hour or bring the game to screeching halt with a work stoppage. 

This is the first battle in the professional sports collective bargaining wars of 2011.  Rather than hanging our heads, sports fans should see this as the best opportunity to establish a powerful and united coalition of sports fans to change the way the sports industry operates forever.

Scott Weiss is the Local Chapter Chair for SFC-New York/New Jersey.  He has been involved in the sports fans advocacy movement since 2000.  He is a life long fan of the Mets, Jets, Knicks, and Rangers.

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Displaced Saints Faithful Get A Victory…Or Do They?

By Ross McDaniel

New Orleans Saints’ season ticket holders displaced by renovations to the Superdome began receiving relocation offers Monday, according to a report from The Times-Picayune.

“The Missing 1200,” as former residents of Section 641 have come to be known, were contacted by Saints’ front office officials and extended multiple offers via personal phone calls, with some packages starting as high as $1700 a seat. However, none were close to the $330 a seat The Missing 1200 paid last season.

Most fans expected a price increase for the upcoming season. After all, the NFL is big business, and with a better product comes a bigger price tag.

But they expected a fair price.

Jeff Maumus, one of the displaced season ticket holders, received a call Monday morning and was offered corner upper deck seats for $550 a seat — a 67% price increase of what he paid last season for worse seats.

“I got a call today with a relocation offer, and I said, ‘How long do I have?’ and they said I had to decide by the end of the day,” Maumus added.

Ross Louis, a professor at Xavier University and one of the displaced 1200 fans, sent an email to all of The Missing 1200 outlining the known offers and said ticket holders generally had 24 hours to decide.

For Maumus and most of the displaced fans, the decision to renew at a higher price was a no-brainer. What choice did he really have, though? Like the rest of Who Dat Nation, Maumus just wants to be in the building again and see that Super Bowl banner raised before New Orleans’ 2010 home opener.

The timing of the offers came as a surprise to The Missing 1200, who were told by Saints’ front office officials that relocation offers would begin toward the middle to the end of May. Everyone contacted Monday was caught off guard.  Which, of course, strengthened the upper hand the Saints’ front office already had over their fans.

Think Boiler Room meets Sophie’s Choice.

While on the surface some might see the Saints’ offers as accommodating, the Sports Fans Coalition sees it as what it is: A chance to increase profits for inferior seats while appearing as the “good guy.”

Sure, the displaced fans could make a stand and refuse the Saints’ offers, but then it’s down to the bottom of the season ticket waiting list that’s already 60,000 names long.

At the end of the day the squeeze was on and The Missing 1200 never had a choice.

Ross McDaniel is an SFC contributor, and serves as Managing Editor/Operator of Spumor.com.

Contain Your Excitement: Three Long Days of NFL Draft

by Jeremiah Tittle

While a fellow sports fan said to me yesterday that “the NFL is the only sport that can pull off a primetime draft”, it is apparent that Roger Goodell’s plan to elevate the spectacle of this modern day slave trade to must-see TV is working. My cousin is in town for only a week, and the one ‘event’ on his schedule which could not be missed is to watch the NFL Draft on TV.

At first, I was perplexed by so many fans’ reaction to the change in scheduling, but apparently Goodell’s elaborate marketing ploy is working. They shortened the down time between picks in individual rounds to enhance the viewer’s experience. They’ve separated the first round, held on Thursday night, from the second and third rounds which are held on Friday night. For those die hard football freaks, the fourth through the seventh rounds take place on Saturday.

While this new and improved event extending into the weekend will gather formidable ratings, and will add another notch to Goodell’s bedpost, as a devout member of Sports Fans Coalition, all this hype, energy, and effort – going into a system that essentially already works - begs the question, ’Don’t you have anything better to do?’

Shouldn’t the NFL be focused on issues of greater importance like knowing when to stop the extortion of tax dollars for stadiums, concessions, merchandise; ending blackouts for cities in economic despair; or preventing perps like Ben Roethlisberger from assaulting women. It appears there are several issues the NFL can and should be focusing on during the off-season, much less the NFL Draft.

No matter the celebration of friends, family, and the die hards. 

I, for one, will contain my excitement.

Jeremiah Tittle is the Managing Editor of SportsFansCoalition.org.

LA Stadium Noise Is Subtraction By Addition

by Jeremiah Tittle

As March came to a close, so did the NFL’s rule against encouraging the stadium crowd to get roudy and loud when the visiting team’s offense is on the field. For many years, teams were actually penalized for pumping in crowd noise sound effects and emploring fans on jumbotrons to ‘MAKE some NOISE!!!’

The NFL owners got something right in their pursuit of improving the fan experience by allowing the 12th man to be, well, just that; having a real impact on the game. It’s a step in the right direction that will, NFL owners hope, increase revenue causing more fans to shell out 3 figures per ticket (plus parking and concessions) ultimately limiting the number of blackouts during the 2010 season as the economy recovers. A happy ending indeed.

Amidst all the decisions the NFL owners made, from the necessary to the more trivial, making fans feel more important should be at the top of the list. And it is that ‘feeling’ of importance which may help the league keep fans from embracing their true power.

Football fans pay for all the elements of the game experience, pay to watch the games on TV at home, join the office fantasy league, but the most overlooked factor in which sports fans fuel this sports league - which generated $8 billion last year - is the portion of tax money and tax subsidy which is provided to teams to build their modern day coliseums.

Case in point: A persistent story over the last 6 months has been Arnold Schwarzenegger’s perfection of the phrase ‘Come to California’. While he got his feet wet shooting California tourism board commercials, his true mastery of the phrase is a bi-product of his clarion call to all NFL franchises interested in a new stadium on the public dime. 

With all the tax issues in California, it is difficult to imagine where that money will come from. That hasn’t stopped the suitors from lining up. Once it was made public that the politics and financing would take care of themselves, it was no surprise that Los Angeles businessmen Casey Wasserman and Tim Leiweke submitted Plan B on the heels of the Governator-endorsed Plan A which would use real estate developer Ed Roski’s bulldozers and cranes.

For all the noise echoing out of Los Angeles as the city attempts to lure an NFL franchise with a tax bankrolled new stadium filled with Hollywood stars in luxury boxes, it’s really subtraction by addition.

Subtraction by the addition of a new plan. Subtraction by the addition of pressure on Jacksonville, Detroit, and Minnesota as the team’s owners threaten to leave unless their current hometown taxpayer’s shell out big bucks for new stadiums to stay put. Subtraction of sports fans’ tax dollars by adding a stadium in LA for a team that doesn’t yet exist. That’s a lot of noise for nothing.

Jeremiah Tittle is the Managing Editor of SportsFansCoalition.org.