I've pretty much given up hope that the NFL will lose popularity only because its many scandals show that it is, in many ways, a socially corrosive institution. Neither has the league's inconsistent enforcement of its own rules done much to damage it. I've moved on to waiting for the league to be damaged by its own unbridled greed and hubris, with its customers eventually tiring of being screwed financially.
Here is an exciting development on that front: Bloomberg Business reports that the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating the NFL for possible antitrust violations related to its ticket resale policies. From Bloomberg (h/t Deadspin):
"The Attorney General's investigation centers on resale price floors -- the practice of putting a lower limit on ticket prices to ensure that they don't go for less than a certain value. The NFL Ticket Exchange enforces these floors, usually preventing sales below the face value of the ticket, Schneiderman said in a wider report on the ticket industry to be released Thursday. Because some teams require ticket holders to use the league-promoted platform, even sellers who would be willing to sell for less can't, according to the report."
It’s common to receive media advisories from sports teams that urge fans to buy tickets through their official marketplaces. Usually these advisories emphasize the risk of fans buying counterfeit tickets if they do not use the official exchange, but I always figured the real motivation for teams and leagues is that they get a cut from re-sales on their official marketplace. It’s a shrewd double-dip.
And now the NFL allegedly is interfering in that market by enforcing a salary floor. This obviously hurts buyers by creating artificially higher prices and, as the New York Attorney General's report notes, buyers "are frequently not informed that the tickets they are buying are subject to a floor" and thus can be "fooled into believing what they are paying is the market price."
Ticket holders who want to sell seats for less than the floor are hurt, too. They should be able to use other marketplaces to sell their tickets for whatever price they want but some teams apparently don't allow it. Bloomberg notes that the Broncos threatened to strip seats from season ticket holders who resale via marketplaces other than the NFL Ticket Exchange.
I'm not sure if the Falcons have a similar policy. The team's renewal and ticket purchase agreement lists "scalping or resale of tickets" as one reason it "retain(s) the option to cancel an account or relocate seats assigned to an account." I reached out to a Falcons spokesman for clarification on the team's resale policy and will update when I hear back.
It’s unseemly for the NFL and its teams to enforce a salary floor on tickets sold through the official exchange. If the league and its teams do this while also forcing season ticket holders to use their exchange, it’s a possible antitrust violation.
Here’s hoping it’s also something that gets people mad enough to reconsider their unconditional love for a league that often doesn’t deserve it.
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