BaseballHead:
A Big Fat Ripoff

Michael Cox

Hey, big fella! Welcome to Baseballhead, where we'd lay 5-1 odds that the freeinternet.com baby could beat the little Pepsi girl in a fair fight.

The past week featured much violence, including a Brian L. Hunter-led ballpark brawl (hey, at least he's good for something) and a heinous loss of self-control by Carl Everett (whom we understand has suffered from that problem for a long while, it's just that now everyone knows). However, the most heinous act of abuse was perpetrated by the Mariners on their fans yesterday. My guess is that it'll soon extend to other MLB cities as well -- unless we work together to stop it.

With much excitement, the M's unveiled something called "Mariners @ the Moment," which they claim is a site that allows the fans to "name their own price" for tickets. Ooh, I thought, you mean like the Priceline model, where you can rack up a pretty decent deal as long as you submit a price close to what the seller normally charges, and catch them during a slow time?

No dice.

After reading the confusing "help," I ascertained that the only way you get tickets is if your "bid" matches or exceeds the "Market Price" at some point in time. Shortly thereafter, I noticed that the "Market Price" was face value.

Of course, you don't have to bid. The M's will kindly sell you the ducats immediately at the "Market Price," which in the morning was the $32 regular price of a box seat for any of the three available games. Thus, the M's play it both ways.

Wait -- it gets worse.

Logging back in later in the day, I discovered that as expected, box seat bidders had been doing their best to get the price up close to the "retail" cost. Then I saw it. The "Market Price" had increased.

In other words, the Mariners were raising their ticket prices dynamically, higher than the highest bid. The only way to get a ticket was to pay the "Market Value."

A seat for the game against the Red Sox on Tuesday, August 1 had a top bid of $30.19, but a "Market Price" of $37.87. Boxes for another game, a Thursday contest against Toronto, had decreased, but it appears that although "Market Value" can increase at will, it goes no lower than face value unless bidders all make extremely low offers and nobody buys at "market price."

The Mariners, my friends, have become scalpers of their own tickets. Er, excuse me, ticket brokers. And TicketMaster is their pimp, to mix the metaphor. Because they're the source of the tickets, they get around Seattle's anti-scalping laws by making the price you paid the new "face value."

Why? Hot on the heels of the recent announcement that MLB would be giving Pearl Jam's favorite enemy the heave-ho, it appears that TicketMaster has plans to circumvent their exclusion from baseball. Through their CitySearch website, TM is hosting these shenanigans (the exceedingly crappy interface should have been the tip-off). And because TM is in on the deal, add another $3 per ticket for "convenience" and $2.25 per order for "handling."

To top it off, the M's have artificially created "demand" for these seats by pulling them out of the regular ticketing system. It's a ripoff, and anyone who buys these falsely inflated tickets gets what they deserve. In fact, anyone who buys there is screwing their fellow fans, because the M's -- who normally already pack Safeco Field -- are looking to this auction to determine how high to set future ticket prices.

"But I want the tickets," I hear you say. Well, there are so, so many other ways to get tickets at face or below that stooping to the Mariners/TicketMaster auction is as stupid as being seen in public clutching N'Sync's new album.

Ways to buy tickets for less:

1. Buy now, from the Mariner box office (if you're in the Seattle area) or by mail (if you're not). No "convenience fees," and if you buy them before the M's pull them from circulation, you're actually saving other innocent fans who might be wavering in their reserve.

2. People will be selling tickets outside of these games -- both husbands whose wives came down ill, and scalpers. Scalpers (yes, scalpers) outside Safeco Field normally sell for face value, due to the law. (They make their money by buying 'em for less, silly.)

3. Hey, I have some I'll sell you (Gimme a break -- I'm a season ticket holder; I have extras).

4. This is the fun one, to do only if you want to take a chance -- Make $1 bids for the box seats. If we all do it, and it's automated, "Market Value" may decline enough that we can then swoop in near the end of the day and scoop us up some cheap seats.

Do it. Log in -- even if you live in Philly or Houston, if you get a pair of box seats at Safeco for $10 or less including surcharges, I'll take 'em off your hands, plus a couple of bucks for your trouble. Do it for us in Seattle. Do it for yourself next season, when the TM empire comes your way.

Also, wait for Tickets.com to take over next season. If the M's try to pull hundreds of seats from circulation just to auction them in cahoots with TicketMaster, you can bet Tickets.com will raise havoc. Also, they have a flat service/convenience fee -- not close to the extortion that keeps TicketMaster's cash cow hooked to the milking machine.

If we all can exercise more self-control than Kenny Everett, we can beat this thing.

 

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