I didn't put it in the sport section because its more of a business issue...is this legal? They're probably giving out the best tickets to these scalpers.
A Toronto Star/CBC investigation tracked online ticket listings for the team’s 2018 home opener and found that the average price for online seats was 205 per cent of face value — with the club getting a cut of each online sale.
The Toronto Blue Jays receive secret commissions on every ticket sold on StubHub, allowing the club to profit on the scalping of its own seats — all without telling fans — a joint Toronto Star/CBC investigation has found.
And the size of that scalping market is larger than anyone suspected.
At least 20,519 tickets to the opening day game — 45 per cent of all stadium seats — were posted for sale on online ticket reselling platforms StubHub, VividSeats, TicketsNow and SeatGeek, a detailed analysis of online ticket listings over the past two months shows.
The average price for those online seats was 205 per cent of face value — a large markup that will soon be illegal in Ontario.
StubHub’s head of global communications Glenn Lehrman confirmed the Jays receive payments — like all Major League Baseball teams — for tickets sold on the world’s largest online ticket resale site. He would not say how much of a cut goes to the clubs.
“They do very well, let’s put it that way,” he said. “For something like opening day, that’s just added revenue that they’re going to get. They’re going to sell out their game regardless and now they’re benefiting from whatever sales that we do on top of that … . It’s absolutely added revenue for them.”
The Jays’ payment arrangement with StubHub has never been reported before now. When the Jays entered into the partnership with StubHub a year ago, public messaging focused on enhancing the fan experience by making it easier to upload tickets for sale. Nowhere did the club say it got a cut.
The Blue Jays declined repeated requests for comment for this story.
StubHub’s Lehrman couldn’t confirm whether the Jays have placed their own seats directly for sale on the scalping service. But he said other MLB teams have done so.
“There have been instances in the past where some teams have used us as an alternative distribution channel. It’s something we would encourage teams to do. But it doesn’t happen very often.”
Earning profit from the resale of the team’s tickets without telling fans is “unethical,” says Richard Powers, associate professor Rotman School of Management.
“That is totally misleading and increases the cost to consumers,” he said. “Getting in bed with the secondary market who they fight against all the time in every other venue, it just seems unethical.”
After decades of battling scalpers, the Jays are now working with them, blurring the once clear line between the box office and secondary marketplace.
Tom Dakers, manager of Blue Jays fan blog Bluebird Banter, said half of opening day seats moving online is “incredible.”
“Almost half? It sounds to me the team is cheating by saying, ‘Our average ticket cost is this,’ but in reality their average ticket cost is much higher because (so many) tickets are being sold on the secondary market,” said Dakers, whose site has 10,000 members and one million page views a month.
“They’ve made the original sale and then they’re getting a percentage of the second sale. That surprises me.”
In a recent interview with Sportnet, Jays president Mark Shapiro said that today’s home opener would be “the highest-revenue game in the history of Rogers Centre.”
He spoke openly about wanting to grab a piece of the burgeoning online scalping market.
“We didn’t think it was advantageous to have 50 per cent of our tickets controlled by the secondary market,” he said. “The secondary market is a fact, we will always accept and even embrace a piece of that market, but we just wanted to clean that up to some extent.”
That cleaning up amounts to reclaiming profits from ticket resellers profiting from higher prices many people pay online. Shapiro estimated almost half of the Jays’ season-ticket holders last year were professional ticket “brokers.”
The Star/CBC analysis shows the average ticket for today’s game was priced at more than double face value on the online scalping market. This comes on top of box office price hikes in each of the last four seasons. The cost of the Jays’ cheapest single game seat has risen by 50 per cent at the box office since 2014.
And since 2016, the Jays have used “dynamic pricing,” where tickets to games against popular opponents are more expensive. That practice can drive up the face value of tickets for high-demand games nearly 70 per cent.
“Facilitating the secondary market, facilitating the scalpers who are really taking advantage of fans, that’s dishonest and ... misleading and certainly goes against the image that they’re trying to portray as sort of the good guy.”
The analysis of ticket sales for the Jays’ opening day game is an unprecedented attempt to quantify the size of the online scalping market. Journalists began monitoring online ticket resellers when they noticed almost 3,500 opening day seats available on StubHub weeks before tickets went on sale through the box office.
From the day tickets officially went on sale in February, reporters tracked each seat in the Rogers Centre as tickets moved from the box office to the online resale market.
The Star/CBC analysis showed it’s easier to get a Jays seat for today’s opening day game in the online aftermarket than from the box office. Only about 13,000 seats for today’s game — out of a total stadium capacity of 45,811 (not including standing room tickets) — were placed for sale at the club’s box office. More than 20,000 would eventually be posted for resale online.
The data collection was imperfect because of the complexity of tracking each seat over two months of heavy trading online. As a result, our analysis underestimates the number of scalped seats. The actual scope and size of the resale market can only be greater.
As the Star and CBC revealed last year in the Paradise Papers, StubHub secretly works with mass scalpers.
https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2018/03/29/jays-get-a-cut-from-online-scalpers.html
A Toronto Star/CBC investigation tracked online ticket listings for the team’s 2018 home opener and found that the average price for online seats was 205 per cent of face value — with the club getting a cut of each online sale.
The Toronto Blue Jays receive secret commissions on every ticket sold on StubHub, allowing the club to profit on the scalping of its own seats — all without telling fans — a joint Toronto Star/CBC investigation has found.
And the size of that scalping market is larger than anyone suspected.
At least 20,519 tickets to the opening day game — 45 per cent of all stadium seats — were posted for sale on online ticket reselling platforms StubHub, VividSeats, TicketsNow and SeatGeek, a detailed analysis of online ticket listings over the past two months shows.
The average price for those online seats was 205 per cent of face value — a large markup that will soon be illegal in Ontario.
StubHub’s head of global communications Glenn Lehrman confirmed the Jays receive payments — like all Major League Baseball teams — for tickets sold on the world’s largest online ticket resale site. He would not say how much of a cut goes to the clubs.
“They do very well, let’s put it that way,” he said. “For something like opening day, that’s just added revenue that they’re going to get. They’re going to sell out their game regardless and now they’re benefiting from whatever sales that we do on top of that … . It’s absolutely added revenue for them.”
The Jays’ payment arrangement with StubHub has never been reported before now. When the Jays entered into the partnership with StubHub a year ago, public messaging focused on enhancing the fan experience by making it easier to upload tickets for sale. Nowhere did the club say it got a cut.
The Blue Jays declined repeated requests for comment for this story.
StubHub’s Lehrman couldn’t confirm whether the Jays have placed their own seats directly for sale on the scalping service. But he said other MLB teams have done so.
“There have been instances in the past where some teams have used us as an alternative distribution channel. It’s something we would encourage teams to do. But it doesn’t happen very often.”
Earning profit from the resale of the team’s tickets without telling fans is “unethical,” says Richard Powers, associate professor Rotman School of Management.
“That is totally misleading and increases the cost to consumers,” he said. “Getting in bed with the secondary market who they fight against all the time in every other venue, it just seems unethical.”
After decades of battling scalpers, the Jays are now working with them, blurring the once clear line between the box office and secondary marketplace.
Tom Dakers, manager of Blue Jays fan blog Bluebird Banter, said half of opening day seats moving online is “incredible.”
“Almost half? It sounds to me the team is cheating by saying, ‘Our average ticket cost is this,’ but in reality their average ticket cost is much higher because (so many) tickets are being sold on the secondary market,” said Dakers, whose site has 10,000 members and one million page views a month.
“They’ve made the original sale and then they’re getting a percentage of the second sale. That surprises me.”
In a recent interview with Sportnet, Jays president Mark Shapiro said that today’s home opener would be “the highest-revenue game in the history of Rogers Centre.”
He spoke openly about wanting to grab a piece of the burgeoning online scalping market.
“We didn’t think it was advantageous to have 50 per cent of our tickets controlled by the secondary market,” he said. “The secondary market is a fact, we will always accept and even embrace a piece of that market, but we just wanted to clean that up to some extent.”
That cleaning up amounts to reclaiming profits from ticket resellers profiting from higher prices many people pay online. Shapiro estimated almost half of the Jays’ season-ticket holders last year were professional ticket “brokers.”
The Star/CBC analysis shows the average ticket for today’s game was priced at more than double face value on the online scalping market. This comes on top of box office price hikes in each of the last four seasons. The cost of the Jays’ cheapest single game seat has risen by 50 per cent at the box office since 2014.
And since 2016, the Jays have used “dynamic pricing,” where tickets to games against popular opponents are more expensive. That practice can drive up the face value of tickets for high-demand games nearly 70 per cent.
“Facilitating the secondary market, facilitating the scalpers who are really taking advantage of fans, that’s dishonest and ... misleading and certainly goes against the image that they’re trying to portray as sort of the good guy.”
The analysis of ticket sales for the Jays’ opening day game is an unprecedented attempt to quantify the size of the online scalping market. Journalists began monitoring online ticket resellers when they noticed almost 3,500 opening day seats available on StubHub weeks before tickets went on sale through the box office.
From the day tickets officially went on sale in February, reporters tracked each seat in the Rogers Centre as tickets moved from the box office to the online resale market.
The Star/CBC analysis showed it’s easier to get a Jays seat for today’s opening day game in the online aftermarket than from the box office. Only about 13,000 seats for today’s game — out of a total stadium capacity of 45,811 (not including standing room tickets) — were placed for sale at the club’s box office. More than 20,000 would eventually be posted for resale online.
The data collection was imperfect because of the complexity of tracking each seat over two months of heavy trading online. As a result, our analysis underestimates the number of scalped seats. The actual scope and size of the resale market can only be greater.
As the Star and CBC revealed last year in the Paradise Papers, StubHub secretly works with mass scalpers.
https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2018/03/29/jays-get-a-cut-from-online-scalpers.html
