The Buccaneers Have An Official Scalper

The Bucs have announced prominently on their web site that StubHub is their "Official Secondary Ticket Marketplace". I'm wondering if the money the team is receiving for that sponsorship is going to offset the increased cost of legitimately purchased tickets. No, you say? Fans are going to get it in the shorts one way or the other, you say?

When I first read about this, I thought maybe StubHub was some kind of different concept for ticket sales. And, to be fair, they advertise themselves only as an exchange conduit (with a value-added fee, of course.) It's supposed to be an eBay for tickets, and eBay did, in fact, purchase StubHub recently. But Ticketmaster claims StubHub is using shady tactics in a law suit filed in April.

According to Ticketmaster's complaint, Stubhub used "improper" tactics to steal away seats that should have been in Ticketmaster's inventory. Sometimes StubHub acquired the tickets by negotiating deals with artists for tickets, and at other times its representatives threatened venues that they would "not be chosen to host future events" unless they sold StubHub a certain number of premium seats, the complaint said.

Now, granted, I hate Ticketmaster and their exclusive agreements with just about every worthwhile venue in the country that forces us to use them and pay their outlandish "service fees". But StubHub is no better when they are taking tickets out of the Ticketmaster pool for themselves and charging well above face value for them. These don't sound like the actions of a fan-to-fan network. And when tickets on StubHub are going for the same premiums that "ticket brokers" (I'm looking at you, Empire Tickets) are shilling them for on eBay, I'm pretty sure the same scalpers are listing the same tickets everywhere and just waiting for potential customers to just throw up their hands and say, "Well, I guess that's fair market value."

There was a time when the biggest fans didn't need money to get the best tickets; only time and dedication. They camped outside the venue for as long as it took to make sure they were in the front of the line at 10:00 AM on Saturday. The venues limited tickets to eight per person to discourage scalpers (which were illegal anyway) and, generally, the system worked. I realize times change and technology has made that scenario pretty archaic. But at the same time, dedication to the team/band/wrestler is no longer enough to guarantee you have a decent seat at face value for your event. The cost of entry got a lot higher, and it seems a little shady for the Buccaneers to place their official stamp on the whole aftermarket process.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to shake my fist at some punk kids.