Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Can You Take Out A Home Equity Loan For Hockey Tickets?

I guess it was to be expected - team wins a championship, tickets become scarce. But when single game tickets went on sale for the Blackhawks last month, I did not expect to be completely shut out. Of all 41 home games. Except for standing room (fuck that). Or the exorbitantly priced 100 level seats (fuck that even more).

I already had issues with the Hawks’ ticket sales because not only did they raise ticket prices again (I can’t say I blame them - supply & demand) but they also divided parts of the 300 level into *3* price levels. For serious? There’s only 17 rows in most of them for Chrissakes! They also have dicked around with my brother’s season tickets - they wanted to move down a couple rows because they sit in the second to last row of their section and folks in standing room basically invade your personal space the entire game. I can attest to that - I used my brother’s tickets to see the preseason game vs. the Wings on Saturday and Amy had to put her arm out to prevent some guy from basically resting his junk on the top of my head. Eww. In any case, the Hawks ticket folks refused to move my brother and his seatmate (even though most of the seats in the rows in front of them are not used by STHs) unless they wanted to move down far enough to be in a more expensive price level. Way to take care of your loyal fans. But why would the Hawks make any concessions to them? The waiting list (which I am a part of) is miles long and they could find someone to take my brother’s seats, probably at the non-grandfathered price range to boot. Hey, the Hawks organ-I-zation is still miles above when Dollar Bill held the reins, but boy can you tell John McDonough is in charge - he pulled the same shit when he was with the Cubs.

So the morning tickets went on sale I dutifully logged onto TicketBastard (and turned off my work phone...shhhh...) at 10 am sharp. Amy and I had mapped out 6 ideal games we wanted to attend with about 4 to 5 games as backups. Down the list I went. When I finally got through the stupid pinwheel screen I couldn't get 2 tickets. Or 1 ticket. Or nothing. I even started looking for games I hadn't planned on and could at best get standing room (uh, no) or seats on the glass (fuck no). I was dejected. I was pissed. After about 45 minutes of this, I gave up - partially because I completely ignored work for that entire time and my coworkers were giving me looks. I decided at lunch to look at StubHub, and lo and behold there were tons of seats on there. Gee, I wonder why. Seeing as there were 300 level tickets just above face, I decided just to get the games I wanted while I still could. I bought tickets for 5 of the 6 games - I wanted seats for the banner raising home opener, but we'll get to that shortly. Upon looking at our seat locations *four* of the games are the exact same pair of seats. These games are spread out throughout the season, so this is no STH going on a vacation. This is a broker, who somehow got season tickets and sells the whole damn season for a profit. That is fucking bullshit - this is something the Blackhawks (and all sporting teams for that matter) need to monitor and eradicate. I'm not opposed to STH holders selling a game here and there while the market is hot - hell my brother sold one of his seats to the Stanley Cup Finals and it paid for most of this upcoming season. But if you have no plans to attend at least some of the games, you have no business being a STH. I'm disappointed that the Hawks and other teams don't put a stop to this - all it takes is ten minutes on any site like StubHub and it's obvious who the brokers are. 

Back to opening night - I had promised my mom that I would try to get us tickets to see the Stanley Cup banner raised. She was still pissed she didn't get to go to any playoff games last year and I felt obligated since I was in utero when my folks still had season tickets and I was the reason they didn't renew (dammit!). She mentioned to my aunt how badly she wanted to go, so my aunt contacted me about going in on getting good seats as part of my Mom's Xmas present. Fine, I thought - since my mom doesn't really get around well these days, I'd get some 200 level tickets and enjoy a nice night out. Well, of course that didn't happen as I think the tickets for that game were sold out faster than you can say Hjalmarsson. So for a couple weeks I white knuckled it, incessantly checking StubHub, Ticketmaster & Ticket Exchange looking for any decent seats that I wouldn't have to promise my first born for. Finally I saw two tickets in the first row of the 300 section on Ticket Exchange. I paid about 3x face for them, but my mom's excited, and I'll probably pee my pants/cry when they raise the banner, so I think it's worth it. Besides, free replica banner to the first 20,000 fans bitches!

For those who care, here are the games I have tickets for this season:

10/09/10 vs. Red Wings
10/30/10 at Wild (wooo....road trip!)
11/07/10 vs. Oilers
12/15/10 vs. Avalanche
01/25/11 vs. Wild
02/27/11 vs. Coyotes (birthday eve!)
03/06/11 vs. Blues

That doesn't include any games I pick up on the spur of the moment - especially when they release the games with promotions - I need more friends for my Toews bobblehead. I'd also like to do another road trip - Nashville would be an obvious choice, but perhaps even St. Louis again since I'd like to see a game there without having to leave midway to get stitches. I guess if I'm feeling daring I could even do Detroit, but I loathe Red Wings fans, so I don't know if I could stomach it. 

While we're on the subject of tickets, I also bought a 5 game pack for the Rockford IceHogs. I got two seats and the total was nearly half what I paid for one of the tickets for opening night. Argh. Well for shits and giggles, here are the games I'm attending:

10/23/10 vs. Wolves
11/27/10 vs. Rivermen
12/18/10 vs. Monsters
01/07/11 vs. Marlies
03/26/11 vs. Admirals

I'll probably try to go to another game or two as tickets are cheap and the games are fun. Unfortunately I'm limited to weekend games. Even though Rockford is only a 60-90 minute drive from where I'm at depending on traffic, getting up at 5:30 in the mornings for work kinda derails any school night fun. I'd also like to go to a couple of Wolves games - I used to go quite a bit the first few seasons they were in existence (my friends' dad had season tickets) but haven't been in probably close to ten years.

If you made it through all this drivel, congrats! Have a Toews-Face from Saturday night's game for your trouble:


3 comments:

  1. That's sad that longtime Hawks fans such as your family and yourself have to suffer because of ticket brokers and bandwagoners. Where were they all when the team sucked? But congrats on scoring opening night tickets. I'm going to the Blues-Flyers game on Oct. 9 :)

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  2. I blame the brokers more than the bandwagoners - hell I didn't go to a lot of games in the 00's due to the lockout & Bill Wirtz. Have fun at Blues/Flyers - boo Pronger for me ;)

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  3. I don't know if I could boo Pronger...being that he's an ex-Blue ;)

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