Thursday, April 05, 2007

The Clock Is Tick-ing

Today, a new section of Fenway Park was introduced, with tickets for it going immediately on sale. It's a set of bleachers pered atop the right field roof boxes, named after Tony C. Look at the message they give you while you're in the virtual waiting room:

To ensure that the families who purchase the tickets in Conigliaro’s Corner actually use them, the Red Sox will not allow tickets to be mailed in advance or delivered via print@home technology. Tickets must be picked up by the purchaser of record on the day of the game when the gates open. Fans picking up the tickets will be required to enter directly into Fenway Park.


I have a theory. This isn't about the new section. They coud've thrown bleachers up anywhere. No, this is a test. The Red Sox have finally come up with a viable anti-scalping idea, and I love it. No one who buys these seats can sell them. Beautiful. I think they're seeing how this goes, and maybe, if it's feasible, they'll start doing this for the rest of the seats in the park at some future date. I wonder how they'll go about "requiring" you to enter the park. That's the key. It shouldn't be too hard for a few hundred, but can you take care of 35,000 that way?

If the wait in the virtual waiting room is any indication, people are still willing to buy under this system. Personally, I finally got through, but decided I don't need any more tickets this season, and--here's the downside to this new method--I don't like to feel "locked in" to a date, and I can't give these to friends, because I'd have to be there to pick up the tickets. However, I could deal with this problem if it meant no more scalping.

How has no one thought of this idea before? Don't want scalping? Will call only. This could lead to a quick dismantling of the entire sleazy online ticket agencies. I'd love to send camera people in with the repo folks who go into the homes of the Girls Gone Wild-watchin', 20-something-er-than-thou "CEO"s of those companies just to see the looks on their "still playing poker until the next fad dictates our lifestyle"-y faces when the Entourage DVDs go bye-bye.

Comments:
We will send a manned mission to Jupiter before we come up with a system to efficiently funnel 35,000 people through a will-call system. I've seen this procedure attempted at concerts, most notably when the Smashing Pumpkins opened the new 9:30 club in 1996, and it was a clusterfuck, and that was only for about a 1,000 people. This idea will not catch on large scale unless people are willing to get to Fenway three hours early.
 
You could start slowly...like, okay, how many entrances are there? make a few more so you could say "A-C enter Gate A, D-F enter Gate B..." And it could rotate every year. Maybe no, but I think you could divide the people up enough so that it could be done. Start with only some tickets one year, and slowly ease the plan in. And each person could give a couple of friends' names that are authorized to retrieve the ticket.

Or how about all tix are print at home, but they come with your name on them, and you show ID at the gate or something.
 

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