Monday, March 05, 2007

presales are a joke

Ah, the Mets finally come over to the hyperbole of the concert industry and the much-dreaded “presale”. This term is as worthless and abused as “sold out” these days: today, “sold out” only means “we sold out of the tickets we chose to make available for this sale.”

e.g.:

Limited ticket inventory for Opening Day and the Subway Series at Shea (May 18-20) is available in Mets Season Tickets, select Ticket Plans, and select Seven Packs. Single Game tickets for these four games sold out through an online random drawing that generated in excess of 400,000 registrations in February.

Hey, MTO: “sold out” means: THERE ARE NO MORE TICKETS. Not: we have plenty of tickets. We just won’t sell them to you unless you buy seven games from us.  If there is such ‘unprecedented’ demand for Mets tickets, then why not sell the Opening Day tickets - either to plan holders or just to anyone - because you certainly don’t need the seven packs to sell those games, right?

[Oh, here’s another tip: this six ticket limit is also a load of hooey. Why not just send the ticket brokers an engraved invitation? Events that are in demand limit the quantity of tickets one can buy in each sales transactions to make things fair. Isn’t that the whole reason for the ticket lottery, to make things fairer for the fans? That’s what you said, right?]

“Presale” is even worse manipulation than “sold out”. For years, I have watched music fans run like lemmings to the sea that is the concert presale, begging and pleading for presale passwords, and then complaining that “all they could get” was Row Z of the third tier, while I wait until the public onsale and score a seat in the second row. The whole point of a presale in the concert industry (with some exceptions for those bands with fan clubs worth a damn, like Pearl Jam or Dave Matthews as an example) is to move the crappiest seats first by attaching a value and a sense of urgency: wow, I’m in before EVERYONE ELSE. So what if all I’m getting is row M in upper reserved 28 - this is the best that’s available since I’m in on the PRESALE and I’m SPECIAL!”

Bullpucky.

So today, my good friend the Mets Ticket Office sends me an email today:

So this is a presale for Flushing Flash subscribers, all 1xxxxxx of them, AFTER the ‘presale’ for Mets Account Holders. All day long, people have been hitting metsgrrl.com with Google queries, looking for a presale password. The presale password for account holders was “WRIGHT” or “REYES”. I mean, COME ON. Was that really supposed to keep non-account holders out of the presale? Today’s is similarly ludicrous; it’s so easy to guess that it can’t be meant as more than ceremonial.

It’s low, it’s manipulative, it’s toying with people’s emotions, it’s not be honest about what’s available and what’s not. I’m not talking about a ticket drop that happens the day or week before the show, where extra seats are released because they’re not needed, or to combat scalpers. I’m talking about the deliberate manipulation of the ticket pool to defraud consumers into thinking what’s currently for sale is the best that they’ll ever be able to do.

MG’s rule with buying concert tickets has always been, I refuse to spend money on a seat I won’t be happy sitting in. If I don’t like what’s in the presale, I don’t buy. If I don’t like what’s offered in the public onsale, I don’t buy. There are exceptions to every rule, of course - the hot tickets that I know will sell out - but again, it goes back to the first rule: if it’s a hot ticket I’ll be happy to be in the building so I don’t mind.

Which is why we are likely coughing up $130 to StubHub to make sure we’re in the building for Opening Day. I’m not going to sit in Section 28 and pay for four games I already have tickets to, just on principle. A helpful reader offered the suggestion that at least buying the seven-pack would mean we might get post-season rights, but right now I would bet any sum of money that the post-season considerations offered to seven-pack and saturday or sunday plan holders will not be an option this year should the Mets (deities willing) once again be playing baseball in October. I don’t trust them right now. I don’t believe they have the fans’ best interest at heart. Which is fine - it’s a business - but then say so, dammit. I mean, I don’t expect the Rolling Stones to act like Phish because they never made any bones about the fact that they were in it for the Benjamins. And yes, I realize this is professional sports, but isn’t there some pretense somewhere? I’m not asking for a plan holder lunch with the team, or a fan fest every year, or all the other wonderful perks that other parks and clubs offer their fan base - I know, this is New York.

This ticket thing irks me because do they really think we’re that dumb? For years, we would moan that there is no way fans of professional sports teams would let themselves be treated the way concert ticket buyers and concert goers are treated.

Mets Grrl is Officially Cranky.