I REALLY can’t stand the ticket office…

Donovan said most of the brokers’ contracts for bulk tickets were canceled. But some brokers — Donovan would not say how many — have been permitted to continue to buy hundreds of Redskins season tickets because they demanded that their contracts be honored and threatened legal action.

I’m surprised the Skins admitted this.

In what essentially explains the Steelers/FedEx debacle, the Redskins FO admitted to greedily selling tickets to brokers who were forced to buy club level seats. Nice…

shameful

this is embarrassing. how could snyder not know about even a little of this? he’s the freakin’ owner for crissakes. ive never been to a redskins game in my life because of this guy. overinflated prices and the tickets going to the wrong people.

All those die hard skins fans waiting for tickets.. and the damn brokers are getting them first. The Redskins offices should be ashamed of themselves. I hope every last employee in the ticket office gets shi$ on for this.

While I think Snyder has learned a little bit about not micromanaging the players of a football team, it’s disgusting that he’d fleece the fans like this. I’m sure he was aware of the situation…but there used to be plausible deniablity and now he can sweep in like a hero, not that anyone would buy his story.

Absolutely sick that they’d lie and sue paying customers for hitting a rough spot (granted, they should have read the contract long ago I learned never to trust what a salesperson says), make money off the lawsuit and then resell the tickets…obviously they were hit bad by the loss.

I was on the list for 5 years before getting called about upper level seats. I did get called seconds after signing up about club level seats though. I’m glad I didn’t bite…yet.

If only you could fire the ownership.

I emailed the author of the WaPost article 2 questions which I hope to hear back on.

1.) How much time went by b/w the internal audit and this article (ie – did the Skins hide it).

2.) Why are Redskins ticket sales agents ALLOWED to sell 1,000+ tix to a single person? That should be a guideline in place. Managers had to notice it. Something stinks.

I love how Jason La Canfora came back to “contribute” to this article. So great! HE would NEVER miss a chance to pile on in a situation like this.

Here are some more facts for you:

When I was laid off in 2003, I called the Redskins for mercy on my season ticket package. It killed me to do it, but I was hurting. They told me they would kindly break up what I owed into 3 installments to be paid off in the next 3 months. That was all they offered to do for me.

When I had my first kid in 2007, I called them again and asked if they would consider helping me out by transferring me to a cheaper seat. They told me they were simply unable to do it as the demand for seats prevented them from being able to do such things.

This is the last year of my season ticket contract. I already called them and told them that I thought they ran a completely absurd operation and that I would not be renewing this contract at these prices (after 3 letters from their office to renew). Guess who I talked to? Jason Friedman, the guy listed in the Washington Post. He told me and I quote, “Maybe we simply aren’t offering you the right deal to stay.”

I will absolutely continue going to games. But my eyes are opened with regard to how I go about doing it.

I buy a lot of tickets at ASC Tickets in Gaithersburg. I’m not sure how I feel about doing business with them after this news. They have a store front called Main Street Tickets in the Kentlands near my house. I normally paid less than face value for the tickets with no commission by walking in the day of or day before the game….plus they have the tickets in hand. I bought tickets for the NO game there last year, so they are not all going to opposing fans! Damn…I’m really torn on this. I bought caps playoff tickets there for the opening game verse the rangers…$100 for $125 seats…8th row behind the bench they went up to 225 for the next game (I think it was due to the game being on a weds and the dates were announced late). I also got opening day Nats tickets for under face value, sat first row between the dugout and the screen….the best seat I ever had to any event…they were ‘Lerner’ seats, so I’m sure ASC is well connected. I’m betting ASC still has the Skins tickets they bought and I need tickets for a few games. I’m leaning towards still buying from them…let me know if I’m an idiot for doing that.

With 91,000 seats, there is a lot of pressure to sell out the stadium for every game. Reading the Post article, it seems like the packages sold to the brokers were not only designed to dump some of the ridiculously expensive premium seats but also to sell chunks of the “less popular” home games.

I’m a student and I can usually only spring for one game a season. I love watching the skins in person, but I’m not sure I would even want to go more than once because getting there, parking, and getting back is expensive, time-consuming, and altogether unpleasant. I’m sure there are a lot of people in the exact same boat. Therefore, my friends and I have an awesome time watching the game and getting as drunk as we want in the comfort of our own homes. The last thing I want to see is for Home Games to get blacked out.

I know other teams have ways to sell single game tickets and do so very successfully to avoid blackouts. I would love to be able to buy single game tickets at face value from the team itself. I’m afraid, however, with the game-day experience the way it currently is, the skins would fail to fill 91,000 seats in the less enticing match-ups and we would all be SOL.

but we could go farther than that too. stuff online wont embarrass danny, but doing something inside the stadium would. another thing would be calling a press conference, cause that’s our legal right to do. maybe the guy who wrote this article could call one, and we could voice our disgust with this.

There’s no way all these ticket brokers were on the list 20 even 10 years ag, so how did they get to the top of the list??

what enrages me more, the facts of the article, or the fact that La Canfora helped with it. I’m sure he worked for free. I was so happy he was out of town finally, then last week I saw his piece on NFLN talking about the NFC East where, naturally, he picked us to finish last, below .500. That guy needs a blanket party. I’ve never seen a single writer have such a personal vendetta against a team like that.
As for the facts, they don’t surprise me. I will always be a Redskins, but their practices make me sick sometimes. Snyder doesn’t give a damn about the fans, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to know he had something to do with this. Money is, and always will be, the bottom line for him. If it were an expansion team, or even just a newer team he’d bought, the fans would’ve run out on him long ago.

I remember Cerrato going on his radio show and even the Redskins Nation show criticizing fans for allowing their tickets to get into the hands of the Steeler fans. He actually blamed the situation on the fans. Now, I know that there were a lot of fans that did this, but I think its same to assume that Cerrato was wrong here.

I wonder if someone will do this for lil Danny when he we build(s) HIS new stadium.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/history/cooke/articles/mood8.htm

The best thing about the contracts is that they guarantee practically nothing on the part of the Redskins. It says basically that for x number of years you will pay whatever we change the prices to and we’ll give you a couple of seats.

So: they’ll give you seats that they have trouble selling, but they can change the price at will and they’ll lock you in for countless years.

Seriously, I’d go to town on that contract writing in out clauses for me and get it notorized and filed with the county before turning it in. Not that I’d ever buy club level seats.