Mr. Miller's BLOG
Blackhawks shun fans.
Posted on August 17, 2010
Some would have you believe that yesterday morning at 10:00 a.m., Blackhawks individual game tickets went on sale Ticketmaster.
Don't believe it. They didn't.
Once again, McEgo and Company (with Rocky's blessing, no doubt) put the organization's crumbling reputation on the line by putting the general public and common fan on the proverbial back-burner in favor of a back door practice that puts available tickets into the hands of brokers instead of those who truly deserve them.
McEgo is no stranger to the practice, either, with his well documented track record of screwing Cub fans with the creation of Wrigley Field Premium Tickets (which was owned by the same people who owned the Cubs, run by a Cubs VP, and even had the Cubs do their accounting) which allowed the Cubs to scalp their own tickets. The bottom line is, well, a bigger bottom line for the team.
Yet at what cost? And not in dollars and cents, but in fan loyalty and organizational integrity.
On the Blackhawks Facebook page yesterday, the team posted a reminder about the 10 o'clock ticket sale. By 11:00, there were over 75 fan responses in which most fans complained about the lack of tickets available.
Not surprising, by early afternoon, the wall post was censored and removed. It's called damage control.
With about 14,000 season ticket holders and a capacity of around 21,000, there should be around 7,000 tickets available per game. Given the fact that the organization holds some back for celebrities and group sales, let's put the number at 5,000 available for the general public. At 41 home games, there should've been about 200k tickets going up for grabs yesterday.
There wasn't.
Fans getting into Ticketmaster's system (either by phone or online) stated that by 10:05am, only SRO (standing room only) seats were available - if that - for the entire season.
There's no way to defend the idea that a late season, Wednesday night game, versus the Panthers sold out in five minutes. It didn't happen.
A reasonable guess says that depending on the game, fewer than 1,500 tickets were actually available to be purchased yesterday.
Before being deleted by the organization yesterday, a Facebook fan suggested the following solution to help get tickets into the fans possession:
Instead of a random code-word for security purposes when ordering tickets online, Ticketmaster should ask simple trivia questions such as "What is Denis Savard's number?" or "Where do the Blackhawks play their home games?"
You'd be amazed at how many people wouldn't get in as a result of that.
Although Ticketmaster is not to blame. Not entirely anyway. This has money, greed, profit and Wirtz written all over it. Ticketmaster didn't screw the fans. The Blackhawks did.
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