By Alfred Branch, Jr.
Some Philadelphia Eagles football fans received what turned out to be invalid tickets to the December 31, 2006, game against the Atlanta Falcons because they were printed on the wrong paper stock, according to sources.
The exact number of tickets that Ticketmaster needed to reissue is unknown, but fans were alerted to the mix up via e-mails and phone calls. The original tickets were printed on yellow paper stock instead of the usual green stock. Once discovered, the original tickets were invalidated and new ones were sent out, said Bonnie Grant, spokesperson for the Eagles. Bonnie Poindexter, a spokesperson for Ticketmaster, declined to comment. Ticketmaster’s policy calls for the team or event sponsor to handle notification of ticket buyers in the event of a change.
“This was a very minimal paper stock issue that once discovered was corrected immediately,” Grant said, adding that the tickets in question represented “a very small number” and were issued for the Standing Room Only section at Lincoln Financial Field.
The incident follows another ticketing mishap for Ticketmaster in the Greater Philadelphia area within the last five months, this time with Live Nation, after the two double-sold tickets to an August Toby Keith concert at the Tweeter Center in Camden, NJ (“Live Nation and Ticketmaster Double-Sell Prime Tickets,” Ticketnews.com, Aug. 30, 2006).
In that case, the problem wasn’t discovered until two days before the show, too late for proper notification, so holders of both tickets tried to sit in the same seats. The mistake resulted from a CD promotion where fans who bought Toby Keith’s latest CD received a code that would allow them to purchase tickets before the general public.
