One thing is for sure about National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell, he is not a fan of the secondary ticket market, and is now looking for ways to try and prevent the resale of tickets to the NFL’s biggest game, the Super Bowl.
The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Goodell wants to make sure the league can get the lowest priced Super Bowl tickets into the hands of fans who want to attend the game, not the ones who are looking to make a profit. While not claiming any changes to the NFL’s ticket policies were eminent, he did speculate possible ways to prevent scalping.
“It’s difficult and it’s time consuming, but it may be the next step that we need to take is where you actually say, ‘You come to the stadium with your identification, and you’ll get your two tickets after you’re inside the gate,” Goodell told the newspaper.
The criticism of the secondary ticket market by the NFL comes less than a year after the league signed a contract with Ticketmaster to be their official secondary marketplace.
“The ticketing marketplace continues to evolve and sports fans demand more creative opportunities to experience our games. We will now be able to meet their expectations with our safe, consistent, and guaranteed service,” Eric Grubman, the NFL’s Executive Vice President and President of NFL Ventures, said in a statement in December 2007 when the deal was finalized.
Despite Goodell being the commissioner during the time the contract was negotiated, it has not stopped him from criticizing those in the secondary ticket industry. In June, Goodell partly blamed the industry for rowdy fans at league stadiums, calling it a “factor” in how the league would write its new fan conduct policy, which was released in August.
Recently, the NFL announced that some of this year’s Super Bowl tickets would carry as high as a $1,000 face value, with 1,000 other tickets being set aside and will be sold for $500.
“The reality is that Super Bowl tickets are trading at four to five times face value,” Goodell said. “One of the big issues that we had in reducing those lower-priced tickets is, do they fall into the wrong hands? Do the scalpers go and take them, and they get the reduced price? All they do is get a better margin, which we’re not interested in. . . . We’re trying to figure out how to get the tickets to the fans.”
