Sunday January 19, 2014
3:30 PM on FOX
CenturyLink Field, Seattle, Washington
@
San Francisco 49ers Seattle Seahawks
(14-4) (14-3)
This came up this week because the San Francisco 49er’s are playing the Seattle Seahawks in the National Football Conference Championship.
There was a lot of bad press about the way that the tickets went on sale to the public. Since the game is in Seattle, I guess the Seahawks did not let tickets be sold to people in California. That is what I heard on the news. I would think that the National Football League would have rules in place for playoff ticket sales.
The fair way that I came up with to sell tickets to playoff games is that the tickets would go on sale the day after the game that determines the home team. There would be three days worth of ticket sales. The first day sales would be for the home teams season ticket holders up to 60% of the capacity of the stadium. The second day sales would be for the visiting team season ticket holders, up to 40% of the remaining capacity. The third day of sales would be the remainder of the tickets that did not sell on the previous days. This would be on sale to the general public.
Now the above percentages can be different to allow more of a mix of people. Maybe a 70 to 30 or 50/50 ratio would be better. I would think it would depend on where the game is being played and how many season ticket holders each team has at the time of the ticket sales. Say a team that has 100% season ticket holders, a 60% capacity may not be the right percentage.
With the current state of computer technology this should be an easy way to implement a fairness policy for everyone. I think that this would reduce the secondary market for tickets and scalping tickets for these type of games.
