Milwaukee's WTMJ Radio "personality" Jeff Wagner was on the warpath against "greedy" E-bay sellers making a buck off of the Green Bay Packers "Family Night." Same event, different year, same radio host with his undies in an uproar.
Once again, Bob Harlan and the Green Bay Packers failed to maximize their possible revenues by underpricing the cost of tickets for an event. They do it for eight regular season football games so it shouldn't be any shock when they do it for something as trivial as "Family Night." They only charged $8.00 ea and they placed no limit on the number of tickets someone could buy. The event sold out in three hours with an average of ten tickets per purchase.
The Bob Harlan solution for next year: limit the number of tickets to eight per purchase. That means the event will sell out in four hours instead of three. As long as people can buy tickets for $8.00 ea and turn around and sell them for more than $200.00 a set, honest people with a speed dial on their phone will do their damndest to buy tickets they have no intention of using. It's not being "greedy" anymore than Jeff Wagner is being greedy when he negotiates with WTMJ for his salary; it's the marketplace at work.
(By the way, the more phone calls it takes to sell the tickets, the more profit lost by the Packers.)
The tickets are clearly underpriced. The real value is what they are going for on E-bay. And if people of moderate means don't like the real cost of tickets, well, rich people have families, too, and they deserve to have a good time just as much as poor people.
Furthermore, there are three groups of people who should have their undies in a bunch over the Bob Harlan ticket pricing policy: Brown County taxpayers, Green Bay Packer shareholders and the rest of the National Football League.
The Brown County taxpayers are contributing to the continuing costs of the renovations to Lambeau Field. Because the Green Bay Packers are not maximizing their potential revenue, the taxpayers will be taxed longer and for more money. If the Green Bay Packers maxmized their potential revenue, then the taxpayers could demand the Packers contribute more to the costs of the renovations.
The Green Bay Packer shareholders should also be upset. Bob Harlan and the Green Bay Packer executive committee have a responsibility to run the organization on behalf of the shareholders in as financially responsible a manner as possible. By shirking that responsibility in allowing a major source of revenue to be lost to the secondary market the shareholders are not having their interests and the interests of the Green Bay Packer organization being properly represented.
With revenue sharing in the NFL and efforts by the commissioner's office to control independent streams of revenue in order to keep the salary level for each team within a narrow range, when a team fails to maximize on it's revenue opportunities the league as a whole suffers. The other owners in the NFL should be demanding Harlan's resignation given that the Packers are the most heavily subsidized team due to television shared revenue. If the team is not even willing to to do something so simple as maintain a realistic ticket price, then how can the rest of the NFL be expected to subsidize the NFL's 32nd team in terms of size of market.
If the Green Bay Packers were truly serious in trying to equalize the opportunity of fans to get tickets, there are options.
The Packers could raise the prices of the "Family Night" tickets to $150-$200 ea, depending on location. This would allow any fan who wished to purchase a ticket at those prices to do so. It would be unpopular with the local tavern owners at first, but they'll figure out a way to make "Family Night" work.
The Packers could have more "Family Night" events. This would take some arm twisting of the players and their union, but the increased revenue to the Packers would allow them to spend more on signing bonuses. More events means more tickets available which means wider spread opportunity to purchase at a lower price. However, it's unlikely the Packers are that creative and that the player's union would cooperate.
Finally, the Packers could encourage all of their players to sign Drew Rosenhaus as their agent. When there are no players in camp because they're all holding out, cancel family night.
