Monday, December 02, 2013

More Ticket Fun

It's the week of MLS Cup. With the issues from last week with the season ticket holder pre-sale, I'd hoped that this week would be about the game itself. Today the sale to the general public begins, but that's apparently come with it's own issues. On the page for ticket sales for the game there is this notice under the "Please Note" section: "(venue name) is located in (city, state/province). Sales to this event will be restricted to residents of (geo-limited states/provinces or selected area). Residency will be based on credit card billing address. Orders by residents outside (geo-limited states/provinces or selected area) will be canceled without notice and refunds given. Delivery of all tickets will be delayed until 12/4/13 to allow for enforcement of 8 ticket limit."

Based on that, it looks like Real Salt Lake fans could again be left out of this sale, because apparently this is being restricted to Kansas and Missouri. Of the ticket issues so far, this is probably the one that annoys me the most. I understand canceling all the orders that came in from the leaked code, that I don't have an issue with. But with tickets going on sale to the "general public" the assumption is that those tickets would be available for anyone to choose from.

Some RSL fans have apparently gotten so frustrated with not being able to get tickets, even after scheduling flights to KC that some are wanting to file a class action lawsuit against MLS, SKC, and TicketMaster. The issue with that is it looks like Ticket Master may have this covered in their purchasing policy that I linked in a previous write up. The section on "Pricing and Other Errors" in the link states "If the amount you pay for a ticket is incorrect regardless of whether because of an error in a price posted on this Site or otherwise communicated to you, or you are able to order a ticket before its scheduled on-sale or presale date or you are able to order a ticket that was not supposed to have been released for sale, then we will have the right to cancel that ticket (or the order for that ticket) and refund to you the amount that you paid. This will apply regardless of whether because of human error or a transactional malfunction of this website or other Ticketmaster operated system."

That would seem to cover the pre-sale issue and other than that I don't think any of the other sales would cause issue enough to bring a lawsuit. The RSL fans could ask more questions of their front office about the distribution of their 1,000 ticket allocation, which rumors continue to fly that most of those tickets went to family, staff, and partners.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How are the MLS Cup tickets typically handled? Is SKC really doing anything different than the norm?

What would be the point of MLS mandating 5% going to the opposing team if they aren't going to restrict the tickets sales to local people?