The Biggest Ripoff in Professional Sports

Watching the owners and players bicker back and forth about all the money being generated by the NFL and who should get how much, it made me laugh and sickened me at the same time. I have no sympathy when billionaires and millionaires complain about their piece of the pie. So who should make concessions? How about both sides?! How about giving the FANS some financial concessions?!

There is blatant thievery occurring in the NFL every season, and both the owners and players are in on it. For those of you who, like me, are a season ticket holder for a NFL team, no explanation is necessary. You know exactly what I’m talking about. For those of you who aren’t, allow me to explain.

As a season ticket holder, I pay for ten games every season – eight regular season games and two pre-season games. I pay the exact same amount per ticket for every game. That means that TWENTY PERCENT of my investment basically goes into the owners’ and players’ pockets while I get the opportunity to watch two meaningless, glorified scrimmages in the form of pre-season games.

I haven’t gone to a pre-season game in several years. I have no desire to see players that I’ve never heard of before and almost certainly will never hear from again. The best players used to play only a fraction of these games; now most don’t even play in them at all.

Selling these tickets is extremely difficult. If I get half of my money back, I’m ecstatic. No one wants to go to these games. A half-full stadium for a pre-season game is a great turnout.

This is the main reason the owners were pushing the idea of an 18-game regular season. They KNOW they are ripping off their main customer base, their season ticket holders. They don’t want to give back any money, so they wanted to add a ninth regular season game and reduce the number of pre-season games from four (home and away) to two.

I have no desire to see an 18-game regular season, and I don’t know of too many people who do. The length of the regular season is perfect as is. The number of pre-season games should be cut, or the prices charged for those tickets should be cut.

If the price for pre-season tickets were halved, it would no longer be an issue for me. I don’t like paying full price for second-rate NFL action. It’s like advertising a movie starring Kate Beckinsale, and then I pay to see it and she’s only in it for fifteen seconds. We season ticket holders pay a good portion of the billions the owners and players are arguing over. It would be nice if WE could get some financial benefit.