Hello all. I am a new listener to the pod as well as an American and avid Tottenham supporter. I was listening to your pod this week and had some comments to make about your stubhub discussion. I have a somewhat different opinion on the topic because I am actually a ticket broker here in Los Angeles and stubhub is immensely important to the viability of our company. We sell the bulk of our inventory using this website and it is the easiest secondary market to both buy and sell tickets. I completely understand though that stubhub poses certain problems to fans trying to support their club and secure tickets. In the US, secondary ticket markets are a fact of life and if you are not able to purchase tickets immediately from the team you wish to view when they go on sale to the public, you go right away to stubhub to see what tickets you can get. Also, what else is different here is that we are used to paying much higher prices for tickets in general. It is reasonable for the face value of good seats for an American football game to be in excess of $300 each. Mind you, our stadiums are much larger on average than football stadiums and there are 32 teams in the league, not 20. I will be visiting London in May for the first time and would like to attend the final fixture of the season. The method of procuring tickets, as it stands, will make it difficult for my sister and I to get tickets together, so stubhub in this case is a viable option for us to purchase a pair of tickets next to one another. I completely agree that tickets going for 500 pounds on stubhub is very high and it would be well out of my price range. As for the point about rich people purchasing tickets instead of fans, this is a little unlikely. Yes, there could be a millionaire that just wants to watch some football and will pay any price, but typically these expensive seats are purchased by people that really, really want to go to the game. I see this in my business all the time. The people that pay exorbitant prices for tickets are usually the superfans that will pay anything to watch their favorite team, musical group, etc., not just casual fans of the sport that have a free Saturday afternoon. Being an international fan, I would like to see an easier option to secure tickets or at least to secure more than 1 seat so that for my 1 visit to White Hart Lane for the next 5 or so years isn't spent next to some strangers, although I would still probably have a great time. I know space is very limited until the new stadium is built, and maybe this is just something fans will have to live with for the next few years until seats become more plentiful. What are your opinions on this?
Sorry for the lenghth of the post
at the commission concept of stubhub, and how its going to shut so many people out of the game, for the benefit of so few
