December 20, 2016
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Chicago Tribune, Fans using resale market oppose Cubs 'absolute discretion' to revoke tickets
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/ct-cubs-season-tickets-revoked-met-20161220story.html
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Chicago Sun-Times, In Chicago, there are the Blackhawks, the Cubs and a huge dropoff
http://chicago.suntimes.com/sports/in-chicago-there-are-the-blackhawks-the-cubs-and-a-huge-dropoff/
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Cubs.com, Maddon relishes reuniting with closer Davis
http://m.cubs.mlb.com/news/article/211879170/joe-maddon-excited-to-reunite-with-wade-davis/
-Chicago Tribune
Fans using resale market oppose Cubs 'absolute discretion' to revoke tickets
By Patrick O’Connell
When the Cubs told Michael Wester his season tickets were not being renewed, he was upset but not surprised.
After all, he made a bundle of money selling seats to coveted postseason games at Wrigley Field. Wester readily
admits he sold more than 85 percent of his tickets, in upper deck sections 506 and 514, during the championship
season.
Cracking down on fans like Wester, the Cubs say, is a way to keep tickets in the hands of people who actually plan
on attending the games. It is also a way for them to try to maximize revenues, or at least prevent others from
profiting handsomely over their popular product, those who study the sports business said.
"The tension that we see is teams are looking to exert more control over the secondary market," said Matt
Notowidigdo, associate professor of economics at Northwestern University who has done consulting work with
several MLB teams, including the Boston Red Sox.
Major League Baseball's official partnership with StubHub makes it easier than ever for fans to sell and buy tickets
with a few clicks of a button or swipes of the finger. For high-demand teams like the Cubs, the puzzle is how to
capture the maximum amount of dollars without alienating loyal and longtime fans, while keeping at least some
prices affordable for the average fan, those who study sports business said.
The Cubs' season ticket holder agreement, like others in the league, states the team can revoke a person's ticket
for any reason at any time, a concept known as "revocable license."
Cubs season ticket licenses are renewed on a yearly basis, the club said, "at the sole discretion of the team." The
license agreement includes language advising fans their plan may be canceled if tickets have been purchased "for
the purpose and intent of reselling the tickets on the secondary market."
The team did not disclose how many other season ticket holders have received nonrenewal notices since the Cubs
won the World Series but said it was not more than a typical offseason.
"The issue is getting tickets in the hands of fans who are primarily interested in enjoying Cubs baseball and
experiencing Wrigley Field," Cubs spokesman Julian Green said.
Wester, a 29-year-old who grew up as a Cubs fan in Mount Prospect and now lives in San Diego, attended about a
half-dozen games in person. He called the Cubs "hypocritical" for saying they cater to the average fan, then
canceling his plan when he made money selling his sought-after tickets.
"Where were they during the three or four years that I was doing this when I was losing money? They did
absolutely nothing," Wester said. "To me, it's like they want to have their cake and eat it, too."
The Cubs' move is hardly unprecedented, both in the team's recent history and among other MLB teams.
After a 101-loss season in 2012, the Cubs revoked nearly 1,000 season tickets from about 40 customers suspected
of scalping. And in 1991, former major league ballplayer Eric Soderholm, who held 18 Cubs season tickets, took the
team to court after it yanked his privileges because he was hawking the seats through his ticket broker business.
He lost.
"Basically, it's a take-it-or-leave-it situation," said Lawrence Wolf Levin, a lawyer who represented Soderholm in
the case. "That was my concept of the law then, as it is now. They (the Cubs) pretty much are doing what they
want to do, when they want to."
The Indians, the Cubs' opponent in the Series, revoked the season tickets of several fans on the eve of the Fall
Classic because their season ticket holder agreement prohibits fans from reselling postseason games.
There is a big difference between the attitudes of high-demand teams like the Cubs, and other clubs where
sellouts are rare and popularity is lower, Notowidigdo said.
"Some teams have a hands-off approach, and some take a very proactive stance," on ticket resales, Notowidigdo
said. Teams that feel they are missing out on revenues are more apt to revoke seat privileges.
"A stronger predictor of teams' attitudes is underlying demand," Notowidigdo said.
The Cubs drew more than 3.2 million fans in 2016, fifth-highest in the majors at more than 39,900 per game. The
team said 2016 regular-season tickets resold on StubHub.com for an average of 96 percent above their face value.
Postseason tickets went for 670 percent above face value, including a 1,206 percent increase for the three World
Series games at Wrigley Field.
According to the Cubs season ticket license agreement, the club has "absolute discretion" on whether to offer fans
seats. The White Sox have similar language in their contract.
"What the team is really hoping to do is make sure they're continuing the revenue," said Mark S. Nagel, a professor
of sport and entertainment at the University of South Carolina. "Underlying this is the concern for the bottom line
because other people are making a profit on the tickets."
Nagel, who teaches classes and has written about ticket rights, said revocable licenses with sports team tickets are
not new, and "99 percent of the time, it's not a problem."
When season ticket agreements either spell out specific guidelines or limits for reselling tickets or give teams
"absolute discretion" to revoke seats, fans should know the ground rules, Nagel said.
"That's really tough to say that's unfair," Nagel said.
Ticket agreements with fans, Nagel said, are designed to allow clubs to make sure their arenas are free of
misbehavior or violence. But the ticket resale phenomenon also comes into play, and the issue for fans becomes
how many tickets they can resell without it becoming a problem in the eyes of team management, Nagel said.
In essence, each team must determine the line for how many resold tickets is too many.
In court filings in the 1990s case, Levin argued that since Soderholm paid for his tickets, the team did not have the
right to revoke his seats simply because he was reselling them. But a Cook County Circuit Court judge, and later the
Illinois appeals court, ruled in favor of the Cubs.
Levin himself used to be a Cubs season ticket holder but decided not to renew his plan a few years ago because
prices were getting too expensive. He said teams want to make as much money as they can, and control their
product and their business. When the courts ruled in favor of the team, Levin said, fans such as Wester don't have
a legal gripe.
"They're saying it's my ball; I'll take it away if you don't play by my rules," Levin said.
The Cubs, which announced that the average price of season tickets will rise 19.5 percent in 2017, say the goal is to
keep tickets in the hands of real fans, weeding out seat holders such as Wester who hold the tickets primarily to
sell. With a lengthy season ticket waiting list, canceling the plans of holders such as Wester allows others a chance
to buy plans.
"The goal is to provide as much value as possible to our season ticket holders," Cubs senior vice president of sales
and marketing Colin Faulkner said recently. "We want to have that direct relationship with fans that are actually
going to the games. It was a significant number a couple of years ago and we've continued every year to take a
look at that as we bring in new season ticket holders as well."
Faulkner said they had a record 98 percent ticket renewal last year and a waiting list of around 109,000.
Even the most rabid fans are unlikely to attend all 81 home baseball games, and even if fans split season tickets
with a group, reselling tickets is common. The teams know this, and to a certain extent, encourage it, making it
easy for fans to securely list their seats for resale.
Sox spokesman Scott Reifert said they "very rarely have issues with fans in this area."
"Philosophically," Reifert said, "we see resale and resell opportunities, particularly through MLB partner StubHub,
as a positive for our fans."
Major League Baseball does not have a leaguewide policy regarding ticket resales or season ticket agreements,
leaving it up to individual clubs to create their own policies.
"What we think is best for the sport is to leave it up to the teams," said Bob Bowman, MLB president, business &
media. "The only people who go to 81 home games every year are the players in uniform. So we leave that up to
the clubs."
The league's official partnership with StubHub, Bowman said, is a legal, safe, reliable and easy way for fans to sell
tickets. The five-year agreement with StubHub, which expires in December 2017, also enables teams to
electronically track how many tickets are resold.
When season ticket holders sell tickets, teams are in a way striking out twice: They are not meeting initial price
objectives on the initial sales, and they miss out on the bulk of the profits when fans resell, Notowidigdo said. Fans
like Wester who sell lots of tickets are, in effect, using their seats as an annuity payment, he said.
In recent years, teams have launched so-called dynamic or flexible pricing, making more attractive games more
expensive and discounting seats against less popular opponents or on weeknights. Nagel said that system is
designed to capture the "accurate" price for a ticket to any given game. But many teams also reserve a small
number of lower quality seats — deep in the outfield or upper deck, for instance — at super-low prices to cater to
everyday fans.
If the Cubs are concerned that season ticket holders are reselling tickets well above face value, perhaps their
tickets are priced too low, Nagel said. Of course, there are public relations and perception concerns about sky-high
ticket prices, and Nagel said this strategy can — and has — also backfired on teams that increase prices before a
season, then watch as their team stumbles toward a losing season.
"What more and more teams need to realize is to be more efficient in how they price initially," Nagel said.
On the other side is the consumer, whose objective is generally simple and consistent.
"Fans," Nagel said, "want to pay the least amount possible for the best seat possible."
-Chicago Sun-Times
In Chicago, there are the Blackhawks, the Cubs and a huge dropoff
By Rick Morrissey
I have a request for pro athletes and their coaches: Please dispense with the bromides about great effort,
character and togetherness. We’re not idiots.
A team can have all three of those attributes and still stink, meaning a fan is asked to spend $100 on a ticket to
watch hardworking, upstanding and inseparable players trip over their own and each other’s feet. And where is
that fan afterward? Poorer and even more depressed.
I was pondering all of this after the Bears’ loss to the Packers on Sunday, a loss that occurred due to a lack of talent
and a lack of coaching. John Fox and his players have turned into the kings of deflection, choosing to talk about
how hard the team plays, as if that somehow absolves the Bears of a 3-11 record. I’m sure your players are what
fathers everywhere would want in future sons-in-law, Coach, but what does that have to do with throwing a rookie
cornerback to the wolves known as Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson?
Whoever said that winning is the only thing was right, at least as it pertains to pro sports. The rest is losing or
losing dressed up as something else, whether the excuse is a rebuilding project, a raft of injuries or the ball
bouncing the wrong way. I can’t think of one organization that has ever shrugged and admitted it was simply inept.
With that in mind, here’s the pure, uncut state of Chicago sports. It’s a decidedly mixed bag:
— The Bears are awful. No matter how you want to wrap it, they aren’t good, and they weren’t good before the
injuries started piling up. If they have a direction, it’s hard to tell what it is. Are they rebuilding? Are they looking to
find a replacement for Jay Cutler? Should we trust them to find a replacement for Jay Cutler? The fact the Bears
are playing a ton of rookies doesn’t, by definition, mean those rookies are good. It just means that the Bears have
run out of replacements for injured players. Ask yourself this question: Do I see anything that clearly points to a
much-improved team for next season? Then go to your room, pull down the shades, get under the covers and
refuse to come out again.
— The Bulls are middling, which is the second cousin of deathly. Somehow, a few early victories tricked us into
believing they could be good this season. Instead, the Bulls are a team of three veterans who like the ball –
Dwyane Wade, Jimmy Butler and Rajon Rondo – and a group of young players that either doesn’t know what it is
doing or can’t do what it is asked to do. There is nothing worse than watching an average NBA team. It combines
no hope for the present with no hope for the future. On a brighter note, how about those Jordan years?
— The White Sox were brutally boring before they went into full rebuild mode and are now intriguing for what the
very distant future might bring. That’s the ultimate irony in sports these days: Reduce the product to rubble and
watch the fan base get energized! A rebuild was something that had to be done, but there’s no way the buzz of
possibility can stand up to the bad baseball that is about to settle over the South Side like a stalled weather
system.
— The Blackhawks are the gold standard in Chicago. They’re what every other franchise wants to be – a champion
again and again. If they could offer one piece of advice to other organizations, it would be, “You might want to
draft Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.” A franchise can talk all it wants about team culture and togetherness, but
if it doesn’t have great players at its core, it’s building a fraternity, not a champion. Season after season, people
predict salary cap doom for the Hawks, and season after season, the team is in the hunt for a Stanley Cup.
— The Cubs are the current World Series champions, and it still feels almost otherworldly to write that. They will
be good for at least the next several years. The most important factors behind their success are not the long
rebuild or the inherent tanking. That didn’t guarantee anything. It was picking the right players and taking
advantage of a generous helping of good luck. Almost everything president of baseball operations Theo Epstein did
worked out, and many of the players he signed succeeded. If he were a hitter, his on-base percentage would be
about .600. Does he know anything about pro football?
-Cubs.com
Maddon relishes reuniting with closer Davis
By Carrie Muskat
CHICAGO -- Manager Joe Maddon is excited about the prospect of being reunited with Wade Davis, who will be the
Cubs' closer in 2017.
"This guy knows how to pitch," Maddon said of the right-hander during an interview Monday on MLB Network's
"Hot Stove."
"It's not just about throwing one pitch and trying to blow people away," Maddon said of Davis. "He's got a great
slider, a cutter that he came up with, and I love his curveball, and he knows how to compete on both sides of the
plate."
Davis, who was acquired from Kansas City in exchange for outfielder Jorge Soler, will replace Aroldis Chapman as
Chicago's closer. Chapman, added in July from the Yankees, was a key piece for the Cubs in the postseason, helping
them win the World Series.
"Having [Davis] at the end of our bullpen will make it very stern once again," Maddon said. "He's well. He's well -there's no concerns going into the season. I'm really excited. I've had a great relationship with him and he's going
to make us a really good bullpen again this year."
Maddon and Davis were together with Tampa Bay from 2009-12, although the right-hander was a starter in the
first three seasons, then converted to a reliever in 2012.
Davis was on the disabled list twice in 2016 because of a right forearm strain. In 45 games this past season, he
posted a 1.87 ERA and was successful in 27 of 30 opportunities.
Davis is one of a few new faces projected for the Cubs' bullpen, joining Brian Duensing, Koji Uehara and Caleb
Smith.
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