The Pot calls the Kettle (All) Black

markets / regulation - 3 March 2005 - 2766 views

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The solution to the NZFRU's dilemma is easy. It should stop intimidating the public with threats of legal action and seizing their tickets, both of which would see it embarrassed totally in any Court. While its bluff and bluster keeps the secondary market price for tickets extremely high, the Union should instead simply provide a channel for scalpers to sell their seats and through which the NZRFU could garner its share as the facilitator of an "official" secondary market. By getting a slice of that action I'm sure we'd find the NZRFU's opposition to scalping would quickly melt.

What underpins my conviction that the Union could be quite easily paid off in this way is that it already conducts its own scalping operation so clearly is not above what it's accusing others of doing. I refer specifically to the Union's practice of licensing a business called Sports Travel, a Wellington based travel agency that sells "rugby travel packages" containing hotels, airfares ..etc combined with tickets to the game. The tickets of course are sold at "face value" but if you don't buy the rest of the package you don't get the ticket. So the real price being charged for the ticket is anything but transparent. While Sports Travel isn't selling tickets alongside Jonah Lomu jerseys of exorbitant value, you get the point? Whether you want accommodation or not, this is how you can buy tickets right up to game time. So there's little difference to what patrons are doing and it's an NZRFU venture!

Let's dissect the double standard. On the one hand the NZRFU says it doesn’t want patrons who find they cannot go to a game to sell their tickets at market prices because it “exploits” rugby people. But on the other the Union has this sweet little number going out the back that enables those who are prepared to pay enough to get tickets providing they buy a whole lot of travel and accommodation product with it. These "travel packages" have been a substantial source of revenue for the NZRFU for years, the Union extracting from the arrangement more than merely the face value of the tickets. Fans desperate to get to the game and with the readies are often able to get seats to rugby events as late as within days of the match even though the game is officially "sold out". They simply have to cough up enough lolly for the add-ons of these packages, whether they want to stay in some concrete slab motel or not, and they get their tickets.

The only difference between this and scalping, which the Union screams as being unfair, is that the NZRFU gets a slice of the actions, while patrons selling tickets they’ve bought yields profits just for the patron. The official line against scalping is that it denies diehard-but-poor fans access to the game. What an earth do these "travel" packages that the NZRFU profiteers from, do?

Yes, the only difference is who it is making the bucks.

The NZRFU should stop pushing the proverbial up hill - any judge would make them look stupid in a court of law. It needs to recognise that others have cottoned on to the little profiteering opportunities that it's been exploiting over the years, and join in.

I can see the ads now - "Buy your tickets here - an official NZRFU scalping outlet".

The beauty of markets is that they will always win. Another of their commendable features is that practices of market manipulation are inevitably exposed. The NZRFU has in my view, some way to go to make the transition from amateurism to shamateurism to amateur professionalism and finally to proper, transparent professionalism. It's about a third of the way there.

There is a very simple reality that needs to be grasped. At current prices there is far greater demand than supply of tickets to the big games. Given this reality the Union's challenge is quite simple. How to give all those who'd like to go an equal chance, and then once that happens, to allow market forces to work. This, rather than its current policy of obfuscating its own scalping operations while bludgeoning others for doing the same, is an hypocrisy that the public can see right through. Once again, in my opinion it does the credibility of the Union no good and totally discredits those responsible.

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