Many of you recall the fiasco that happened when the Green Bay Packers tried to charge season ticket holders for playoff games in November of 2013. First, the Packers didn’t even look like they were making the playoffs, much less hosting a home game at that point. Second, season ticket holders had to buy tickets to three postseason games as if somehow the Packers would be hosting a wild card, divisional and NFC championship game at Lambeau. Third, the Packers would be taking all of that money and not refunding it if the team didn’t make the playoffs or host three games.
Well, a lot of season ticket holders told the Packers exactly what they could do with that B.S. So many of them, in fact, that the Packers had trouble selling out the wild card game that by several strokes of luck they ended up hosting.
After the season, Packers president Mark Murphy was like, “Uh… guess we ought to change that playoff ticket policy.” Well, the Packers won’t have to because the NFL did it for them.
The league has instituted a new rule barring teams from charging fans for playoff tickets before they clinch a playoff berth. The rule was voted on and passed at the NFL owners meeting today.
Pay as you go. How novel!
The caveat here is teams can still take orders for playoff tickets before they clinch a berth. They just can’t bill the credit cards, but that’s fine because that was the problem last year.
The Packers were taking fan money, which could then only be applied as a credit to this year’s season ticket costs if the team didn’t have three home playoff games. No refunds. No we’ll bill you later. Just greed, plain and simple.
Clearly, the Packers were one of the main reasons for the new rule.
NFL owners may vote this morning to chg playoff ticket polciy, so teams cannot, like packers, charge fans early for the tickets.
— Daniel Kaplan (@KaplanSportsBiz) March 24, 2014
We’re sure the Packers will still take a look at their playoff ticket policy and they may even amend it further considering the blowback they got last year.
Last updated on May 17th, 2015 at 12:45 pm
This was such a one time deal. Remember the Pack had just embarrassed itself at Detroit the week before the playoff ticket mailings went out. They didn’t look like they would even make the playoffs, only Detroit and Chicago free falling allowed it, along with our Dallas “miracle.” Then instead of promoting the fact that 40,000 ticket holders did not respond, the Packers sat on that news, for weeks. If they had let the public know in advance rather than wait until after the Bear victory the sales would have picked up much faster. The fact that season tix holders would not be refunded tickets not used, but credited to next years tickets wasn’t smart, either. Does anyone think that if the Pack had beaten Detroit and were something like 9-3 they would have had difficulty selling? This was the perfect storm of stupid.
The Packers are behind the times! The Bears have had the pay as you go policy for years.
Bears fans wouldn’t know the difference anyway since they never have to buy any playoff tickets..
It’s a capital P in packers daniel!
I paid the money, I went to the SF game, next years tickets were paid for out of the remainder, and I got a check for 200 bucks refunded to me in the mail. Big deal. What a bunch of fucking whiners.
What? That’s not even how it works. We received a bill for two playoff games which includes either a wildcard or divisional game and the Championship game. The bill came to $386 per ticket. We have 4 tickets. That’s $1544 for last seasons playoff games. Four tickets for the seven regular season green package games is $2580. The Packers were 5-5-1 when we had to decide if we wanted playoff tickets. Any leftover money is applied to next seasons tickets and is not refunded in the mail. I can think of other shit to spend that money on rather than let the Packers collect interest off my money.
Who earned interest on your money sitting in a bank account?