“Real fans are the losers”: NFL fans criticize the league for its handling of ticket distribution for the historic game at Allianz Arena in Germany
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Tom Brady and Pete Carroll
This year will be a historic one as for the first time ever, the NFL will be entering Germany. The European country is a part of the league’s push to the sport of football on an international scale. It is attempting to do what the NBA has done by venturing overseas and taking the sport globally. The NBA has had much success doing this which is why the NFL also wishes to become a global phenomenon rather than just having an active presence in the USA.
In the 2022 NFL season, the Seattle Seahawks will face off against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Allianz Arena in Germany in Week 9 of the regular season. The league partnered with Ticketmaster, a website from which you can purchase tickets for sports events, concerts, and other events for the distribution of the tickets for the game. However, the tickets were wiped out within SECONDS.
NFL Fans accuse Ticketmaster of offering inadequate infrastructure for purchasing tickets:
It does not come as a surprise considering that Tom Brady will be playing that game and this is quite possibly his last season in the league, we will get to see the GOAT of football mimic Michael Jordan’s European tour when he went to play in France for the NBA exhibition game in 1996.
Most of the tickets seem to be picked up by scalpers who brought tickets in bulk and now that the official tickets have been sold out, they are selling them via second-party sites with the lowest ticket selling for £700. Ticketmaster priced the original tickets at around £70. That is a ten-time jump in the pricing.
NFL fans were furious over this system and believed that the league should have made better arrangements. A user on Twitter commented, “Ticketmaster should be ashamed. By putting no CAPTCHA in place, the touts and scalpers have taken all of the #nflmunich tickets. They are the winners. The real fans are the losers. Way to ruin the first NFL game in Germany.”
TalkSport 2’s Will Gavin was in agreement with this and took to social media to voice out his frustration as well, “Ticketmaster’s handling of these sales is a joke!.” Another user proposes a theory that Ticketmaster has nothing to lose as those who are reselling tickets are doing so via Ticketmaster itself. “Many resale tickets are back on Ticketmaster, making them more money in fees etc, so they have no incentive to fix the problem, add to that NFL have a partnership with them, and the fans are the ones screwed time and time again.”
Another user expressed disappointment in not being able to secure the tickets despite being the 69,000th user in the queue for the tickets. “I thought I had it bad being 69,000th in the queue for #NFLMunich tickets, despite being there at 8:55 AM, but seems I’m relatively near the front. Extremely disappointed to see it’s already sold out.”
Fans did not like that there was no rule that limited any one person from buying multiple tickets which led to resellers and scalpers picking up a load of tickets. All resale sites were full with these tickets and that outraged people who were waiting for hours in the queue.
Ticketmaster reportedly had no provision in place for verifying if the users were humans or just bots. A fan tweeted, “Tried to get tickets for the NFL game in Munich but sold out. Ticketmaster had no CAPTCHA (or anything else setup) to filter out bots and I can see tickets already being resold.”
It is doubtful that Ticketmaster will be able to do anything about this now, they have not yet released an official statement but the NFL may decide to look into this and give the ticket distribution to another company from next time onwards. All the fans are looking forward to the Buccaneers Vs Seahawks game that will take place in Germany!
Also Read: “Throwing like he’s hungover from partying with Brady after The Match”: NFL Twitter reacts to the Packers QB attending the minicamp
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Sumedh Joshi
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