Ok, as many of you know by now, the New York Giants are putting into place a PSL (Personal Seat Licenceing) system that will basically force the fans to help the franchise pay off it's debt for building a bigger stadium, as well as other buildings, such as a stupid looking ski lift and the Xanadu Amusement Park.The Giants feel that in order to make up the difference for a $1.6 billion dollar stadium located at the major eye sore that is Route 3 in East Rutherford New Jersery, loyal fans should sacrifice their mortgage and college education in order to be a season ticket holder.
Here are some of the prices: If you are ticket holder in the lower level, you would be forking over $700 a ticket. Multply that by two tickets for two people and your already paying $1400 for a single game. Multilpy that by 10 games, which is the entire season package of games, and you're paying $14,000 dollars just on game tickets. Add this to the fact that you will have to pay $20,000 to hold each of your seats in the PSL system, and your are already spending between $34,000-$45,000 on eight fall afternoons in the entire calendar year. And this is not including parking, consession food, and suvoniers.
If you have a seat in the upper tear it's no relief. You will spend between $105 - $85 a ticket. Multiply it all out, with the PSL's and your spending close to $4,000 on the seat licence, and $3,400 on tickets, or over $7,000.
See the moths coming out of your pockets?
With an economy that is terrible; where the standard of living for an American, who is not a multi-millionaire, is going down; where a college education is worth almost nothing nowadays, where baby boombers refuse to retire from their jobs, forcing companies to layoff most of the 20, 30 and 40 somethings who work for them; where the disparity between rich and poor gets steeper and bigger - one would think that the Giants would be good businessmen and give the fans a break.
Not the case - John Mara is no better than those who ran ENRON into the ground, and those who run a half dozen media outlets across the country. He is a corrupt businessman, who took a franchise owned by his father, Wellington, who always gave back to the people, and told the same fans to take out a loan, or a mortgage, or their college education to come see his team play football. That is really sick.
Don't let Mara tell you, as he did this afternoon on WFAN with Chris Carlin and Kimberly Jones, that he is willing to work with the fans. Think Mara will negotiate the price of tickets with each individual fan? That's a rethorical question.
And don't think for a minute that Woody Johnson, who owns the Jets, the team that will share the stadium with the Giants, will not do something similar to his fans. Johnson has built a reputation as a cheapskate, and one who treats his fans like total garbage, putting an underperforming and untalented product on the field.
He is also moving the team completeing away from its original fan base in Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island, when the Jets permantly move their training facility to Florham Park in Morris County N.J. later this year. He doesn't care about the fans, and will likely offer prices that are even steeper than the one's the Giants are offering; and that's pretty steep.
This is a total disgrace, thousands of fans, who have been going to Giant games, and Jet games for forty, some fifty years will be out on the street, forced to watch every game at home on TV, (which if you ask me is the best seat in the house). And as they are watching, more and more seats will be empty, because the name of the game, and good business is not to sell the most tickets at the highest price, but to put out a winning product on the field.
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