It made sense when the Sacramento Kings sold tickets on Groupon. It didn’t raise any red flags when the Golden State Warriors had tickets on Living Social. And it has been no big deal that the San Francisco Giants have been offering “dynamic pricing” for years.
Those moves made sense. They were all good marketing. But what showed up in email boxes Wednesday was more than a marketing ploy. It reeked of desperation.
The NFL direct- mail ad deal offered a “2 tickets for the price of 1″ promotion for two Raiders games this season at O.co Coliseum. Not just any Raiders home games, but Sept. 25 against the New York Jets and Oct. 2 against the New England Patriots.
That’s against one team that went to the last two AFC Championship Games and travels well and another team that has been one of the premier NFL franchises in the past decade. If you’re adding at home, that’s 1+1 = slow ticket sales.
Really? Has anyone every heard of an NFL team doing a two-fer?
The NFL rarely has been a league that discount its product. Even its woeful exhibition games have to sell at full price – and that can be in triple figures for prime seats because most teams charge the same price as regular-season games.
However, the Raiders have had trouble selling tickets since they returned to Oakland about 16 years ago. For one reason or another, 64 percent of the Raiders’ games in that time have been blacked out. That is, they haven’t sold out 72 prior to kickoff.
That has kept the majority of Raiders home games off Bay Area TV, but that problem has not spurred more sellouts. In fact, their first exhibition game this month looked more like an intimate gathering than an NFL crowd.
More Raiders fans than ever seem frustrated that the team hasn’t had a winning season since their last trip to the Super Bowl in 2002. Look at any message board; you’ll see more Raiders fans than ever are throwing up their hands in disgust over the way Al Davis is running the team. And the way he goes through coaches like, well, free tickets.
It seems that number of disgusted fans – the Raiders rarely release season-ticket numbers – is at an all-time high since the Raiders are using a Ticketmaster promotion to “paper” the Coliseum. For the Jets and the Patriots? The home-town product has to be bad to use discounts to get people to see Mark Sanchez and Tom Brady perform.
The fact that an NFL team is using this marketing tool is remarkable. The fact that it’s the Raiders is disgusting. After all, they already have devalued their product on the field. Why not devalue the NFL experience in the stands?
Click here for that ticket deal.
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Back to LA with them. The fans of the former Oakland Raiders have never forgiven Al Davis. Clearly. And the thugs in LA that took over for them would still gladly fill the stands.