“There’s not a lot of rationality with these fees,” Weiner said.
“Major League Baseball is nickel-and-diming the public, and it adds up to big bucks.”
Once again the local NYC government is barking up the wrong tree which should be no shock to anyone who actually lives here.
We all hate the fees tacked onto ticket sales from vendors but if you’re going to complain and use your position of power as a way to get heard, you need to focus on the people charging those fees. That would be Ticketmaster, tickets.com, StubHub and all the other vendors out there.
And focusing it on baseball is also pretty ridiculous. These fees exist for all events, and they’re actually less worse for MLB than they are for some concerts. I bought tickets through TM/LiveNation for a show where the face price was $25, and then I was charged a $10+ “convenience fee” and then the processing fee on top of that.
It’s easy to go out and hold a press conference to get some attention like Anthony Weiner, and most people out there probably think that it is the Yankees and Mets and MLB or whoever setting the fees but if you ever want it to change, you have to point the fingers in the right direction. Just saying “Hey MLB don’t be mean with fees!” is a quick, populist move that doesn’t even make any sense if you sit back and think about how the system works for two seconds.
In addition to that, the entire article from the NYDN about this never once mentions that the large fees are imposed by the ticket vendors, choosing to go the easy route and go along with the political huffing and puffing rather than pointing out where the fees are coming from. For example, they mention that you get charged a fee to print out your ticket? Who charges that? That would be Ticketmaster and other vendors and not MLB, but readers are lead to believe otherwise. That’s just lazy, hazardous reporting and writing that misinforms the general public. Shameful.
Ah, populists: even when they have a decent point, they can’t put enough thought into it to make sure they hit the right target.