Thursday, October 18, 2007

Major League Baseball Sure Does Enjoy Screwing Its Consumers


I don't know how it has evolved to this, but "America's Pastime" has become more like "Screwing America Is Our Pastime".

In recent times, Major League Baseball has endured asteriks and andro, a weird DirecTV/MLB Channel liason and now it's like they're punishing fans of the Colorado Rockies that don't use the Internet.

The Colorado Rockies have changed their plans for selling World Series tickets, switching to online purchases only.

The team announced the new plan on Wednesday.

Tickets were to go on sale at Coors Field and Rockies' Dugout Stores in the Denver area on Monday using a lottery system for in-person transactions, as well as online.

Instead, all sales will be online, starting at 10 a.m. Monday.

Sure, Al Gore would really appreciate it if everyone used his invention, but according to the annual National Technology Scan survey "29% or 31 million homes in the United States have no Internet and those residents don’t intend to subscribe to any access for the next year. In addition, 44% of households aren’t interested in any Internet content".

I'm not sure how many of those 31 million without Internet access are Rockies' fans, but there has to be a few. And if they don't have access at work, then Major League Baseball has just put them in a difficult position.

The other problem would be if the ticket servers crashed during what will probably be a huge traffic jam of sales. It wouldn't be the first time that something like that has occured during online ticket sales for a sporting event. Just ask Pittsburgh Panthers' fans about their '03 ticket fiasco. And that was for Panthers basketball tickets. This is for tickets for the Rockies, the hottest team in baseball right now, first World Series appearance.

Good luck Rockies' fans, I have a feeling you might need it.

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