I just wanted to take my son to a training camp event. It's too damn expensive to do anything else football related Soni thought I'd take him to this.
I was 40th in line on the Ticketmaster queue when they went on sale today at 10am.
Took about three minutes to get in.
Once I got in they were already sold out.
Let me guess, they'll be on seat geek for 150 a piece in the next few minutes.
Fuck this shit.
Crazyness. I half ass'd it this year and was 415 and sold out when I get in.
Last year was able to get 4 dates.
Ticketmaster/whatever systems they use is so random/luck to get anything sometimes.
The NFL estimates season ticket holders average 80% of most ticket sales. That means on the Bears 60k person stadium something like 48k people there are season ticket holders.
There bears also offer a variety of season ticket wait lists estimated to be 10k people long. Some of these people get the right to buy tickets.
My non-psl season tickets are section 440.
There are only 14,000 training camp tickets available for all of training camp.
Season ticket holders get a right to those
Season Ticker Holders dont get free tickets anymore...we have to use our STH Points. Im sure some are set aside but they arent given for free.
Call your state rep to demand limits on scalping. Teams don’t care who buys tickets as long as someone buys them. The only thing that bothers the Bears is that they could’ve charged more for the tickets and still sold out
Well they’re free tickets so bears don’t benefit from 3rd parties reselling them
Reminds me of how the video game industry slowly took steps to make sure game stop and re sale stores don’t exist at least in the same format they did way back when
this isn't a new phenomenon. they sell out fast every year. tickets are still dirt cheap. maybe the bears should increase the price to reduce scalping
If the Bears wanted to, they could almost eliminate scalping by making all tickets will call and requiring them to be purchased with a personal credit card and not business cards
Maybe. This is very different but Fred again set up his Ticketmaster for pop ups so that each person can only get 2 tickets, tickets can't be transferred to other people, and they can only be sold back to Ticketmaster at face value (not resold). And if you do sell back to Ticketmaster you don't get your fees back. Events still sold out within 2 minutes and most people in virtual queues didn't have the option to buy.
Now, I know we're talking about one of the hottest artists of the minute, who has 17M monthly Spotify listeners and comparing it to practice for a mediocre sports team, but my point is more that the Internet makes access to ticketing easier and as long as demand far outpaces supply, it might not matter what types of scalper controls you put in place-- this stuff will sell out immediately anyway.
Whether the attention is deserved or not, there are few things more popular in the Chicagoland metro area in August than the idea of a good Bears team, especially with the new narrative of Johnson + Caleb. There are 10M people in the metro area and about 5000 people are able to go to camp every day, across 11 practices. That's less than a single home game, with the tickets being dirt cheap (free?). Even if only 2% (200,000) people try to get tickets it means only 25% of those people will actually get them. I'm not sure there are many scalping controls that would have prevented an instant sellout here.
Also, I'm not trying to take away from the very real late stage capitalism effects that do exist. I do think it manifests in different ways though. In the past people were paid less but big purchases were WAY cheaper. For example, on a pretty modest salary you could get married, buy a house, support a single income family with two kids, send kids to college, and retire. But to do that you still had to be budget conscious so you didn't do stuff like eat out that often. Now, we're paid more but all those big items are an order of magnitude more expensive and are completely unattainable for large segments of the population, so we commit to a lifestyle where we rent, elope, and forego kids, but in doing so now more people can all afford to go to multi-hundred dollar sporting events and restaurants instead. So it creates excess demand for that stuff imo. In this case the tickets for training camp are pretty much free so maybe that isn't a big effect here, but this is more of a general musing
I have a much easier time not getting tickets if I know all the people who buy ahead of me are actually people who want to go to the thing though. It sucks not getting tickets knowing the majority of people ahead of me are just trying to make a quick buck, and may or may not have been using bots and shit that your average person doesn't have access to.
That's a totally fair point.
Making all tickets will call would be a noticeable expense increase on their/the stadium owner's end to support enough people to handle event day ticket lookups vs just quickly scanning a QR code.
Also is a POS system able to determine the difference between a business and personal CC? Business cards still have the personal name of the user on them and that's what you fill out when submitting your card details.
It would only cost them a couple grand per game. The Bears make huge profits and could easily afford to do this.
"You've got plenty of profits, you can afford this" is probably not the winning sales pitch to any business. They would only do it if there was something in it for them.
100% agree. The Bears have repeatedly shown how little they care about their fans
Actually places like ticketmaster PREFER scalpers buy them. Then if they can get the scalpers to resell on their platform they can charge fees a second time. The more times a ticket is resold the more fees ticketmaster gets (as long as its on their platform, but also pretty confident that they have a behind the scenes agreement with places like stub hub).
Training camp tickets are free
Reason why I despise all 3rd party ticket vendors. They get their double cut of buy and then sell. They have no incentive to prevent bots and scalpers.
Scalpers ruin so many things, it's a shame.
Not sure if Family Fest tickets go on sale at the same time as camp tickets, but it’s pretty cool and pretty cheap and plenty of seats since it’s Soldier Field.
The problem is people use bots to mass buy tickets then repost them for 10x the original price. Until tickcet companies like ticket will enforce tickets sales we will always be screwed over by someones greed.
But Ticketmaster has "bot detection". Lol.
I swear bot detection is just how they screw over people for the scalpers sake.
I’ve had an account for 10 years and last year I got totally locked out of my account when 5 folks gave me money to buy tickets for everyone. I had to use my girlfriend’s account and couldn’t even use my credit card as it was flagged to my account. It was such fucking bullshit.
The not detention fucked me… I was just on my computer and it thought I was a bot somehow and got kicked out
people use bots to mass buy tickets
Nope. They're run by ticketmaster. I can pretty much guarantee it considering regular users get blocked from purchasing tickets as it claims you're a bot when you're not. Their bot detection is WAY too strict to allow anyone to run one. The only logical explanation is they're the ones scalping their own tickets.
Decades of irresponsible fiscal and monetary policy quietly corroding our quality of life as we continued to kick the can down the road
Doesn’t make any sense if you were 40th in line!! Even if all the people in front of you got 4 tickets each there still should be some left for you. So stupid. I got screwed as well. I just wanted to take my daughter. I miss platteville days!
I am assuming they didn't get on by 10 exactly. I also assume they were trying to get a weekend day, which had much longer lines. I was in 10 mins before and ended up being in the 400 and 500 spots on weekend dates. Those dates were sold out by the time I got in around 10:10. I was able to get a week day because the line was much shorter.
Nope. I got on at about 930 and chose a Thursday practice.
Me and my wife got on at 940 and got 4 tickets to the 7/29 and 4 to 7/30. My queue was at like 110 but I was able to get tickets for both those days. Sorry you got somehow screwed. Maybe it was one of the joint practice days
You can blame the internet for this one. In the old days, getting a ticket to this sort of thing came down to how much time you were willing to sink into it. Stand in a line, camp out, call radio stations, etc. You could buy from scalpers, but it was quite shady and not something everyone was willing to do.
Now anyone, anywhere can buy tickets without leaving their house. Scalpers can sell on official re-selling sites that aren't shady at all. Now the market for buyers isn't limited to the people that can show up at the box office. No one has to put any significant time in these things anymore, it only comes down to how much you're willing to pay.
As a result, events are as expensive as possible (capitalism) and there's no way to "earn" a good spot by waiting in a line that others aren't willing to wait in.
Technological improvements are the instruments that allow this phenomenon, but the underlying disease is wealth inequality. At every link in the chain from tickets being sold to finally arriving in a user’s hand, additional cost is rolled in and price pushed higher. But the whole chain falls apart if people aren’t paying absurdly inequitable prices at the terminus. The most egregious example of this was the Taylor Swift tour. People just shouldn’t be able to pay six grand to go to a concert.
I think it just exposes the wealth inequality issue more. Before we were able to electronically buy tickets, a wealthy person would have to pursue someone that had a ticket and offer them whatever they were willing to accept. That took effort and was a difficult thing to do before electronic communication. The person that stood in the line had the advantage.
Now with electronic buying, bots and scalpers buy everything immediately making the "line" pointless. The wealthy person now just needs to buy the ticket on stub hub. They don't have to do anything but foot the bill which has turned any event that has widespread popularity into a display of wealth.
Value is fundamentally willingness to pay, whether that be willingness to pay money, willingness to pay time, or whatever other components of the rationing process. The internet basically ended time being apart of the equation. It doesn’t take much for the average person to camp out on a computer to buy tickets, or for a scalper to camp out to buy 500 (or code a bot to do it for them, I have been told by programmer friends that making bots is not hard to learn). So now money isn’t just the primary component of the opportunity cost, it’s essentially the only component.
Have Family Fest tickets gone on sale yet? That might be better for kids and have more capacity.
Hate Ticketmaster so much
Take him to Family Day at Solider Field, probably better than training camp anyway.
NFL football in person is a rich man’s spectator sport now. All the rest should be grateful to watch it on TV.
Unless you're an avid sailor watching on TV is becoming a rich man's pursuit as well.
Season tickets for Northern Illinois start at $110 for the entire season. My buddy gave up going to NFL events in person and takes his fam there and has a blast.
NIU is a good time albeit their stadium is lacking, at least it was last time they were there.
Still is, you’re definitely just going for the on field action.
This is due to the public raising sports to a religion, players to gods, and being willing to pay anything to see sports.
I quit wanting to go in person and am happy to watch.
It's all greed. Entertainment is not worth millions.
Of course, ceos making in the 100 millions doesn't make sense.
I was 288 in line and also all gone , like wtf really. They were supposed to stop this from happening again! I was really excited for no apparent reason
I'm glad I got my training camp visit out of my system back when they were still in Bearbonnais.
Anything going through ticketmaster will always have "bots" stealing all the tickets.
While Bourbonnais was so much better, I will say that I’m glad that I did get to Halas Hall for one, just to experience the facilities as well as what I really wanted to see, the Sweetness Shrine in the Walter Payton center.
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You are an awesome person.
🐻⬇️
I remember being able to just walk into training camp at Bourbonais (no ticket necessary) and there never being a problem with crowds. Granted I was a kid, but was this some sort of Mandela effect misremembering? Because otherwise I don't see why we need a ticketing system at all
Late stage capitalism.
"late stage capitalism is when NFL training camp tickets sell out fast" - Corl Marks
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It’s greed supported by an economic model (capitalism) that encourages it you vaginal fold.
It is the literal definition of capitalism.
They should get rid of bots in qeue, doesn’t seem right and is an atrocious way to make money off of true fans of football. It’s Pokémon cards all over again. When I learned this at an early age I gave up on things that would benefit scalpers. Wishing Scalpers the worse time and hope no one buys your overpriced shit and that they lose money for their greed.
Until they get rid of the secondary market on tickets for large events, his will continue
Reselling tickets for profit has got to be put to an end.
I second this.. nfl is becoming the ufc they just want celebrities and people with money to spend on concessions… people who will post it on social media.. reality is I was lucky enough to snag up some bears vs Steelers tickets about a month before Rodger’s signed the same ticket I got for the ridiculous price of 750 each are now around 2750 each a 200% almost. 300% increase in price
Lol, have you resold yet?
Loved going to games growing up but I would absolutely flip those (assuming plus 4k on a pair of tickets - 3ish after taxes) and take a very nice vacation abroad.
3k plus the 1.5 you were in for covers airfare and a room wherever.
Luckily, I’m local in Champaign
Also not yet.. I actually have some pals coming from Pittsburgh to see the game
You can wait till a few days before training camp starts and they release more tickets but there is no announcement for it, just have to keep an eye out. Family fest also seems like it should be somewhat affordable. I agree it sucks and I missed out on tickets initially last year, but i got them on re-release.
Nice. Appreciate the advice.
I think last year they said something about taking away tickets if they were on the resale market. Not sure if that's why there was a second release. I couldn't go because I started a new job and it was too soon to request time off.
Buy from a scalper using your CC and just chargeback
I will probably get crapped on for this view, but I don’t think this is a Ticketmaster, bot, or Bears issue. Let me first say I got shutout too. Won’t be going.
A single Bears game is full with 60k people there. The ENTIRE month of training camp tickets is probably less than that. The place does not hold a ton of people. These tickets are free and there were likely hundreds of thousands of fans trying for tickets.
If demand was 10x number of tix available, most people will be shut out. I would love to go, but I’m not sure this is a technology issue.
People suck. Best thing to do is not pay the scalpers but unfortunately NPC's will buy them happily. And yes games are way over priced especially if you're trying to buy 3-4 tickets which is around grand if not more. Sucks.
Yep. It’s really hard and expensive to get into any sport at this point. Specialty cable packages, tickets are a billion dollars, parking is nuts, ballpark food/drink is dumb. It should not cost $1000 for a family of 4 to go an NFL game.
One of the many, but probably the biggest, reasons sports just has a smaller and smaller place in my world.
Capitalism Ruins Everything Around Me
.....C.R.E.A.M.?
DOLLA DOLLA BILL Y'ALL
Let me guess, they'll be on seat geek for 150 a piece in the next few minutes.
So are they on any resale sites? I don't see any. They're free tickets for a limited number of dates. Of course they're going to sell out. Everybody in here ranting about "late stage capitalism" because they couldn't get free tickets to watch a football team practice. Truly first world problems LMFAO
Seriously. I knew quite a few of our fans were boneheaded but this whole thread turning into a capitalism rant is hilarious. And over training camp tickets of all things
Yeah ticketmaster is scummy like that. I'm absolutely convinced they run their own bots.
Capitalism
With all things tickets these days, wait until the day before and then check the secondary market. It's all layers of bs. There's no price discovery or market until just before the event.
Family night is nice but expensive. I usually take the kids to a preseason game because it’s cheaper than regular season but those Will probably go away once they add more regular season games so who knows.
I love the Bears but I get great coverage on my HD TV. Fuck all that noise.
Greed, plain and simple.
I got screwed too! Just wanted to go with my dad for the Bears / Bills joint practice as he's coming into town for the preseason game a few days later. Anyone have 3 extra tics for 8/15?
mann seeing the feedback makes me feel lucky. Never been to a Bears game also bc too much $$ & I had just found out last year about training camp tix available to the public. So I had it in my plans to keep a lookout for this year. Saw a reddit post about a similar experience. Got in at 9:50 to be in the queue & was able to get tix at 10:02. Also, I made sure I had the app updated bc it was acting stupid b4
Preach!
Me, two of my nephews and my brother in law all logged in at 9:00 to get tickets for my son and I. None of us were successful. Absolutely brutal.
I was somewhere around 4000 in the queue lmao that’s such a crazy number for training camp
Splintersmaster. Any interest in taking your kid on Thursday, July 31st?
If the Bears had any brass they’d recoup the training camp tickets posted online
I’m over in Indiana and the same thing happened for pacers watch party tickets. It was ridiculous.
Same thing happened to me, wanted to take my wife and three kids because a game is too much AND I used to go to training camp each year back when I was young and I don’t even remember them charging? This is ridiculous!
Bring back training camp to Bourbonnais!!
Root cause is most likely citizens United. Elected officials have no reason to fix the issue because they're being paid not to.
The answer as always is capitalism.
Blame the guy that shot Harambe
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It's free here in Chicago too.
I tried to get tickets to camp today to take my son and was also unsuccessful. I had a feeling we weren’t going to get tickets but tried anyways. I have a friend with season tickets and he gave me his preseason tickets to the Dolphins game to take my son. I wanted the training camp experience because my son has some sensory processing issues and I’m afraid that even though he really wants to go to the game, even with his headphones he won’t be able to tolerate the noise. It might be a really short trip to Soldier Field next month…
Greed run rampant and put on a pedestal in this country.
ThAt'S jUsT cApItAlIsM
interestingly enough the NFL salary cap is essentially a perfectly socialized system
Careful, they might hear you
except for the whole team ownership thing being voluntary (minus one)
this is the only thing about the packers i don’t find revolting…
The Packers are truthfully owned by the other 31 owners. They sell stock that is worth $0.005/share for $250 a share as a bullshit excuse to drum up money occasionally. They let them vote on bullshit options like stadium upgrades and whatnot, but the real money/revenue after team expenses and ticket sales goes back to the league, i.e. the other 31 owners.
These are the investors that Bernie Madoff dreamed of.
Can you explain that a bit more. I always thought that the Packers were some kind of municipally owned franchise, or public trust or something. Do the other NFL franchises get the profits generated by the Packers?
i dont think youre quite seeing it clearly if that’s meant as a counterpoint
And the draft… and the number of teams
No it’s not. The players would own the team if that were the case.
That's the C word
I mean yeah it is
The point is that people (scalpers, mainly) like to use "capitalism" or "running a business" or "I just gotta pay the bills" as an excuse to be a dick. Reselling tickets for stupid markup might be capitalism, but that doesn't mean it's not shitty.
Capitalism just inherently has shitty parts to it like this. It’s like how Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc have entire departments setup dedicated to making users more addicted to their platform purely for getting more ad money
Especially with every company that is traded on the stock market having to somehow show growth constantly. It doesn’t happen by being nice to the normals
I think the point is not that just because it's capitalism it's good.
The point is that capitalism's primary function is to drive up costs, drive down quality, and erode the middle class by creating a massive wealth disparity such that a very small number of people control an overwhelming amount of the resources, and thus, society.
If you are a capitalist your entire goal is to own as much as possible which necessarily means your goal is also to ensure that everybody besides you has as little as possible.
Great post, and for those who doubt it, the "official" definition is more about extracting maximum value in controlled asset transactions allowed by the market.
That value? If you don't know whose ass it's coming out of, it's yours.
Capitalism is just creating endless middlemen for everything to artificially drive up the prices of goods for absolutely no reason other than greed.
Yea and it's working out so well /s
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For?
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Get fucked, you socialist commie /s
That’s just called “American values.”
Sadly, it's this side of the pond, too. And not because of America.
Capitalism has eaten itself. Now it's turned on us.
Same old crap. I was so excited to get tickets for my son and I. Why should I be surprised, it’s the Bears…
That's being human, not just this country.