[Cecil Terwilliger]

When Selling season tickets on CP, all I care about is STH cost. I don’t care what ticketmaster charges, what tickets sell for on kijiji or stubhub. To me it’s more about the sellers, not making sure buyers are paying market price. STH already get a deep discount compared to the public price. Selling for FV should be enough of a profit.

Frame it all you want as a deal compared to ticketmaster. Really what we should be talking about is the profit for sellers. CP should not be in the business of maximizing seller profits under the guise of “but it’s not as much of a ripoff as ticketmaster”.

Scalping tickets on CP opens up the site for people to use CP to make money. More money than they already make selling their tickets for FV. I’m totally cool with the site not being used for that purpose.

Is ticketmaster ticket exchange a massive scam? Yes. Ticketmaster in general is a scam. But I don’t see that as a good reason to open up CP to scalping. Just because other avenues are ripoffs doesn’t mean we need to compete with them. Season ticket holders don’t pay ticketmaster fees anyway.

I’ve never understood the reasoning that since some games get sold for below face or even below cost that we should allow scalping. When I buy season tickets I buy them. I understand the cost. If I can only afford them if I can sell enough games to pay for me to see 10 games for free, then maybe I shouldn’t have season tickets. When I can’t afford them maybe I ask for an at cost partner on CP. And if I can no longer afford tickets because no one will buy my tickets above my cost, then maybe I give up my tickets. Does that mean less tickets on CP for cheap? Maybe but I didn’t become a STH to be a charity just like how I didn’t do it for a profit.

I’ve always viewed it as passing along some of my STH benefits to other fans. CP doesn’t owe me an avenue to maximize profit. It’s for me to easily sell tickets to real fans while making a tidy profit (usually) or break even. If there is a sunk cost because the team sucks, then that’s the risk I take when I invested in the team.

When I’ve sold my season tickets on CP, I always make enough that I get to go to about 10 games per year for free. And I never sold tickets anywhere else for above face. CP only. I always felt like I owed that to the community. Never that the community owed it to me to let me make money off fellow posters.

Did people get some deals? Sure. But I got tons of free hockey from it. I never ever thought about how it sucked that I didn’t make enough profit on my tickets. I don’t need to get paid to go watch the Flames (even if it feels like I should from time to time).