[sportscurmudgeon]

Interesting happening here:

I am NOT on the waiting list for Redskins' season tickets. I never was...

On 12 July, 93 days ago) I received a "cold call" from the Redskins' ticket department telling me that I could have season tickets in any one of three stadium areas if I used my credit card to make a downpayment on tickets right then.

The young man who called identified himself as "Jeff" or "Jess" - - I really can't say which one for sure. I told him that I was NOT on the waiting list - and never was - and wondered why he was calling me offering tickets. He said something about my name being on a "preferred contact list" that the Redskins had been compiling for the last several years. [Note: If you have read my comments here and my Internet column comments, you would have to wonder what blockhead in the Redskins' hierarchy would put me on a "preferred contact list".
I listened to the sales pitch and asked "Jeff/Jess" why he was wasting his time cold calling a preferred contact list when the Redskins had about a hundred thousand people on the waiting list for season tickets. He said that the team valued people on the preferred list because they would be influential in getting others to buy tix too and so I was being offered this opportunity before others on the actual waiting list - - presumably others who had been waiting decades on that list.

I told "Jeff/Jess" as politely as I could to remove my name from the "preferred contact list" because there was no way on Planet Earth that I was going to buy season tickets - - plus two full-priced meaningless exhibition games plus parking credentials - - to see a mediocre football team. I told him that when the Redskins once again became an elite team in the league, I would gladly pay a premium price to get individual game tickets from folks who wanted to re-sell them but that he and his cohorts were wasting their time calling me with a sales pitch.

Conclusion:

1. The 100,000 or so people on the waiting list are a myth. If they were there and chomping at the bit to get tickets, there would be no cold calls and no "preferred contact lists".

2. The ticket situation is not yet "desperate enough" to consider allowing buyers on the "preferred contact list" to buy season tix but not have to buy exhibition games at full price or to buy parking if they do not want it.

3. If the Redskins continue to have to pretend to "sell out" every home game for whatever PR benefits they think accrues to the organization, they will be forced to continue this kind of marketing strategy. If that is the case, they will continue not to sell out their home games.