NFL Season Ticket Holders Forced to Pay Full Price for Preseason Games

Preseason football is meaningless to the NFL fan.  To the organizations, it has a lot of meaning.  It gives players a chance to gain game experience before the season begins.  It also let’s coaches evaluate backup players who they haven’t seen in game situations.  Season ticket holders are forced to pay full price for two meaningless preseason games and by looking at the attendance of preseason games, the ticket holders often don’t attend them.  

It’s not fair for NFL season ticket holders to have to pay full price for preseason games.  The games don’t count and if your team isn’t home for the third preseason game then you don’t really get to see starters in action for an extended part of the game.  Take the 2009 New Orleans Saints for instance.  Their preseason home games are week one and four.  These are the two games the starters play the least.  Saints fans would be lucky to see the starters play for a full quarter combined in their two home preseason games.  I can’t expect Saints season ticket holders to pay full ticket price, the price of a ticket to a regular season game, to see two preseason games full of backups.   

What can be done about this?  NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is a proponent of decreasing preseason games from four to three and maybe even two.  He also would like to expand the regular season schedule to 17 or 18 games.  Season Ticket holders would pay what they pay now for a full season package but only have one preseason game and get an extra regular season game.  Not everyone agrees with Goodell though.  Coaches have said they like having four preseason games because it gives them a chance to evaluate players better.  Obviously, the evaluations are not of the starters, they are of the guys are fighting for a chance to make the opening day roster. 

Another way to solve the problem would be to lower the ticket prices for preseason games.  Cut the price per ticket in half and make the price for two preseason games equal to the price of one regular season game ticket.  Owners wouldn’t want this for obvious financial reasons, but it would really make fans happy.  This is why owners may rather see a cut in preseason games and an increase in regular season games.  There will be more television viewers and a higher attendance which means more money in an owner’s pocket.  Expanding the regular season also affects the health of players.  They would get paid more but would be worn down more each season.  

Roger Goodell will most likely bring up the idea of cutting the preseason and extending the regular season when the collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2010 season.  This proposal has several benefits and drawbacks.  Owners, coaches, players and fans all have various views of the situation although fans don’t have much say in the matter.