Hundreds With Tickets but No Seats:
… Sections of temporary bleachers erected inside Cowboys Stadium were not completed in time for the game, leaving about 1,250 people holding tickets for seats declared unusable.
The N.F.L. said that about 850 of those ticket holders were relocated to other seats in the stadium. But long after the game started, hundreds were still outside, in line at the ticket window, awaiting a resolution that few imagined could satisfy them.
Those sent away to watch the game elsewhere, or invited to watch the game on televisions inside a club at the stadium, were promised refunds by the N.F.L. worth three times the face value of their tickets, which were mostly $800 or $900 apiece. But most of those affected had paid far more for their tickets, and had spent small fortunes on travel and lodging.
… “I’ve just lost eight grand,” said Bradley Geier, a Dallas lawyer, who said he spent $9,700 for two tickets that had a face value of $900 each.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for these people; no one likes being cheated. Then again, they paid thousands of dollars for a ticket worth $800-900, so it’s not like they didn’t have a lot of money to throw around. None of these people will go hungry due to the poor planning.
How can people justify spending so much for a sporting event? I wonder about people like this, and those who spend, say, $10,000 for a watch. You can get a dang nice watch for $500. Or for way, way less. I have a Fossil watch that cost $50. It’s a nice watch; keeps time pretty good. I have to reset it only once in a while. There are very few people in the world who need to know the exact time down to the microsecond.
But aha: $50 gets you a watch. It doesn’t get you status.
