The story is meant to induce a smile. A wonderful gesture to brighten your day:
“Why did I get so lucky? How did this happen to me?” said [Marge] Bishop, who lives in a brown house on a gravelly lot in a wooded area of Gloucester. Her father built the house in 1932.
“I’m just a regular person,” Bishop said. “And I’ve been given this remarkable once-in-a-lifetime gift. It’s incredible. It’s the most remarkable story.”
And what was this "remarkable" gift bestowed upon this "regular person"? Well, let's break it all down.
Mrs. Bishop has had season tickets to Boston Bruins hockey games for 40+ years. When the price of her tickets jumped from $73 to $90 in 2004, she blanched. When they went to $150 in 2006, more than doubling in the span of two years, she had had enough. Then her angel of mercy sprang into action: Charlie Jacobs, son of Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, was giving her a lifetime pass!
What a touching moment! What a great guy! As Mrs. Bishop puts it:
“It was the most unbelievable gesture,” Bishop said. “People just don’t do things like that.”
Stop.
Wait a second.
This is ridiculous.
The team doubles the prices for the best seats by the ice and we are supposed to get all emotional about the two tickets they decided to give away? They literally made up the loss on that with the next two seats by the boards! EVERYTHING ELSE afterwards is pure outrageous profit.
And get a load of the profits we are talking about here:
A review of [father Jeremy] Jacobs’ track record as owner of the Bruins and the TD Garden by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting reveals:
A squeeze on average fans amid a steady expansion of costly season tickets and luxury seating, with ticket prices poised to surge again;
More than $200 million in profits from the Bruins and the garden spanning over the last decade alone, most earned before the Stanley Cup win;
Check out this not-so-moving story from one fan who doesn't feel a tingle from the mere mention of the Jacobs name:
[A] night out at the garden to watch the Bruins – more than $340 for a family of four – costs as much as an afternoon at Fenway Park, long baseball’s priciest ballpark, which weighs in at just over $339, according to Team Marketing.
In fact, just going solo to a hockey game can be expensive, noted [fan Casey] Robichaud, decked out in a Bruins T-shirt as she watched the game at the bar.
With an outing at the garden a sure $100-plus night, there are only so many games she can afford to attend.
Determined to avoid paying the Garden’s concession prices, which include beer at more than $7 a pop, some fans take extreme measures.
“It makes people think like they have to drink heavily before the game,” she said.
Fact is, the Jacobs family is sitting on a goldmine and is determined to squeeze every last drop out of the lemons, er, fans:
Meanwhile, the garden itself has turned out to be a major profit center, with a steady stream of concerts, events and corporate sponsorship deals.
Owned by Jacobs and Delaware North, the garden was listed as the sixth most lucrative arena in the country by Forbes in 2008, with revenue of $106 million. It had moved up to No. 3 by 2010 on the Forbes list, though revenue estimates were not included that year.
The arena generates anywhere from $15 million to $25 million a year in profit, noted one arena expert. Taking the more conservative end of that estimate, that amounts to another $150 million in profits for Jacobs over the past 10 years.
That’s a total of well more than $200 million from the Bruins and the Garden, from fans and concert-goers as well, over the past decade, based on Forbes annual estimates and sports business experts.
Professional sports are all about money today and as long as the citizenry allows itself to be debased like this AND continues to clamor for entry into these corporate cathedrals of greed, things are not going to change. We know this already.
But spare us, please, the knight-in-shining-armor garbage promulgated by a corrupt and compliant mainstream media organ.
You are gouging 17,563 suckers for everything you can get out of them on a nightly basis. Cutting a break to two sheep who'd been fleeced for all they could stand is not going to change that ugly reality one bit.
Only in our decadent modern society can someone this venial and disgusting be hailed as a wonderful giver.
How much more of this are we all going to put up with?
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