Ticket Perfection Strikes Back

Posted by Alex Dalenberg in Uncategorized on 09-14-11    No Comments


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So a while back I posted on a service called Ticket Perfection which lets sports fans insure their tickets against blowouts. Basically, if the final score is lopsided beyond a certain threshold, the insured will get at least some money back — potentially all of it — depending on how much ticket insurance they purchased.

My first impression: not a service I think I would use. More to the point, I called it a rip-off.

Needless to say, the entrepreneurs over at Ticket Perfection weren’t thrilled with my admittedly harsh assessment and you can check out the company’s complete response at the end of the original post.

Basically, to refute my perception that insuring every game wouldn’t be worth it because you’d be shelling out so much money in ticket insurance, Ticket Perfection’s data shows that, if you went to every NFL game played by a particular team last season, and fully insured your ticket for each game, the majority of fans would make money back.

Ticket Perfection’s Eric Brancaccio told us in an email that, in laying out its service, the company has built something of an actuarial table showing blowout margins and the price of insurance.

Of course, in this case, if you can actually afford to attend every NFL game — including road games — I can’t imagine you’re that concerned with getting your money back on ticket insurance.  But Brancaccio says the service makes just as much sense for the ordinary fan who goes to to one or two games a year, although, in my mind, you’re reducing your probability of a blowout that way.

But for Brancaccio, the point isn’t so much in making money using the service, it’s addressing the fact that, when you buy a ticket to a sporting event, on some level you don’t really know what you’re paying for.

“We don’t see Ticket Perfection as a money making vehicle although as our numbers show it can be. We truly believe that generally a closer contest is a better experience for the fan than a lopsided one even if our home team is putting a beatdown on a bitter rival. The crux of our service is based around addressing how a fixed price ticket can yield either a thrilling game or a boring one.”

Brancaccio also added that most users choose to insure their tickets for smaller amounts, as low as 2.5 percent of ticket price which would yield 25 percent refund in case of a blowout.

So, if the principle of potentially shelling out money for what ends up being a crappy game is something that’s important to you, you could probably do worse than give Ticket Perfection a try.

Just keep in mind, you’re pretty much straight up gambling on the outcome of the event. So you’re just going to have to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Or I guess since you could be watching a blowout it might better to ask yourself: Do I not feel lucky?

Like this post? You may also like these:

  1. Blowout Insurance: Do We Need This?
  2. The Great Sunday Ticket Ripoff
  3. Ticket Exchange Makes Hot Market Online
  4. The Sports Tech Nihilist: NFL Sunday Ticket Screams, ‘Show Me The Money!’
  5. Nets Muddy Season-Ticket Waters With Social Coupon Sales


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