On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that the hometown Redskins are beginning to require season ticket holders who want to pay for them with a credit card to use a Redskins-branded MasterCard backed by MBNA.
If fans like, they can still pay for the tickets with cash or check for next season, though one statement from a team spokesman seemed to leave open the possibility that the team might change its mind for 2006.
There's all sorts of spin the team used to justify its decision ("streamlining the ticket process"), but the bottom line is pretty simple:
"Where the Redskins benefit is by creating another branded product and offering the fans an inducement to use it," said Chicago-based sports marketer Marc S. Ganis. "If many more people sign up for MBNA credit cards, they likely will use them for non-team related purchases such as groceries, department stores or whatever it is. That can have a modest financial benefit to the team through the sponsorship fee paid by MBNA."
Long-time Redskins season ticket holder and Post columnist Tony Kornheiser wasn't very happy with the development:
And while I'm not for a second questioning the owner's desire to win or his commitment to win, it just seems like this is not the time to tell your loyal fans that they'd better use a certain kind of credit card to pay for their season tickets.
With a winning team you could say, "Ahhh, that's just business."
With a losing team you say, "That's crapola."
I can certainly empathize with Kornheiser here. I've been a Baltimore Ravens season ticket holder for almost a decade now, and I'd be pretty angry if they tried something like this too (which, thankfully, they haven't).
Then again, Kornheiser and every other season ticket holder has an option if they're angry enough.
They can drop the tickets.
Madness you say? Absolutely. For madness is just about the only word one can use to describe the state of Redskins fandom in and around the nation's capital.
For fans who haven't lived here, it's hard to understand just how popular the Redskins really are, and how important they are to life in the Washington area. These folks are loyal to a fault, something that's owed in part to the fact that the Redskins were the only professional football team in the Southeast for most of the century.
And this loyalty pre-dates the rise of the Joe Gibbs-coached teams that won three titles in four Super Bowl appearances; in fact, it even pre-dates the appearance of the "Over the Hill Gang," that George Allen willed to an NFC championship and a berth in Super Bowl VII.
And it's that particular malady that Redskins owner Dan Snyder is capitalizing on when he makes a decision like this one. Because for every fan that he might drive away, he's probably got 100 more ready to swoop in and pay full price for that abandoned season ticket.
No, it isn't nice. But Snyder didn't go into the business world to make friends. He got into business to make money, and after leveraging himself to the hilt to buy the Redskins, I have a tough time finding fault with anything he does to maximize his profits.
Say what you will about his influnce over personnel decisions with the team, which has been nothing short of disastrous. But on the business side, Snyder has turned the team into an absolute cash machine, generating $70 million in operating income in the last full year that it was reported.
In the end, it's one of the cruelest ironies in all of sport: The fans who get praised on game day for being the "best in the NFL," are the same fans who have to pay dearly for the privilege.
