They've come up with a new right in Massachusetts -- the right of a football fan to buy a ticket from the opposing team:
Rhonda Park of Kansas City was one of several football fans around the country who contacted the Globe after it reported on the Chargers' locals-only policy last week. She said teams should be required to sell tickets to fans of the opposing team.
"This is not right," she said of the locals-only policies. "I am a true Kansas City Chiefs fan and if they were to do that I would be ashamed of my team and city."
Even though the Colts are selling tickets to "locals only," you can still get one in the "after-sale market," and it will only cost you from $265 to $2,500. The average price of an after-sale ticket for the Colts-Patriots game is $437, the Boston Globe notes, whereas if the game were in Massachusetts, it would be in the $600-$700 range. That's because Indiana, unlike Massachusetts, has virtually no anti-scalping law, so the workings of the free market keep the price down, an ironclad law of economics they seem to find offensive out east.
I have never understood the contempt some people have for scalping. It represents a free-market economy of the purest sort -- willing participants entering a voluntary contract, one with something to sell, the other wanting to buy it, supply and demand setting the price. I mean, it's not like people are jacking up the price of penicillin for Katrina victims.
On the other hand, I'm also a fan of Big Oil, Big Pharmaceuticals and Wal-Mart, so my view may well be in the minority.
