Giant Ripoff


Giants' Ownership Has Some Explainin' To Do

By Guest Blogger Barry Klein

[The NYGiants announced that their new stadium will be partially funded by selling "Personal Seat Licenses"-- which can cost fans up to $20,000 to merely guarentee they'll have the chance to buy tickets to see the games, which would cost additional sums of money. Longtime Giants season ticket holder, and blog reader, Barry Klein shares his thoughts...]

Wow!!! The new Giants/Jets stadium sounds like it will be awesome. According to the owners there will be modern food service, restaurants, tailgate zones and (hold your hats) cutting edge scoreboards. Apparently, all this is being done to give the fans the “amenities they deserve.” Thanks a lot Mara and Tisch families, but if you didn’t have the money to pay for the stadium, you shouldn’t force the Giants fans to do it without consulting them beforehand.

The truth of the matter is that the old Giants stadium was fine. Not many fans had any complaints about the stadium. Traffic and parking could have been eased by adding a train, but not much to complain about inside the stadium. Because of the owners’ greed, fans now have to pay for the opportunity to keep seats they already have on top of the thousands a year they have to pay to actually attend the games. What a scam!

You hear owners around the NFL complaining about not being able to make money because of high player salaries…blah, blah, blah. Cry me a river. The owners bought the teams initially because they had more money than they knew what to do with and they wanted to have fun by actually owning and directing a franchise.

Bob Tisch paid $75 million for a 50% share in the Giants. According to a 2005 Forbes article, the franchise is now worth $800 million. If you are now worried about your investment, sell the team. Just please stop talking to the fans like we are idiots. We know this new stadium is not for us. It’s to pad your already enormous bank accounts (or if not your bank accounts, just your egos).

Are you serious? You are giving us the option to finance the seat licenses over time. Great idea!!! In such a great economic time when likely most of your fan base is having trouble paying off debts (mortgages, credit card bills, student loans, etc.), thanks for giving us the opportunity to take on more debt.

Don’t act of though you feel bad. If you truly felt bad, we’d either be keeping the old stadium or you’d be paying for this new stadium without your old, trusty ATMs…I mean the NY Giants and Jets fans. We can’t even boycott or we won’t get tickets to the team we love.

In closing, I’d like to thank the owners of the Giants for showing us the real Mara and Tisch families. We had thought the Maras, a family that has owned the team since its inception, cared about the people who helped make the team and the sport popular…the average middle-class fan. As for the Tisches, we see the charity you provide to the less affluent in the city of NY and elsewhere. However, with regard to how you treat the fans in New York, you disappoint us all.