Right now the buzz in baseball is the Minnesota Twins trade of Johan Santana to the New York Mets. Every fan of Major League Baseball seems to be following closely the trade details and looking for additional information about it.
In case you haven’t read about the trade Johan Santana will be shipped to the Mets for the four following prospects:
Carlos Gomez - Outfielder
Deolis Guerra - Pitcher (Righthander)
Phil Humber - Pitcher (Righthander, had Tommy John surgery in 2005)
Kevin Mulvey - Pitcher (Righthander)
With this trade the Mets starting rotation consists of the following five pitchers:
Johan Santana - 3.33 ERA (Left)
Pedro Martinez - 2.57 ERA (Right)
Oliver Perez - 3.56 ERA (Left)
John Maine - 3.91 ERA (Right)
Orlando Hernandez - 3.72 ERA (Right)
Initially judging the trade everyone who follows baseball agrees that the Mets came out in way better shape. The prospects the Mets gave up are just that, prospects. Santana is a proven winner and the Mets can start winning now, while the Twins will have to wait a few years to see if any of these prospects becomes a solid baseball player.
Read more
Dale Earnhardt Jr. always has had the talent and the fan support, but now that he belongs to Hendrick Motorsports he probably also has some of the best resources that NASCAR has to offer.
Is this the creation of a three-headed monster? Are we looking at the birth of the New York Yankees of stock car racing?
Not likely, let me explain why.
Read more
The Associated Press reported today that tickets for Super Bowl XLII between the New York Giants and New England Patriots cost as much as $19446, and that the average price so far is $4300. The incredible part is that football fans so far seem to be willing to pay those prices even when the NFL originally priced those tickets at $700 or $900NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, who seems resigned to the fact that the league is mostly powerless to stop the profitable turnover of tickets, said to the Associated Press that the face value of their tickets was underpriced based on demand and what people are willing to pay.
Furthermore the Associated Press reported that the average price of Super Bowl tickets has been going up every year, so probably we should not be surprised about this. Tickets for last year’s game between the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolist Colts averaged $4,004. That was sharply higher than the Pittsburgh Steelers-Seattle Seahawks in 2006 at $3,009, the Philadelphia Eagles-Patriots in 2005 at $2,659, the Patriots-Carolina Panthers in 2004 at $2,290, and the Oakland Raiders-Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2003 at $2,767.
So if you do want to go to the Super Bowl but you don’t want to pay as much, there still is time and there are many tickets left. Check out the price of these Super Bowl tickets here. And if you’re looking for corporate packages you may want to check out this site. Good luck!
How about those Celtics struggling lately? Well, don’t loose your sleep over them. The NBA season is a marathon, so don’t expect the Celtics to maintain the same pace for the whole campaign. This was a team that was destroying opponents during the first two months of the season and only had three losses. It is very tough to do that, and even though the Celtics are now among the NBA’s elite this is the first season that this roster is playing together.
Only very special teams like the Michael Jordan’s Bulls were capable of sustaining that kind of pace for a whole season and ended eventually with 72 victories. And although these Celtics are good, they are not that good; however is very safe to say that this Celtics team can have between 65 and 67 victories by the end of the regular season .
Some Celtic fans are panicking not because of the number of losses (they now have four in the month of January alone) but because of some of the opponents to whom Boston has lost (Charlotte, Toronto and twice to Washington).
Although these defeats are dissapointing I don’t think Celtic fans have anything to worry about. Now that their team is among the league’s best it is easy for the other teams to be motivated and pump themselves up when facing the C’s, while on the other hand the Celtics may overlook some of the matches when they face “weaker” teams.
What the Celtics have to do is learn from their mistakes and change their attitude when facing these teams they have overlooked in the past. They have to understand that now every night they will have to play their best because all the other teams will try to prove themselselves and their home fans that they can beat the mighty Celtics.
If they do this, the Celtics will even learn from these defeats and will mature, a process that is necessary for every team with new key players on their rosters. A process that will eventually help them achieve the chemistry and toughness that is necessary to hopefully reach the NBA Finals for the first time since 1987.
Miami based Tickets of America President CEO Michael J Lipman is encouraged by publicly traded companies such as Ebay and IAC’s ability to foresee the opportunities in the billion dollar secondary resell market and believes they will pave the way for future merger and acquisitions.
The acquisition of Ticketsnow is a surprising move for Ticketmaster since the majority of tickets posted on Ticketsnow’s website are ticket brokers’ inventory, may of whom will now pull the plug by not listing them anymore as a result of this partnership. Ticketsnow’s business model caters to brokers and the majority of the web hits are from fellow brokers, not from fans listing inventory.
Ticketmaster, a dominant primary market ticket seller, actively encourages teams and concert promoters to buy and then sell their tickets on Ticketmaster’s secondary market exchange. As a result of losing several legislative battles in states such as New York and being investigated in states such as Missouri, Ticketmaster’s “Ticketexchange” and “auctions” have failed in the public eye. Ticketmaster must use the Ticketsnow brand name to market premium seats to events such as Hannah Montana to the secondary market which will inflate the prices.
The law of supply and demand dictates the price of tickets on the secondary market, consumers reselling their tickets on the Internet are a contributing factor for what the market price is, reputable companies such as www.ticketsofamerica.com , Ebay, and Stubhub encourage fans to buy/sell at market prices which often times causes prices to sell at less than face value. Ticketmaster, Promoters, Sports Teams, and Venue partners often hold back the supply of tickets which artificially inflates the prices by hyping the scarcity of supply and deceiving the public by saying “sold out.” This is not in the best interest of the consumer and prices are never going to be less than face value or at true market price.
Loading ...