Sprint Center Opens, Contracts Remain Closed
 

October 08, 2007
Sprint Center Opens, Contracts Remain Closed
This week the Sprint Center will officially open. On Wednesday there will be a Grand Opening and a tour for the public. Yet the public still knows very little about how the building is being operated, especially when it comes to tickets.

While the mainstream media and publicity hungry politicians have focused on the issue of ticket scalping, it seems that many more tickets are lost to the elite than to the illegal.

Did eighteen percent of tickets for Billy Joel really go to Founders Club members? How often will that happen? Did the promoters of the Hannah Montana show really get more than twenty five percent of the tickets? Is that what it will take to bring big acts to Kansas City?

Our argument is this: if contracts with Founders Club members, suite holders or ”others” are taking tickets away from the general public pool, the general public has a right to know. AEG may mange the arena as a private company, but they do so under contract with the city. The bonds that are building the arena are the public’s debt.


www.mosource.com

The center will have a 12-hour open house from 10:10 AM to 10:10 PM on Wed. The cost is a suggested $5 charitable donation (I don't know what charity).

Yeah! More publicly funded arenas! Yeah!

http://www.biztech.stevens-tech.edu/...cial_ed_a3.jpg

Anyone that voted in favor of this plan is getting EXACTLY what you paid for.

Yep, no new taxes except for car rentals and hotels. No risk if it fails. If it operates at a loss the managment company must cover the loss's. But the management controls the venue as they see fit. Let priviate enterprise run these arenas not the local governments.

As far as I'm concerned thats okay with me. Those fat cats/companies are paying way more for the privildge of getting tickets than the mark up I would pay to go to a broker.

as long as the shows are sold out, i don't really care where the tickets are going.


none of the "big acts" care either

You keep pounding on this button like it's going to eventually work.

We're not "paying" for anything.

It's a great deal.

I guess you never travel. Think Globally, be stupid locally.

Hopefully you'll never need to rent a car because yours broke down, or want to eat and drink it up downtown and spend the night in a hotel instead of driving home.

If it's this great deal why am I hearing all this bitching about who is and is not getting tickets? I'll freely admit I'm unaffected by it, I wouldn't shell out my hard earned cash to see a live show anyway.

Unless you really have to have Hanna Montana tickets. But I must admit that the plan seems to isolate the gov and citizens from financial risk. If the gov controlled ticket sales I'm sure they would have to shoulder far more exposure than they'd like to.

On a tangent; Who the hell lets their kids go to Hanna Montana anyway? It's a commercial for more stuff that is also a commercial for even more stuff. Crap packaged to sell more crap packaged to sell more crap.

Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower.

I actually travel a lot and since I'm paying for shit in other cities I'm glad that visitors are paying for some of our shit.

I've rented a car locally but I was smart enough to rent in Johnson County. Why would I pay for a hotel room downtown when I cab ride home is about a quarter of the price???

People will bitch about anything. The fact remains that we are attracting high quality acts (not that any of them are of interest to me) and without the arena the public would be fighting over ZERO tickets. There is no way that everyone is going to get tickets to every show. Just like a ton of people being left out of Chiefs games back in the 90's.



This arena is costing me $0. That's a great deal.

Best Mel Brooks movie ever...welll besides Blazing Saddles.

Yeah, like how no arena deal could ever be good enough for this city, and how we're all better off leaving downtown the way it is because it's the tax payers that will end up getting screwed, no matter if that's actually true... and who cares if we can't compete with real hotspots like Omaha and Oklahoma City, while they laugh at Kemper Arena, because change is scary, damnit!

Sorry, carry on...

If the arena was privately built, then what leg would any of these people have to stand on to complain? The ownership could really do whatever they wanted with tickets.

But in reality, I think some of it is just... this is what the big acts do. They sell out. People act like this is some kind of shocking deal.

That was beautiful.

I got an email from Sprint Center wanting me to buy Blue Man group tickets for $95.00 a piece.LMAO