Tickets Will Not Be Sold Here

At least personally, paper tickets have been obsolete for a while. I either print my ticket or show it on my phone. The latter is what we did last month on our round trip to/from Chicago via Amtrak.  What about for local events?

If you plan on going to a St. Louis Blues game this season, you’ll need to have a smartphone or at least an e-mail address. Tickets to the game are now completely mobile.

Staff said you can purchase tickets through the NHL app and pull them up on your phone. (Fox2)

I use a card for transit, not a paper pass, transfer, or ticket.  All this change has me wondering about ticket windows.

These are always closed when I pass by, not much going on that requires tickets. The recent UMC conference was busy, but no ticket sales.

The event with physical ticket sales was the 2019 Monster Jam truck show held the last two days (March 2-3). Even they link to Ticketmaster for tickets.

The days of the ticket window are numbered.

— Steve Patterson

Readers Not Rams Fans

Next year professional football will return to St. Louis when the XFL league begins play in 8 cities.  Can it compete with the NFL, will it outlast its initial 3 years of funding?  Hard to say, but it seems the NFL isn’t the sure thing it once was:

The lowest-scoring Super Bowl in history turned off fans Sunday, with the matchup between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams drawing the game’s smallest TV audience since 2008.

TV’s most-watched annual event drew 98.2 million viewers, down 5% from last year when 103.4 million viewers watched on NBC, according to Nielsen data.
 
Counting those who watched the game on streaming platforms, CBS put the total audience at 100.7 million viewers, down 4.5% from the 105.4 million who watched on all platforms last year when the Patriots played the Philadelphia Eagles. (Los Angeles Times)

On Sunday we asked Siri a couple of times for the current score, but we didn’t watch the game at all. Yawn.

Here are the results from the non-scientific poll:

Q: Who do you want to win in today’s NFL Super Bowl?

• Don’t care: 16 [53.33%]
• New England Patriots: 9 [30%]
• Los Angeles Rams: 4 [13.33%]
• Undecided: 1 [3.33%]

More backed the Patriots over the Rams, still far less than the “don’t care” crowd.

One Kansas City politician has a solution to the lack of an NFL team in St. Louis:

City Councilman and mayoral candidate Quinton Lucas told St. Louis television station KMOV that if it comes down to losing a home game, he thinks the Chiefs would be better off trying to build a regional footprint rather than an international following.

“I don’t think it’s just a pie in the sky thing,” Lucas told a St. Louis reporter.

The Chiefs lost a home game to play against the Detroit Lions in London in 2015.

The Chiefs were scheduled to play an away game in Mexico City in 2018 only to have that game moved to Los Angeles due to poor field conditions. They’re scheduled again for an away game in Mexico City in 2019.

Lucas thinks the team would be better off playing across the state than across the world. (KMBC)

Interesting. Given that the XFL plays at a different time of year than the NFL there wouldn’t be a venue conflict. The NFL’s reason for playing a home game abroad is an attempt to compete with football (aka soccer).

— Steve Patterson

On This Day: Fields Foods Opens (2014), Rams Ask To Leave (2016)

A couple of interesting events took place on January 4th in recent years.

Five years ago, in 2014, Fields Foods opened for its first day of business. A red ribbon was cut at an event the night before.  Since then a Tim Hortons opened & closed out front.

Field Foods is set to expand from their original location by adding locations in Dogtown & Downtown West this year.

Three years ago the Rams formerly asked the NFL to relocate to Los Angeles.

The St. Louis Rams, along with the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers, have filed relocation requests with the National Football League, league officials said Monday.

The requests come less than 24 hours after the application period began and sets the stage for a key owners vote on relocation expected to happen next week in Houston. There, owners will vote on which team or teams will be allowed to move to the Los Angeles market in the 2016 season.

The applications will be reviewed this week by league staff and three league committees, which will make a recommendation to owners on the issue.

In a statement on the team’s website, the Rams said, “The St. Louis Rams informed the National Football League today that the Rams propose to relocate to the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. The relocation would be effective for the 2016 NFL League Year.”

The St. Louis stadium task force, which has proposed a $1.1 billion stadium in an effort to keep the Rams in St. Louis, said the Rams’ relocation request was expected. (St. Louis Business Journal)

Eight days later the NFL owners approved the Rams request 30-2.

As recently announced, St. Louis will be getting an XFL football team. Games begin in just 13 months! It’s hard to predict how well the XFL will do financially, if it’ll survive the initial 3 years of funding set aside.

Even though we knew it was coming, it was still a blow when the Rams asked the NFL to leave. As we welcome the XFL next year, and collecting more rent per game, we might look back on January 4, 2016 as a blessing.

— Steve Patterson

Holiday Nostalgia

I’d originally planned to write about retailing, gift giving and such, however, I ran out of time. Instead you get some nostalgic ramblings.

My husband and I are both atheists, but Xmas is an important time for us. It’s about recalling childhood memories, watching favorite movies, and having a meal with family. For us this means my husband’s family (mom, brother, uncle) coming to our loft for Xmas lunch tomorrow.

I love getting to host a holiday meal, this is the 6th Xmas that we’ve had them over. As a kid we’d go to my grandparent’s houses for the holidays. At my maternal grandparents, Mennonites, that meant the men in one room and the women in another (kitchen/breakfast). After we were served, they’d eat. I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen to learn from my grandmother (1902-1982), or hang with my cousin. They never did a tree.

My paternal grandmother’s (1905-1994) house was very different. There everyone was in the kitchen enjoying the company and abundance of food, and her endearing laugh. She always had a huge tree.

Since marrying I’ve learned of traditions in his family, one year I made a traditional German stollen from scratch. His ancestors came here around WWI, fought in WWII.

I hope you have great memories, traditions, and plenty of food. To me, this holiday was never about what it has become: consumerism.

— Steve Patterson

Only One of Four Rams-Related Lawsuits Settled

In writing the recent post introducing the Sunday Poll I goofed. A readers comment left on the Facebook link explains my mistake:

You are mixing up 2 different lawsuits.

The lawsuit you referenced in 2017 is St. Louis City, St. Louis County and the Regional Convention and Sports Authority against the NFL for Breach of Contract for not being honest in their statements as the plans for a new stadium were being developed.

That lawsuit is still quite a while from any determination.

The lawsuit settled this week was a class action lawsuit of Rams Personal Seat License Owners vs. the Rams alone, claiming they had the rights to buy tickets for 30 years. Since the Rams left after 21 years, they asked for their money back and/or the right to buy seats at the new Rams stadium in LA.

The settlement in this suit was the Rams paying back 30% of the amount of the PSL.

In my hurry to finish the post I wasn’t as thorough as usual, my apologies.  After the fact, I’ve done the research I should’ve done earlier.

In September the Post-Dispatch explained four ongoing lawsuits:

• One lawsuit involves future ownership of the Rams’ former practice facility in Earth City, known for years as Rams Park.
• A second involves fans who bought tickets and team merchandise in the final years of the Rams’ time in St. Louis.
• A third is a class-action suit on behalf of thousands of PSL (personal seat license) holders from the team’s 21-season stay in St. Louis.
• The fourth, and biggest of the four, basically challenges the way the Rams, the NFL, and the 31 other NFL teams and owners went about the process of relocating the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles.

It’s the third lawsuit over PSLs that has been settled.

The original PSLs were good for 30 seasons, coinciding with the 30-year length of the stadium lease at what was once called the Edward Jones Dome. As such, they would be good through the 2024 season, but then the Rams moved to LA after 21 seasons in St. Louis.

The suit sought a refund for the unused nine years worth of the seat license fee plus damages, and in some cases the chance to buy Rams season tickets in Los Angeles. Citing a Forbes article, the suit said the average price of the original 46,000 licenses was $2,085 per ticket for a total of about $96 million.

The case itself involves more than 20,000 ticket accounts. (Post-Dispatch)

The other mistake I made was not making the poll question controversial, so the responses were far fewer than usual. The results can be viewed on the original post.

Again, my apologies for these mistakes.

— Steve Patterson

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