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Monday, November 23, 2009

You will never see this happen in American sports

Mets fans, take note:
Wigan's players have pledged to refund the ticket price for any of the club's fans who attended their side's 9-1 thrashing at the hands of Tottenham at White Hart Lane yesterday,

. . .

"The club have announced that the players of Wigan Athletic have decided to personally refund every Latics fan who bought a ticket from the DW Stadium ticket office for the match against Tottenham Hotspur," a statement read.

The club captain, Mario Melchiot, insisted that the team will be able to respond to the defeat, but said the fans "must not be taken for granted. We feel that as a group of players we badly let down our supporters yesterday, and this is a gesture we have to make and pay them back for their tremendous loyalty."

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posted by Barry at 11:37 AM Digg this

5 Comments:

  • Barry,

    Did you miss this story from September?

    http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4496615

    By Blogger Tar Heelz, at 2:05 PM  

  • I did.

    but two things strike me as different here.

    first, these aren't professional athletes in the Oregon case.

    second, the players offered to refund all the fans who traveled to London to see the game on their own, without, to my knowledge, receiving any invoices from anyone.

    Would love to Mets' players (or last years Lions' team, for that matter) dig into their own pockets and offer fans even 10% off of their season ticket purchases.

    Will.

    Not.

    Happen.

    By Blogger Barry, at 2:11 PM  

  • I should have probably been clearer about pro v college sports in the headline.

    Don't have the resources to check, but i wouldn't be surprised if, for instance, USF b'ball fans got reimbursed for their tickets back in the early 80s when that program got shut down.

    By Blogger Barry, at 5:23 PM  

  • The Atlanta Hawks offered partial refunds to season ticket holders after a much worse than expected year.

    Also in Atlanta, Arthur Blank cut Falcons ticket prices substantially after buying the franchise as a way of both apologizing to fans for the sad sack play of the team and to at least get people into the seats. Since the team has become a playoff contender, they've gone up again, but he did lower them.

    No, this doesn't happen very often, but it does, in fact, happen. So quit being such a damned Euro-snob. :)

    By Blogger Unknown, at 10:15 AM  

  • Did the players offer to reimburse the fans?

    That's the main point of the story.

    The athletes were embarrassed by their performance.

    Now, granted, it was an away game, so they probably only took 2 or 3 thousand fans to the game. (In European football, visiting teams get an allotment of tickets to sell to their supporters. In US sports, visiting teams usually get a cut of the gate.) So, at 70 bucks or so a ticket, the total outlay was probably under $200,000. Divided among the 18 players in the squad for the game, that's a little over $10,000 each. For players averaging $50,000 a week, it's a significant, if ultimately painless, gesture.

    Find me an example of US athletes reimbursing their fans after tanking, and i'll buy you another beer.

    By Blogger Barry, at 10:23 AM  

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