Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

This season, Xavier, Villanova, and apparently 3 other Big East schools have signed a deal with "Let's Move Down".

LMD is a smartphone app that allows the schools to sell seat upgrades to its fans AFTER the arena doors have opened, yes even late into the game.

The idea is supposed to be, you are stuck in the Bob Eucker seats (upper corner, above the rafters, behind a support column, and the players look like ants, and you can't even see the scoreboard clearly. ) You look down and see some sweet unused seats lower level center. Prime real estate that is usually the domain of big money donors and season ticket holders., You think "Let's Move Down" , but know instead of sneaking down and hoping the usher doesn't see you, or the seats rightful owners come along, causing some akwardness, you can pay the app some money in the form of an upgrade, and the venue sends you the tickets for those seats direct to the app.

That's how they say it works.

Xavier had Lets Move Down enabled for the exhibition game Saturday. On Xavier Hoops we were sort of laughing at it. Let me explain. The official posted price for the exhibition game was $20. Season tickets were face priced at $19.

One distinquished poster curious about the LMD app looked up available seat upgrades, it offered him - the empty seats in the row right in front of him. The upgrade fee was $30/ seat. Mind you that's $30 on TOP of the $19/seat he paid for the original seats. So for $49 total he could sit one row closer, for a game that the posted admission price is $20. In my mind, charging somebody above face price for a seat is known as SCALPING. Yet, LMD and Xavier were willing to sell these seats for 250% of face ($49 rather than the posted $20 price) Yes, the prices go down as the game goes on, I think he could have upgraded for $20/seat with 11 minutes left in the game

It gets worse, he could have "upgraded" from lower level seats to upper level sides - for an $18 upgrade fee. The only upgrade there would be vertical direction from the court, as in UP.

(Note:Ticket Scalping is legal in Cincinnati)

So the schools are selling certain seats twice? Or are the ones being up sold, just ones that were never purchased? It would seem like most good seats are already sold even if they aren't always occupied.

Marquette will be using this starting friday

What schools are using this?

How can this possibly work?

Does the original ticket-holder have to someone convey that the seat is "available" to be sold to somebody else? Otherwise, how could LMD actually know whether that seat will be occupied later? How does LMD even know it is not currently occupied?

Does the original ticket-holder then get a "cut" of that "upgrade" fee? If not, then why would anyone actually agree to participate and "sell" his or her seat, regardless of whether planning to use it?

What happens if someone has a seat in the third row but is running really late? Can he/she indicate to LMD that the seat is available and "sell" the upgrade, but then still come and get in the doors with his/her original ticket? And if so, what happens when he/she complains to an usher and can show the actual ticket and there's suddenly a conflict?

This doesn't seem very workable. But if a number of schools are doing it, I'm curious to hear about it.

I think it works like this: if you know you can't make the game you put your seats up for sale and the school and LMD gets a cut. If they haven't sold the tickets then the school makes all the money on an upgrade.

redmen9194 wrote:What schools are using this?

I read GU is using this.