PANTHERS REVOKE PSLS OF THOSE WHO DIDN’T BUY PLAYOFF TICKETS

Many Carolina Panthers season ticket holders received letters in the mail from the team recently. It wasn’t a thank you note and a promise to have great success in 2009, but a note informing them that their personal seat licenses were being revoked because of a failure to purchase playoff tickets. The owners of the PSLs have been given the opportunity to pay a reinstatement fee, $228 in one case according to the Charlotte Observer. If they don’t pay by Friday, though, they can wave goodbye to their tickets and to the money they spent to buy the PSLs in the first place. The Panthers are acting within their rights because the agreement with PSL buyers requires them to purchase playoff tickets. Those who didn’t pony up knew there were consequences. That said, it’s a requirement which seems to fall outside the bounds of the PSL arrangement. Teams justify asking people to buy PSLs by marketing them as assets which can make you money over the long run. The only thing they can actually sell as part of the come-on is the right to buy preseason and regular season games because those are the only things they’re actually able to guarantee. Playoff tickets are a bonus, one that most PSL owners will only be too happy to buy, but a bonus shouldn’t be a requirement. PSL owners should have a right of first refusal on playoff tickets with the team getting the right to sell them to the general public if the owner passes.