At a time, NFL desperately wants fans to choose to buy tickets to football games, the franchise in Washington nearly made fans less likely to buy tickets to football games. For a change, the latest example has nothing to do with the quality of the on-field product.
Via ESPN.com, the franchise imposed a $50 “envelope fee” for tickets left at will call. And the team already has dumped the policy.
“It was a policy that was implemented to combat scalping at the stadium,” team spokesman Tony Wyllie said. “Our ticket office has historically exercised discretion in enforcing the policy. It is an outdated policy, and we no longer require payment. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
Strangely, the article from ESPN.com doesn’t make it clear that the team already has abandoned the policy. Upon reading the headline and initially reviewing the article, it seems as if the team hasn’t gotten rid of the policy, even though it has.
Even more strangely, the article lists the franchise’s various recent embarrassments, without mentioning the biggest one: An admission by the wife of the General Manager that she posted on Twitter a suggestion that an ESPN reporter obtains information by trading sexual favors, which came after the G.M.'s wife initially denied it.
Then again, maybe none of this is strange. Maybe this is an example of how ESPN will subtly retaliate against the team for the attack on one of its own.