super bowl futures

Rick Harmon thinks Super Bowl tickets can be bought and sold like pork bellies. Harmon, who founded the Chicago-based Ticket Reserve to test the idea, has a point. "With tickets to the most-coveted events, the average person believes the suits have taken over," he says.
Well, yes, although the rest of us can feel involved as we indirectly subsidize the tax-deductible corporate schmoozing at big games. The NFL sets aside just 500 pairs of Super Bowl tickets for the public, which are sold through a lottery that drew 35,000 entrants.
Otherwise, fans face prices that can top $10,000 on the $20 billion secondary market for event tickets, where outlets like online ticket brokers now offer Super Bowl tickets topping $5,000.
Harmon, who was a venture capitalist in the oil and gas industries before founding the 20-person company, suggests an alternative based on "a real-time, multi-attribute, bid-and-ask matching engine."
Skybox? It's a guy thing Maytag's $607 Skybox, Fred Lowery says, "is not a refrigerator. It's truly a vending machine." It's billed as the first personal beverage vendor for home use. More specifically, says Lowery, who directs Maytag's strategic initiatives group, it's meant for your "man cave."
He says company research indicates "every guy would like to carve out his own little place in his home. Internally, we call it the man cave. And lots of guys, at some point, would like a vending machine in their man cave."
You don't put money in the Skybox, now listing for $500 on amazon.com and making its debut in retail stores March 1. And it has child-safety locks.
Targeting sports fans, Maytag has licensing deals with various major leagues, NASCAR and 50 colleges to let users pick the team logos featured in the machine's illuminated sign.
That option, Lowery says, was obvious: "When a guy decorates his man cave, he wants to use his favorite team."
— Michael Hiestand Actually, he says, it's nothing new: "It's basically the same engine powering the London Options exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange."
The Ticket Reserve ran a "beta test" with Super Bowl tickets, which it hopes will convince various leagues to use this online market to sell tickets to their big events. On Dec. 1, buyers could get the $200 "certificates" allowing them to pick an NFL team and get the right to buy a pair of $500 Super Bowl tickets at face value — if that team made the Super Bowl. Or buyers could sell those rights until the Super Bowl teams had been determined. Shares for New England Patriots tickets, Harmon says, rose to more than $800.
Ticket Reserve kept the money of everybody whose team didn't make the Super Bowl, and it charged 10% commissions every time a futures contract was traded. It hopes to get leagues to use the market by offering them a cut of those revenues, which is supposed to appeal to leagues that routinely leave money on the table as their big-event tickets are resold at higher prices.
Chicago White Sox marketer Rob Gallas is skeptical.
"Maybe this is the next big idea," Gallas says, "but I doubt it. Sports is supposed to be fun and games. And Cubs and White Sox fans would have a better chance with Lotto."
Memphis Grizzlies marketer Andy Dolich also suggests the sports shouldn't have to grow up. "My reaction is that if you make sports too applicable to the real world, it's not a good thing," he says.
But Ticket Reserve president Peter Roisman, who used to manage pro golfers, sees a new world: "There will be trading for sports futures, just like oil futures."
Fun debt: The NFL will introduce this spring what's billed as the first credit card rewards from a professional sports league.
But people who use the NFL Extra Points cards won't get the usual rewards, such as airline frequent-flier miles. In going into the credit card business, the NFL is trying to lure consumers with stuff nobody else can offer. Consumers who pile up enough points, NFL marketer John Collins says, might be able to cash them in for game tickets or experiences like "breakfast and a film session with an NFL coach."
The NFL will work through its sponsors.
MBNA, a bank paying $96 million over six years, will issue the cards from Visa, paying $300 million over six years, and MasterCard, which has tie-ins with 16 teams. The NFL, Collins says, will get a "bounty" on each member it signs and royalties on spending.
It could add up. The NFL hopes to get 2 million users, spending $7,000 annually, within three years.
The NFL has had so-called affinity credit cards, whose NFL tie-in was simply sporting NFL logos. Collins says those didn't prompt much shopping: "Some people just put them up on their walls."
Run for Greece: You don't need a passport to run in the torch relay for the 2004 Athens Olympics. The global run, hitting 34 cities in 26 countries, will touch down June 16-19 in Los Angeles, St. Louis and Atlanta, all ex-Olympic hosts, as well as New York, which is vying for the 2012 Games.
Nominating forms for runners, due Feb. 23, are available on Suggested "qualities" for runners include knowing "life is not always about winning."
Your money: LeBron James next month becomes the second athlete, after Lance Armstrong, to get his own "signature" Nike wristwatch. The $129 LeBron 1 has touches, such as a marker set at 23 seconds — his jersey number — rather than 25. The dial's design, Nike says, is based on the hubcap of James' Hummer. ... Serious USA introduces this week what's hyped as the first NFL "digital trading cards." The $4 card-shaped CD-ROMs, for 60 players, allow users to find out players' favorite foods and watch him in video clips. Says Serious USA president David Brown on why such cards, sold in Europe, are needed: "Today's generation isn't satisfied with pieces of paper."