Toronto Ticket Scandal May Have Cheated Maple Leafs Fans and Players

Five days ago, Rick Westhead of The Toronto Star broke news about a scandal within the Maple Leafs' parent company Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. Citing "ticket irregularities," a senior executive resigned and five other employees were fired. Today, Westhead defines those "irregularities" as MLSE employees allegedly pocketing money from the resale of personal seat licenses that cost as much as $30,000:

When the Air Canada Centre opened in 1999, MLSE charged $15,000 for personal-seat licenses for 1,500 platinum-level seats (along with a $2,500 annual fee). Buyers got the first chance to buy tickets to concerts; reserve seats at special restaurants; access a business centre at the Air Canada Centre, private washrooms and a coat check; and also the right to resell their licenses.

Yet within two years, MLSE executives realized they had missed an opportunity to make millions of dollars more by selling PSLs for other sections of the arena. They offered season-ticket holders in lower-priced sections a chance to buy PSLs for their season tickets, which in some cases had been in families for several generations but which were becoming harder to transfer. "MLSE had become very strict about the transfer of tickets," said a former MLSE executive. "It used to be that you only had to say you wanted to transfer seats to your cousin, and it wasn't a problem. But now the company's attitude is you have to prove you're a direct blood relative with a birth certificate."

How big can this scandal get? Both the police and the NHL Players Association would like to know the answer to that, too.

The theory put forward by an unnamed source in the Star is that "if season-ticket holders wanted to turn in their non-PSL seats it might have been possible for agents to resell them to buyers willing to pay more than the base rate for PSLs, with the agents keeping some of that money." I'm no Ralph Nader, but I think that kind of price-gouging embezzlement is typically frowned upon.

Westhead reports that the Toronto police fraud unit had contacted MLSE to see if any criminal activity had taken place, and that NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly plans to ask if any of the money skimmed off the PSL sales should have gone to the players -- you know, the ones who get 54 percent of all hockey-related revenue under the new CBA.

You hate to kick a giant media conglomerate that's mismanaged a hockey franchise into depressing levels of embarrassment when it's down, so instead here's the bottom line in this scandal: Personal Seat Licenses are the devil. They've been the devil since the Carolina Panthers told fans they were essential to the region getting a franchise right through the moment when high-school football teams started making tax-paying team parents ante up for PSLs. They're a pure money-grab, and an affront to what should be a fan-friendly relationship between sports franchises and their most loyal customers.

Not that MLSE has exactly been endearing itself to fans lately...