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Barry Kahn and his company Qcue found a way to turn the business of selling sports tickets into one that closely resembles that of airlines.  Teams and stadiums will use a price discriminating computer program to raise and lower the price of tickets based on supply and demand on a real time basis.  This is a fancy way of cutting out scalpers and funneling a fuller portion of the cash made off tickets in the hands of ownership.

How will this effect the fans?  100% positively.  Scalpers and ticket agencies already price tickets in a similar fashion as Qcue.  The face value of tickets will be the only thing that changes, not the market price, so the common fan won't flinch or notice the difference.  On top of that, season tickets are already priced based on similar calculations taken at the end of the previous season.  All individual game tickets are based on expected turnout against a specific opponent, on a given day of the week, at a certain point in the season, etc.  So the only effect fans will witness will be that teams start collecting more revenue and start paying more to sign better players.  The Celtics couldn't have afforded to have Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen all on payroll if they hadn't employed a price discriminating scheme for seats the previous season.  And the Red Sox declined to offer Mark Texiera more money because he was asking for too much.  So I say, if ticket prices are likely to remain the same, hire Qcue and let teams benefit.

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