I Love This Move By The Wizards Ticket Office Using Ernie Grunfeld's Firing To Sell Tickets

(Washington Post) – It was Valentine’s Day, but Alan Pyke wasn’t feeling much love for the Washington Wizards. Pyke used to go to about 10 games a year but hadn’t been to Capital One Arena to see his favorite basketball team in nearly two seasons.

The Wizards had lost by nine in Toronto the night before. Point guard John Wall reinjured his Achilles’ tendon, sidelining him for the rest of the season plus much of the 2019-20 season, too, almost 10 days earlier. Pyke missed the Wizards, but even friends couldn’t give him tickets now, and the team certainly couldn’t sell him any.

But while he was walking home from work that afternoon, a Wizards saleswoman called and offered tickets anyway. He politely declined, but moments after he ended the call, he dialed her back.

“Grab a pen and take this down,” he said. “As soon as they fire Ernie Grunfeld, I’ll be at the next home game.”

The Wizards parted ways with Grunfeld, the beleaguered team president, on Tuesday, and moments after the announcement went public, Pyke’s phone rang.

It was the ticket saleswoman, holding him to his word. He purchased seats to the game against the San Antonio Spurs on Friday. It was part of a spontaneous celebration of Grunfeld’s departure after 16 years.

“This is the least [the Wizards] could do,” Pyke said.

“It kind of feels like we won a title,” said Ari Neugeboren, a 20-year-old college student from Bethesda. “The saying, ‘Better late than never’ applies here.”

Another season ticket salesman emailed Ben Kussin-Shoptaw, a graduate student in Baltimore, after the Wizards announced Grunfeld’s departure.

“According to our system,” the salesman wrote, “the last time you spoke to a rep here you said that you would only be interested in some sort of ticket package once Ernie Grunfeld was let go. I am not sure if you saw the news, but he was let go earlier this afternoon. I wanted to reach out and see if you had any interest in some of our ticket options?”

For Kussin-Shoptaw, it’s too little too late. He can’t justify the schlep from Baltimore to the District just to see a basketball team with a now-competent front office, he said.

Man do I love this story, mostly because it hits close to home. You see 10 years ago my first job coming out of ASU was to sell season tickets for the Colorado Rapids of the MLS. It wasn’t even one of the cushy ticket sales jobs either, I’m talking Inside Sales. The lowest of the low on the totem pole. Maybe some stoolies reading this blog currently live that life for a respective sports league, or maybe you’re just in sales in the business world, but you know what a grind that is. My day consisted of “making” 100 phone calls a day to people who went to one random game years prior in hopes of convincing them to buy season tickets. Hell, MLS season tickets were like $180 at the time and it was still nearly impossible. It’s why to this day I will always have respect for anyone in that grind.

When you have a job like this you probably use some sort of CRM system that tracks everything. I think the Rapids used GoldMine or something like that (sorry if this triggers anyone). Basically this is where you dial whatever contact info is there and put all your notes of whatever bullshit the person told you was the reason they didn’t want to buy. Sometimes we would all fake dial and just write

“4/3 – VM”

to make it seem like we couldn’t get a hold of the person. It’s a ruthless job I’m telling you. There’s only so many times you can hear the words “fuck you stop calling”, so sometimes you have the person give you a scenario like the one above that’s fun in nature, but is also sort of fuck you. No Wizards fan ever thought Ernie would be sent packing so I get why something like that was said. But they forgot that as ticket reps you’re just looking for anything to plug into the system. You’re damn right every single excuse you’ve ever told a ticket rep is written down so they can have the receipts for that one day it’s time to collect and your hands will be tied. If I were a betting man I would imagine there were a ton of Wizards ticket reps that cleaned up since this news broke, even if it’s just single game ticket purchases because chances are the Grunfeld excuse is something they heard all the time.

In the ticket slinging game there are no rules, it’s basically the wild wild West.  You grind and grind and grind thinking of anything you could possibly do to hit your numbers. When you’re doing it for a team that stinks it’s even harder, so I love what the Wizards are doing here. Sure it’s a little messed up to be using someone’s firing to your own benefit, but Grunfeld did so much to hurt that franchise over the years it’s only right the franchise gets to have their revenge and profit off his demise.