Super high prices for Bowl visitors
Ken Alltucker and Dawn Gilbertson
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 24, 2008 12:00 AM
No matter that the airfare topped $1,000 and requires a detour through Tucson. Or that the rental-car tab for two days was above $400.
The New York city chefs who called travel agent Charlene Ocone-Pecora this week to book a trip to Phoenix for the Super Bowl just cared about seeing their New York Giants.
"They're die-hard fans," the owner of 4 Seasons Travel Bureau said. "It (money) is just not an issue."
Passionate fans planning a last-minute trip to Arizona to watch the New England Patriots battle the Giants in Super Bowl XLII can expect some sticker shock.
A sampling of prices shows airline fares from Boston and New York have quadrupled over the past week. Some rental-car prices have more than tripled. And some suburban hotels are charging as much as six times a typical weeknight rate.
Plan to cruise to Scottsdale clubs in a rented Cadillac Escalade or have a chauffeur guide you around in a stretch limousine? Expect to pay up to double the amount you would pay seven days later. Organizers of Super Bowl XLII predict Arizona's economy will be the ultimate winner of professional football's championship game, with as many as 125,000 visitors looking to spend millions to book rooms, rent vehicles, shop and party with celebrities.
Still, some fans are surprised by the cost of attending the big game - or even of hanging out in the metro area where the game is to be played.
"The prices in Phoenix are ridiculous right now," said Tom Bielenda, a Boston-area resident and Patriots season-ticket holder. "The rooms that are available are going for five times the price of what they are worth."
Money no object?
Hotels, airlines and other tourism businesses are betting money is no object for plenty of fans booking last-minute trips.
Major resorts set their rates several years ago when they committed their rooms to the NFL, most at levels not sharply higher than regular rates this time of year. The steep price increases mainly can be seen at smaller and independent hotels.
The new Comfort Suites hotel in Goodyear, open just a few weeks, is advertising in New York newspapers, offering room rates starting at $600 a night. There is a four-night minimum. Regular rates start at $179.
"We were just looking to see what the market will bear," said Nena Gourlay, director of sales.
She said most callers haven't balked at the rates, which many of its competitors are also charging.
"If anyone has made any calls, they know that you're not going to get your standard rate for the Super Bowl," she said.
A new Courtyard by Marriott near Avondale and the Hyatt Place in downtown Scottsdale each ran ads this week on the Boston section of popular Web site craigslist.org. Hyatt Place offered $699 a night with a four-night minimum, while the Courtyard is going for $599 a night with a three-night minimum. Their standard winter rates are $199 a night and $229, respectively.
Airlines are also taking advantage of the Super Bowl supply-demand imbalance.
Fares on US Airways.com jumped up appreciably after the Patriots-Giants matchup was decided Sunday night.
Round-trip tickets on peak time non-stop flights from Boston, already higher than normal from early bookings by confident Patriots fans, jumped from as low as $700 last week to more than $2,700
The most expensive leg of the trip is Monday, Feb. 4. Many flights out of Phoenix to Boston, New York and other major cities are already sold out that day, forcing travelers to stay longer or fly out of Tucson or other cities. The airline is trying to bring in larger planes to add more seats.
"The one day that everybody wants to leave is obviously the day after the game," said Wallace Beall, managing director of revenue analysis for US Airways.
Big business
Car-rental companies and limousine companies this week are busy fielding calls from corporate customers, groups and individuals searching for ground transportation to the Super Bowl.
The Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group has supplied its rental locations at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport with additional cars in anticipation of Super Bowl week. It has raised its rates, too.
Dollar Rent a Car charges $107 a day to rent an economy car such as a Chevrolet Aveo during Super Bowl weekend. Two weeks after the Super Bowl, the same car can be leased for $41 per day.
"It is supply and demand and looking at what the competitors do," said Chris Payne, a spokesman for Tulsa, Okla.-based Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group. "It is very much like the airlines in that respect."
January and February is traditionally a busy period for limousine and shuttle companies such as Scottsdale-based Transtyle and SuperShuttle, which runs the ExecuCar sedan service in Phoenix. Add in a Super Bowl and the FBR Open, and the companies are scrambling to take orders.
ExecuCar is bolstering its fleet of limousines and shuttles with more vehicles. The company will charge $575 for a six-hour minimum to drive football fans to University of Phoenix Stadium on game day. The normal rate: $325 for six hours.
"We have to charge a premium for the game for two reasons," said Dave Bird, SuperShuttle's senior vice president of operations. "The traffic is going to be horrendous, and we have to buy a ($165) parking pass."
Budget-savvy fans
Some fans have avoided the supersize costs by planning ahead.
Bielenda, of Boston, arranged his Super Bowl plans in September on a hunch his beloved Patriots would make the big game. He'll skip Phoenix-area hotels due to high prices and the crowds associated with Super Bowl week. Instead, he booked rooms in Las Vegas and Sedona, with plans to drive to Glendale on game day.
"I got a better price for a room in Sedona than I could in Phoenix," said Bielenda, a Patriots season-ticket holder since the mid-1990s.
Rick Ardis, manager of Ardis Travel in the Giants' hometown of East Rutherford, N.J.,said he hadn't booked any Super Bowl trips as of Wednesday.
"Unfortunately, it's out of the price range of most of my customers," he said. "They're just stunned."
Ardis said the budget buster for most fans isn't sky-high airline tickets or hotel prices but the price of tickets to the Super Bowl. Fans who didn't win their team's season-ticket lottery and don't have NFL or corporate ticket connections face ticket prices in the thousands.
Tickets are going for $3,000 and up on sites like stubhub.com and ebay.com. The lowest package prices he could find started at $5,000 per person, and they didn't include airfare.
Some see the high prices for flights, rooms and services as capitalism run amok.
"They think because it is the Super Bowl, they will spend an unlimited amount of dollars," said Robert Tuchman, president of New York-based TSE Sports & Entertainment.
He expects many fans will look for cheaper rates over the next week, prompting hotels to adjust pricing. "The truth is, people will turn away, and they will find an alternative. Come a week from now, they may be slashing their rates in half when they don't sell the room."
Arizona has no anti-gouging laws, even though Attorney General Terry Goddard has called for such legislation to protect consumers.
The Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee helped arrange a minimum number of rooms for the National Football League. Beyond that, it's not the host committee's job to try to control costs for visitors.
"We can't tell business what they can or can't do," said Bob Sullivan, president of the host committee.
Sullivan warns the NFL, the National Collegiate Athletic Association or organizers of other major sporting events will scrutinize a host city's costs before deciding whether to bring future events here.
"They are not going to want to do business in communities that take advantage of the consumer to such an extent that it does not make the experience a pleasant one," he said.
Copyright (c) 2008, azcentral.com. All rights reserved.
Who Do You Have in the Ninth?
People treat their vote like a bet at the horse races and the media and politicians love it!
by Gary Wood
(Libertarian)
Ahhh, the ponies, have you ever spent a day at the racetrack watching the thoroughbreds run? You grab the racing forms, check out the picks from the expert odds makers, study the lines and lay down your bet for the winner. If you're a Chalk Player you wager on the favorites in any given race and you know the odds are in your favor at the start of every race. The horses begin the parade toward the starting gate and someone near you says there is a horse that looks pretty or I sure like the colors that horse is wearing and they go to bet on that pretty plug horse as you shake your head in disbelief, what a waste of money. Yet, from time-to-time, you are caught in amazement as the plug turns out to be the winner and the silly bet returns large rewards.
Many people enjoy the thrill of betting on sporting events. In every event there are favorites and long shots. Most are not willing to bet on the long shots, there is something in our nature that shouts to us not to waste our money on betting our hearts or betting on a long shot. At the same time we find ourselves often cheering for underdogs and when an underdog wins, even if we didn't bet on them, we quietly smile and think maybe we should have just this one time.
The experts are always ready with their picks and they have the best information to substantiate their picks. Look at the preseason polls in college football this year alone. Every sports show broadcast before opening day had the justification for picking the best of the best while giving little attention to the rest. This season the best have fallen week after week, leaving the experts scratching their heads in disbelief. That's why we play the game, after all, and it is exciting to watch. The buzz turns from the best to the Cinderella teams that have risen to the occasion if only for one game. Simply stated, you just never know.
Still we turn our attention to the facts and figures that scream what should be happening, who should be winning. When we step to the window to plunk down our dollars we are drawn by that voice that calmly reaffirms our need to pick the winner, the obvious winner, and so it goes at sports books and racetracks all over the world.
This mentality bleeds over into an event that is far more important than anything happening in the sports world. Every year we face the voting booth at some level and enter the polling booth to cast our votes for candidates who will represent our views, our desires. Yet, we are trapped in a sporting event mentality not wanting to waste our vote, wanting to be able to say we voted for the winner rather than we voted for the one we thought would represent us well.
We follow the experts and listen to the odds developed by the early polling data. We gather our information as if we were betting on a horse race rather than voting on the future of our nation, State or community. Time and again we hear an expert cry to the masses that a vote for one candidate or another is merely a wasted vote, thrown away like a poorly conceived monetary bet on a plug horse. We are swayed away from someone we think may represent our views and instead convinced they have no chance so we cast our vote for the odds on winner, we become nothing more than Chalk Players in a political sporting event.
Politics are not sports; this is not the time to take on the wagering mentality we use for betting on players, horses, or teams. There is never a wasted vote unless it is the vote that goes unused. There is never a wasted vote unless it is a vote for a candidate you do not fully embrace but simply select because, after all, they are the front runner, the odds on favorite and better looking than the other horse in the race.
Politics are filled with experts who understand the sports betting mentality and play on it with skilled perfection. There are many media talking heads, party politic leaders, and pollsters ready to convince voters not to waste their votes no matter what their heart or mind may say. There is a mountain of statistics and data to prove which candidates must receive your vote for they are the favorites. Chalk Players continue to cast votes based on this expert analysis and after the race, even when your candidate wins, there is often regret if the changes you want never reach fruition. Politics are not a sporting event; your vote is never wasted, if you cast it based on your beliefs of who the best candidate is to represent you.
Will your candidate always win if you do bet your desires? Perhaps not yet from time-to-time they do, if you are brave enough to break free from the sports betting mentality played on by the leaders who truly don't care what you do. Don't select your candidate the way you select your horse, select your candidate based on the beliefs in your heart rather than the expert's polling advice. The future of your nation, State and community depends on your vote while the future of the horse depends only on the jockey and the ride and not on your bet.
(c) 2008 Gary Wood, all rights reserved.
RGA Refutes State Monopoly Claims
By Staff
The Remote Gaming Association has been quick to discount claims made late last week by the European State Lotteries & Toto Association (ESLTA) that state gaming monopolies are necessary to prevent corruption in sport.
The ESLTA stated that 'uncontrolled expansion' of online sports betting is at least partly responsible for recent attempts to influence the outcome of sporting events but Clive Hawkswood, Chief Executive Officer for the trade organisation, responded by saying that these allegations were being used to prop up a failing case for European monopolies.
ESLTA's comments were released following news that the Union Of European Football Associations (UEFA) is investigating up to 26 incidents of betting related corruption.
Hawkswood stated that reputable private betting operators were regulated to the same standard as state monopolies, if not better, and that it was the betting companies themselves that would be the victims of match-fixing.
"Furthermore, all our members will collaborate with the competent authorities on any case of alleged match-fixing," said Hawkswood.
"The integrity of sports is of fundamental importance to all betting operators because they provide our core products. Wherever possible we are committed to working with sporting authorities to address any problems which arise and that will continue to be the case."
Copyright OnlineCasinoNews.com
Europe rigging scandal
Patrick Sawer and Andrew Alderson in London
December 3, 2007
A TOP-level police inquiry has been launched into multimillion-pound match-fixing allegations involving some of Europe's biggest national and club teams.
More than 20 games are being investigated after concern by UEFA - the controlling body for European football - that they were targeted by Asian betting syndicates. One of the countries whose teams might have been involved, it was reported, is Croatia, who last month knocked England out of the Euro 2008 tournament by winning at Wembley. The matches under scrutiny include one Euro 2008 qualifying match and several Champions League, UEFA Cup and Intertoto Cup matches. UEFA's report is understood to focus on strange "betting patterns" on the games in question.
The UEFA report lists 15 matches it suspects might have been fixed this season alone. There are also reports that a further 11 games were rigged in the 2005-2006 season. The games in question, it has been reported, mostly involved teams from eastern and south-eastern Europe - including Croatia, Bulgaria, Georgia and Serbia.
UEFA has prepared a 96-page dossier and handed its evidence to Europol, the European Union's criminal intelligence agency. Police forces in several countries will be asked to help the investigation. In recent years, the expansion of international competitions has increased the number of "minnow" nations and smaller clubs taking part in major tournaments. Players earning low wages are likely to be more susceptible to taking bribes to "throw" matches.
The Europol inquiry follows an unrelated City of London Police investigation into allegations of corruption in English football, which resulted in the arrest last week of five men, including the Portsmouth FC manager Harry Redknapp, who denies any wrongdoing.
Several match-fixing allegations have been aired during the past two decades involving many sports, notably football and cricket. More recently, tennis players have been accused of deliberately losing games for betting syndicates.
Bruce Grobbelaar, the former Liverpool goalkeeper, was at the centre of match-fixing claims in 1994. He and three other defendants were charged with conspiracy to corrupt, but were all cleared in 1997 after two trials in which the juries could not agree a verdict.
A UEFA spokesman said on Saturday: "It is correct that we are currently investigating 15 matches in co-operation with Europol."
Graham Bean, the former head of the English FA compliance unit, said the affair could become the biggest of its kind in the international game.
"These are exceptionally serious allegations," he said. "Clearly for UEFA to pass this report across [to the police] they must have evidence of some kind, perhaps as a result of betting patterns, or individuals telling them what they know. This is potentially one of the most serious things that has ever happened in world football."
Last week UEFA opened an investigation into the Intertoto Cup match between Bulgaria's Cherno More and Macedonia's Makedonija on July 7, which Cherno More won 4-0. The Bulgarian club denied any wrongdoing.
The scandal may have come to light after a memorandum of understanding between UEFA and the online betting agency Betfair, in which it promised to alert the governing body to any unusual betting patterns.
Telegraph, London
Copyright (c) 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.
Athletic board extends sports betting ban for all UW officials
By: Devin Rose /The Daily Cardinal
The UW Athletic Board voted to prohibit any UW officials from betting on sports events.
The UW-Madison Athletic Board unanimously voted Friday to comply with an NCAA rule, which prohibits UW top officials from engaging in sports betting.
According to revised NCAA bylaws, these top officials include university chancellors, presidents and athletic board members.
Walter Dickey, a UW-Madison professor and board chair, said the board expanded the previous wager ban for athletic department staff and student athletes to include those who have "oversight responsibility over athletics."
"We decided to be explicit about the fact that it does bind the athletic board and passed our own policy [of the NCAA rule]," he said.
Dickey said officials might have been conducting office pools for various sports tournaments, which are no longer allowed under the revised policy.
Peter Dykstra, a student member of the board, said the rule was adopted out of compliance with the NCAA and not specifically for any incident that occurred.
NCAA bylaws define sports wagering as "placing, accepting or soliciting a wager of any type with any individual or organization on any intercollegiate, amateur or professional team or contest."
The ban applies to any practice or competition in a sport that the NCAA conducts, championship games, and also applies to bowl subdivision football and emerging sports for women. Fantasy leagues are prohibited as well.
However, traditional wagers between institutions, such as the struggle with the University of Minnesota's football team for Paul Bunyan's axe, are still allowed.
"There are some instances where you may not have to pay anything to enter into a contest, but if there's a prize involved, that's still a reward [which is not allowed]," Dykstra said.
All Content Copyright (C) 2007 - The Daily Cardinal Media Corporation
Sports Recap
Monday, October 15 2007 @ 06:45 EDT
Contributed by: Chase Johnson
Ohio State has been here before, leading the Bowl Championship Series standings. For second-place South Florida, it's another breakthrough in a season full of them. The Buckeyes and Bulls held the first two spots in the first BCS standings on the season released Sunday. The top two teams in the final standings released Dec. 2 will play in the national title game in New Orleans on Jan. 7.
With a cold rain falling, Josh Fogg shut down Arizona's bats in his first postseason start and Yorvit Torrealba hit a tiebreaking three-run homer to fuel the Rockies' 4-1 victory Sunday night in Game 3 of the NL Championship Series. MVP hopeful Matt Holliday also homered as the wild-card Rockies took a 3-0 lead with their 20th win in 21 games, a streak that has taken Colorado from afterthoughts to the buzz of baseball.
The Green Bay Packers (5-1) won despite an off day from Brett Favre, who became the NFL's career interception king with an errant pass picked off by Redskins safety Sean Taylor in the third quarter.
Indiana made a strong statement Sunday that it has enough tolerance for secondary NCAA violations under men's basketball coach Kelvin Sampson to ensure his job status, but it will make sure Sampson and any members of his staff pay for violations with their bank accounts and their ability to fully do their jobs.
George Steinbrenner's sons Hank and Hal have taken over the daily running of the New York Yankees, according to a report. The New York Post said the details about the control of the franchise will be ironed out at top-level meetings the Yankees are holding this week in Tampa. According to The Associated Press manager Joe Torre's status for next season will be decided during discussions starting on Tuesday morning.
By hiring Dusty Baker as their next manager, the Cincinnati Reds have made a pronounced change in philosophy, turning to an outsider to run the team for the first time in 18 years. The last time they did it, they won a championship. The Reds confirmed on Sunday that Baker will become their next manager. Baker, who has a three-year deal, will be introduced at a news conference Monday in Cincinnati.
Lorena Ochoa clinched her second straight LPGA Tour player of the year award with a runaway victory Sunday in the Samsung World Championship. Successfully defending her title in the elite event, Ochoa crafted a closing 6-under 66 in what began as a pressure-packed final round. The title was her seventh of the year and 16th overall.
Nine days after he was crowned homecoming king at Lake Fenton (Mich.) High School, Eli Florence died Sunday afternoon at his home. He was 15. Eli became the emotional center of attention in the Flint, Mich., suburb and beyond when, on Oct. 5, five of his friends at Lake Fenton High -- four football players and a golfer -- opted to forgo their own chances to be the school's homecoming king and agreed as a group to honor the terminally ill sophomore and former teammate.
Notre Dame might use its third starting quarterback of the season when the Fighting Irish face No. 13 USC on Saturday.
Ernie Els took his record tally of World Match Play titles to seven with a 6 and 4 drubbing of Argentina's Angel Cabrera in Sunday's final at Wentworth.
Andy Murray tried to clarify remarks he made about corruption in tennis on Sunday, two days ahead of his scheduled meeting with ATP officials about the comments he made last week. "I never said once that players fix matches and that players were directly betting on matches," Murray said. "I did say that there was a lot of betting in tennis." On Tuesday, Murray said that "everyone knows it goes on" after several other players said they were offered money to throw matches over the past months.
Russia's Elena Dementieva gave herself an early birthday present when she crushed Serena Williams 5-7, 6-1, 6-1 to win her first Kremlin Cup title on Sunday.
Double world champion Kate Ziegler of the United States broke her own 800-meter freestyle short-course world record on Sunday -- her third world record in 48 hours.
Copyright (c) 2007 TV Sports Daily
All part of the beautiful gaming
October 2, 2007
A friend over from the United States remarks on the ubiquitous, in-yer-face advertising of gambling websites at Premier League grounds and asks if that is something that we, the English, are comfortable with. It is not a bad question to ask in a week when it was predicted that British punters will lose 10 billion gbp in 2008.
Nor is it a bad question to pose when at least two well-known managers in Britain have been known to struggle with gambling habits that stray dangerously close to addiction and players, including England squad members, continue to bet big sums on their sport in defiance of regulations.
Or at a time when Tim Henman, hardly a man to shoot his mouth off, talks about match-fixing in tennis as a fact of life and when basketball in the US - hence my friend’s concern - is reeling from the shock of a senior NBA referee staking money on his own games in one of the worst scandals to hit sport either side of the Atlantic.
Temptations will always be dangled and they will always be grabbed, particularly in a vulnerable sport such as tennis, where lowly ranked players can be nobbled with relative ease. These outbreaks are not a reason to prohibit gambling and in any case - as the US Government has been discovering with its legal challenges to online betting - that is the sort of battle that Canute tried to win.
But there is a difference between accepting the existence of gambling and allowing it to be flaunted across our football grounds and through our televisions. There are reasons why we should feel discomforted by the garish billboards and why we should be asking if sport should be such a powerful advertising vehicle for the gaming industry.
New legislation introduced last month allowed televised commercials by gambling companies for the first time, but only after 9pm. That watershed was introduced for a good reason - so children cannot be targeted - and yet there cannot be a 12-year-old in the country who has not been bombarded with adverts at Premier League grounds or England matches.
This has all happened without so much as a murmur from the FA and the Premier League. Indeed, in their representation to the Gaming Commission, they could not find any reason why gambling companies should be stopped from plastering their logos on the replica shirts worn by children, expressing concern that to do so may reduce the sport’s income. It was only late in the day that the law was tweaked so that eight-year-olds would not be walking advertisements for gaming companies.
It does not have to be this way. The French have outlawed all advertising of online gambling services within football grounds, which includes the players' shirts and hoardings. But then France does not have a Government that seems less concerned with policing the gambling industry than making sure that it gets a piece of the action.
Ours has scrapped the 24-hour "sobering up" period before anybody can join a casino and, while plans for a Manchester supercasino are on hold, 17 others are proposed for towns such as Middlesbrough and Swansea. It has been billed as a regeneration programme, although building a casino in working-class towns seems a strange way to attack social deprivation.
It is about as sensitive as flashing up those adverts around Old Trafford in front of Wayne Rooney, who racked up 700,000 gbp in gambling losses. Or West Ham United going into partnership with an online casino despite several of their players requiring treatment for addiction.
Like the Government, the football authorities talk of tighter controls, but the evidence is scant. The new legislation makes it a criminal offence for footballers to trade insider information, but you can take it from me that the vast majority of the players do not know the law has changed, never mind obey it.
There is much talk of the "memorandums of understanding" between regulatory organisations such as the FA and the betting exchanges, but the flow of information is strictly limited. So are successful prosecutions.
When Harry Redknapp moved from Southampton to Portsmouth, a staggering 16.7 million gbp was wagered on Betfair. A lot of people seemed to know something was up, but after months of investigation the FA came up with nothing.
The harm may have been limited to individual wallets, but the stench it left hardly inspired hope that the truth will come out in more serious instances, such as the investigation into Nikolay Davydenko's recent defeat by Martin Vassallo Arguello. About 3.4 million gbp was staked - ten times the typical sum for a second-round match at the Poland Open - before Davydenko withdrew because of injury.
The gaming companies say that they have the checks to spot unusual activity and yet we are told that as many as 130 tennis matches since 2003 are under retrospective investigation.
Now tennis is said to be discussing with the gaming companies how it can profit from the wave of betting, which brings us to the central contradiction.
Sport is fixated as never before by corrupting influences and yet, at the same time, it has never been more eager to take every pound in revenue from the bookmaking industry. At this rate, it cannot be long before Paddy Power is inscribed on the Centre Court grass at Wimbledon.
(c) Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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