MILWAUKEE (AP) — The Milwaukee Brewers ran a promotion more than a decade ago offering fans a “timeless ticket” giving them access to any game in the future if they paid $1,000.
Now that the Brewers are in the World Series for the first time since 1982, fans who made this deal are eager to get back the tickets they purchased in 2015. This has led to some complications.
Brewers president of business operations Rick Schlesinger said Tuesday that several hundred fans have indicated they want to exchange their Timeless tickets for a World Series game. Schlesinger acknowledged that “we subsequently made errors in our internal communications about the logistics needed to meet the requests.”
“While we were able to accommodate everyone with seats, we received feedback from some who were not happy with the location of their seats,” Schlesinger said. “Clearly, even with extraordinary limitations on available seats, we have not lived up to the spirit of the program and we have been working on a resolution.”
Milwaukee’s Danny Fochesato purchased a Timeless Ticket on his 27th birthday, planning all along to redeem it whenever the Brewers reached the World Series.
The promotion allowed a Timeless ticket holder to redeem that ticket and become eligible to purchase three additional tickets for that game at full retail price. The offer states that tickets “may be exchanged for the best available seat locations, subject to ticket availability at the time of exchange.”
“In 2015, that was a big selling point from sellers on this,” Fochesato said. “They really touted, ‘Hey, these are going to be the best seats available. You will have priority just behind season ticket holders. Anything season ticket holders don’t have, you’ll have a chance for the World Series.” That’s kind of the story they sold.
It would have worked well when Fochesato tried to trade his all-time ticket to a potential World Series game in 2018, when the Brewers reached the NL Championship Series.
Fochesato said he got four tickets at the 100 level behind home plate that he could have used if the Brewers had made the World Series that year, when they ended up losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 7 of the NLCS.
This time he wasn’t so lucky.
“We had a form, and it only had options of 400 levels or standing room,” Fochesato said. “We couldn’t even figure out what game we had. We just had to indicate which ones we wanted, and then we had to submit the form and just sit and wait for what we got. I was immediately like, ‘No, that’s wrong.’
Fochesato said he negotiated to get three 400-level seats for Saturday’s Game 2 with the Tampa Bay Rays and one lower-level seat in the right corner for Friday’s Game 1.
He said he waited in line for the public ticket sale and found that better seats were available than those offered to him under the Timeless Ticket program.
The Brewers are trying to make amends.
Schlesinger said any Timeless ticket holder who requested World Series tickets before the deadline will now be able to keep those World Series tickets while also being able to keep their Timeless ticket to exchange for another game in a future season.
“We regret our mistake and look forward to welcoming them to American Family Field for their World Series experience,” Schlesinger said.
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