NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Tennessee Titans -- in an effort to keep their claims of a sellout streak alive -- entered into a business deal with a professional scalper, NewsChannel 5 Investigates discovered.
With fans now excited about new quarterback Marcus Mariota, that once-secret ticket deal raises serious questions about what fans have a right to expect at the ticket office.
"To me, it raises credibility questions -- do Titans fans have the ability to buy the best seats?" said veteran sportscaster George Plaster of Nashville's 102.5 The Game.
On paper, every single Tennessee Titans game has been a sellout for the last 16 seasons, through a downturn in the economy and an equally dramatic downturn in the team's fortunes.
Plaster has often joked that "one of the biggest frauds in sports is this Titans sellout streak -- I mean who is kidding who?"
He said that all you had to do was look around the stadium and all the empty seats to know that the Titans' official claim for "paid attendance" -- 69,143 for every game -- was suspicious.
"Why the Titans designed the strategy to continue to say 69,143 is beyond me -- because anybody could look and see and realize this is just simply not the case," he continued.
To keep the sellout streak alive -- and avoid a blackout of the team's games on local television -- our investigation discovered the Titans essentially went into business with ticket broker Cole Rubin.
Rubin is a ticket broker out of Boca Raton, Florida, who runs a company that boasts it can help teams "eliminate unsold inventory with innovative strategy." He also claims to be one of the biggest customers of StubHub, the ticket resale site at the center of the national debate over ticket scalping.
The ticket deal was hammered out by former Titans ticket executives Marty Collins and Tim Zenner, with the blessing then executive vice president Don MacLachlan.
MacLachlan told NewsChannel 5 Investigates that the ticket office strategy was to make Rubin "the main guy" for scalping the Titans' tickets. The goal was to eliminate other brokers who "cheapen the market." The ticket office staff was "trying to up the value" of Titans tickets, MacLachlan said.
"Rubin," he added, "was trying to reduce some of his competition" at the Titans' stadium, LP Field.
Marty Collins, who was senior director of ticketing for the Titans, told NewsChannel 5 Investigates that, in return, Rubin "bought tickets to help sell out the games that were a challenge in the last year or two."
While the people interviewed differed in their stories about when the relationship with Rubin began, they described a business deal that intensified for the 2014 season.
Rubin did not return NewsChannel 5's telephone call.
"It's incredibly hypocritical," said Chris Grimm, executive director of the Fan Freedom Project. That's an advocacy group that fights restrictions on fans' tickets.
That's because the Titans prohibit ticket scalping around the stadium, the team claims the right to keep fans from transferring their personal seat licenses (PSLs) to ticket brokers and it pushes the NFL TicketExchange as the only safe place for the resale of tickets to Titans games.
"They're cutting secret deals with these same guys," Grimm said. "They are in bed with ticket brokers to increase their own profits. So it's not just hypocritical, it's deceptive."
As part of the deal, according to the former team executives, the Titans gave Rubin free tickets to preseason match-ups, like last season's Green Bay game -- match-ups that were reportedly written off on the team's books as donations to the military.
The Titans also sold Rubin tickets for the more popular regular-season games, like last year's home opener with Dallas -- tickets that Rubin could scalp to Cowboys fans.
In return, the ticket broker agreed to take a portion of those profits and buy tickets to less popular games -- at a substantial discount.
MacLachlan says the team was also quietly offering discounts to youth and church groups, insisting Rubin "didn't get something that other groups did not receive."
"Why is somebody in Boca Raton getting a discount?" asked George Plaster. "I've been a season ticket holder from day one -- I've never gotten a discount."
And Plaster questioned why he's been seeing fans from opposing teams increasingly showing up in prime sections of the taxpayer-funded stadium.
"Could one person buy two from somebody who did not want to go? Sure. But rows and rows of 50-yard line seats? That's hard for me to believe."
In fact, the former Titans executives insisted that many other teams in the NFL are also quietly cutting deals with ticket brokers.
Rubin reportedly claims to have relationships with 22 different NFL teams.
In a written statement, the Titans acknowledged: "As an organization we employ many strategies to maximize ticket sales, including ticket brokers from time to time. Most professional sports teams do also."
Chris Grimm, the Fan Freedom executive director, said: "The teams are trying to consolidate whose buying their tickets to just a few select brokers, and we are believe that they are trying to work out arrangements to fix prices."
Still, the Titans said the team's own internal audit uncovered what it described as "irregularities" in its ticket operations.
Marty Collins said, "I think those were the two main concerns, was [Rubin] getting complimentary tickets possibly and/or discounted tickets."
As a result, the Titans let Collins and Zenner go -- and MacLachlan, after a number of other complaints over the fan experience, also got the ax.
Plaster said, "I think somebody is going to have to address, look, whatever happened, this is not who we are, this is not what we stand for and going forward you won't be having these kinds of stories."
As to Don MacLachlan and Marty Collins, they said their employee, Tim Zenner, was the one who had the most dealings with the ticket broker.
Zenner declined to comment.
But his attorney insisted that every aspect of the deal with Rubin was officially sanctioned.
"Mr. Zenner only did what he felt was in the best interests of the Titans organization and what he was told to do by his superiors," said attorney Ed Yarbrough.
Here is the statement from the Titans:
After a regularly scheduled internal audit of ticket sales after the 2014 NFL season, we noted irregularities in our own ticket operation. These issues led to an internal investigation, which confirmed these irregularities. We took immediate corrective action, including informing the National Football League and Metro Finance and the Metro Sports Authority, hiring independent accounting professionals to conduct further audits, instituting new and better controls to prevent future occurrences, and restructuring our Ticket Office. We are continuing our investigation to verify the initial findings and make certain nothing has been overlooked.
As an organization, we employ many strategies to maximize ticket sales, including ticket brokers from time to time. Most professional sports teams do also. We also offer, for example, ticket resale services through TicketMaster. Resale of tickets to NFL games is a common and accepted practice. To the best of our knowledge, no ticket broker was a participant in any of our internal ticket policy errors.
We give away hundreds, if not into the thousands, of tickets annually for the specific use of the men and women who serve us in the military and we will proudly continue to do so. The fact that some tickets were falsely designated as military comps on an internal report during a past season can never diminish the esteem in which we hold our servicemen and women, the high regard in which we hold their duty and sacrifice, and the fact that we will continue to provide our military with complimentary tickets throughout each future Titan season.
Our organization prides itself on principles of integrity and we place a premium on our partnerships with the Metropolitan Government and the Sports Authority. We remit between $2.5 and $3.0 million per year in user fees to Metro. We have previously informed Metro Finance and the Sports Authority that as soon as our secondary investigation is concluded, we will promptly pay any additional sales taxes and user fees that result from the findings. As we have said in multiple public hearings over the years and in our private communications with Metro Finance, we are always prepared to be audited at any time and for any time period in connection with ticket sales and related sales and use taxes and fees. With respect to this issue we have always been transparent and will continue to do so. For example, we have agreed to work with Metro Finance going forward to independently certify user fee receipts by audit. This is not and has never been an issue for Titans.
Many terms are used to describe total attendance, but our total attendance is a function of two sets of tickets: tickets sold and tickets given away on a complimentary basis. Our total attendance figures are based on total tickets distributed for each game and is consistent with our policies and NFL policies. We pay the user fee to Metro based on tickets actually sold, as opposed to tickets that are given away—to our employees, our players, to the military, and to other guests. The user fee was designed to benefit the stadium and to help defray Metro’s expenses associated with the upkeep, maintenance and refurbishment of the building. We support the concept of the user fee and collect it for the benefit of the Metropolitan Government for tickets sold. It is to our benefit and to the benefit of Titans ticket buyers and other users of the building to maintain one of Metro’s greatest public works. The notion that we would not collect and remit the user fee on sold tickets is false. The user fee works to Metro’s benefit, Titans benefit and to the benefit of every user of the building.
We have paid the tax due on every single ticket we have ever sold since it went into effect in 2009, as we have for every other event. Any suggestion or statement to the contrary is false.
