Seat licenses part of the Cubs plan

This little nugget was in the Gordon Whittenmyer’s note from the Cubs Convention:

License to bill

A near-certain, unsurprising byproduct of the Cubs’ impending sale is the same kind of seat licenses for season tickets that the Bears imposed after the Soldier Field reconstruction.

The positive, the Cubs say, is fans’ ability to transfer rights to their season tickets to non-family members. Among the negatives: A slow-moving waiting list for season tickets rarely, if ever, budges; and season-ticket holders get the great privilege of paying thousands of dollars for the right to pay thousands of dollars for tickets. What a country.

”A future owner will look at all the possibilities,” vice president for business operations Mark McGuire said. ”That would be one of the things that would be a possibility.”

Read: Count on it.

What may have been a good idea just a few short years ago, could really alienate this team from the paying customers in this economy. When you combine presenting this idea at a fan convention, with this interview, there is little doubt in my mind that most of the people on the non-baseball side of things in the Cubs front office should be shown the door by the next owner. These people don’t value their customers. They take them for granted. That is very very dangerous ground to walk on, for any business.