Fair, Unfair, and the 2020 Ryder Cup
The Ryder Cup pits 12 of the best golfers from the U.S. against 12 of the best golfers from Europe. It takes place every other year, and each time, it switches continents; in 2020, it’ll be in Wisconsin. In 2022, Rome. For those fans who can’t afford the money or the time off work to travel across an ocean, the Ryder Cup is a once-every-four-years event.
More than a year ago, my brother and I registered for tickets. Last week, we both got emails like this:
Yesterday, we were in the lobby right when it opened and were randomly assigned places in a virtual line. For almost an hour, we waited, watching our progress bar barely move, as our hope became desperation then despair. Finally, we got the notification: All match-day tickets were gone.
We weren’t the only ones who missed out.
I was frustrated too. I thought getting tickets was a lock; it’s a golf course, after all: a 560-acre expanse of land. It seems as though there should be enough for everyone.
On the other hand, though, the Ryder Cup is a global event that, again, is closer in scale to the Olympics or World Cup than even a major golf tournament like the U.S. Open. Of course demand for tickets is going to be high. When demand is high and there’s a fixed number of tickets available, not everyone is going to get one. That’s Economics 101.
Why the complaints, then? Why the attacks on this system that a) advised people in bold, red letters that they might not get tickets …
… and b) allotted places in line randomly to pre-registered people?
How people conceptualize “fair” fascinates me. This passage (emphasis mine), from Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, is revealing:
We studied public perceptions of what constitutes unfair behavior on the part of merchants, employers, and landlords. Our overarching question was whether the opprobrium attached to unfairness imposes constraints on profit seeking. We found that it does. We also found that the moral rules by which the public evaluates what firms may or may not do draw a crucial distinction between losses and gains. The basic principle is that the existing wage, price, or rent sets a reference point, which has the nature of an entitlement that must not be infringed.
It is considered unfair for the firm to impose losses on its customers or workers relative to the reference transaction, unless it must do so to protect its own entitlement. Consider this example:
A hardware store has been selling snow shovels for $15. The morning after a large snowstorm, the store raises the price to $20. Please rate this action as: Completely Fair; Acceptable; Unfair; Very Unfair
The hardware store behaves appropriately according to the standard economic model: it responds to increased demand by raising its price. The participants in the survey did not agree: 82% rated the action Unfair or Very Unfair. They evidently viewed the pre-blizzard price as a reference point and the raised price as a loss that the store imposes on its customers, not because it must but simply because it can. A basic rule of fairness, we found, is that the exploitation of market power to impose losses on others is unacceptable.
The following example illustrates this rule in another context (the dollar values should be adjusted for about 100% inflation since these data were collected in 1984):
A small photocopying shop has one employee who has worked there for six months and earns $9 per hour. Business continues to be satisfactory, but a factory in the area has closed and unemployment has increased. Other small shops have now hired reliable workers at $7 an hour to perform jobs similar to those done by the photocopy shop employee. The owner of the shop reduces the employee’s wage to $7.
The respondents did not approve: 83% considered the behavior Unfair or Very Unfair. However, a slight variation on the question clarifies the nature of the employer’s obligation. The background scenario of a profitable store in an area of high unemployment is the same, but now
the current employee leaves, and the owner decides to pay a replacement $7 an hour.
A large majority (73%) considered this action Acceptable. It appears that the employer does not have a moral obligation to pay $9 an hour. The entitlement is personal: the current worker has a right to retain his wage even if market conditions would allow the employer to impose a wage cut. The replacement worker has no entitlement to the previous worker’s reference wage, and the employer is therefore allowed to reduce pay without the risk of being branded unfair.
It’s not that the Ryder Cup actually was unfair; it simply allowed fans’ expectations to surpass reality. In reality, we all had maybe a 50% chance of getting tickets through the Ryder Cup website. In our minds, however, those chances were much higher.
Now ideally, tickets would be allotted according to how much each person would appreciate attending the Ryder Cup or how much they “need” to be able to see it.
Perhaps some diehard golf fan out there could tell a gut-wrenching story about how he watched last year’s Ryder Cup alongside his dying father. His father’s final wish could have been, “Son, I want you to go to the 2020 World Cup and pour a beer out for me.”
Surely that fan should get preferential access to tickets, right?
Ah, but say a man and a woman met one night last year at an airport and immediately fell in love over their golf fandom. They agreed: If their relationship was really meant to be, they would meet at noon at the 18th Green on Sunday of the 2020 Ryder Cup.
Everyone has a heartrending story, or will come up with one when pressed, for why they deserve a ticket. Who or what could possibly decide which story is more worthy? It seems to me that how much money you’re willing or able to spend on a site like Stubhub is about as fair a system as there is.
What we’re left with, then, is this: The complaints are not about an unfair or deceitful system. The complaints are from people about a system that didn’t work for them.
If you enjoyed this story — and even if you didn’t — you should check out my book, Ticketless: How Sneaking Into The Super Bowl And Everything Else (Almost) Held My Life Together.
