The Titans organization may have some explaining to do if a report done by channel 5 news in Nashville is indeed true. Reportedly the Titans were giving tickets to scalpers and claiming them to be military donations.
The report claims that the Titans had an agreement with Florida ticket broker Cole Rubin, in which Rubin received the opportunity to box out the scalping competition on in-demand matchups in order to inflate the tickets’ resale value. In return, Rubin bought blocks of tickets to unsexy games, but those tickets technically being “sold” kept the Titans’ sellout streak going, even if no one was actually filling up LP Field to watch the sadness within. As the Tennessean notes, the Titans could trumpet that sellout streak to get more money when cutting local ad deals.
The report also claims that the Titans fudged their accounting to cover up the deal. They allegedly gave Rubin free tickets to preseason games, which were “written off on the team’s books as donations to the military.”
Ticket manager Marty Collins and assistant Tim Zenner reportedly made the arrangement, while executive vice president Don MacLachlan approved it. All three left the team in February; Collins and Zenner were fired, while MacLachlan resigned.
Of course, the Titans are denying that any of this is true. The team is doing an internal investigation. The NFL will only look at the results of the Titans investigation as opposed to doing one of their own.
[h/t Deadspin]