Chargers Fess Up To Ticket-Gate, Blame One Sales Rep

It would appear that our little article poking fun at the San Diego Chargers for trying to sell the Arrowhead Addicts tickets to the Nov. 1 Chiefs/Chargers Thursday Night Football contest has caused quite a stir.

What started as a us having a little fun with our division rivals has ballooned into a national story and has now ended up back on the laps of the Chargers themselves. The story was picked up by Deadspin, Pro Football Talk, Yahoo! Sports and various blogs and message boards across the net. Yesterday morning I received an email from Michael Gehlken, Chargers beat writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune. I spoke with later and he filed a story on the incident late last night, which you can see here, if you didn’t catch it in The Morning Fix this morning.

Gehlken took the story to A.G. Spanos, San Diego’s executive vice president and chief executive officer.

“I totally understand that reaction,” said Spanos, the team’s executive vice president and chief executive officer. “It’s disappointing because we’ve been so aggressive this year with trying to sell to new Chargers fans. We hired 18 new people. We’re launching a season-ticket holder referral program, where season-ticket holders are going to be able to get rewards if they refer a new Chargers season-ticket holder customer.

“We’ve been very aggressive. We’re trying our best to pack the stadium with Chargers fans. This article, it hurt.”

Spanos went on to blame the incident on an “overeager sales rep,” and the Chargers would not comment on whether or not this person was disciplined.

Now that the Chargers have responded, follow-up stories are beginning to emerge.

So what do you say Addict? Who wants to organize a group to go out to San Diego for the game? Wouldn’t it be fun to do our own follow-up on this story by turning the Q into Arrowhead West that Thursday?