Inquirer editorial: Mayor Kenney won't raise $1 million selling Philly's box seats

Most likely Mayor Kenney had a number of ideas when he was merely a councilman that he can finally put into action now that he's the top dog at City Hall. But the fact that he can doesn't necessarily mean that he should.

Three years ago, for example, when then-Councilman Kenney proposed selling the luxury box seats that the city acquired in exchange for helping to fund construction of Lincoln Financial Field and other sports venues, the idea fell upon Mayor Nutter's deaf ears and went nowhere.

That apparently didn't sit well with Kenney, who in some respects had been walking in Nutter's shadow ever since he was a year behind him at St. Joseph's Preparatory School in the 1970s. But who would have thought Kenney would resurrect the box-seats idea so early in his administration?

Kenney said during last year's mayoral campaign that he could raise $1 million a year by selling the box seats for games and concerts. He said he would give the cash to the School District. That sounded plausible. A luxury suite on the Linc's club level for the Sept. 25 Eagles-Steelers game was being offered online last week for $26,875.

But the city doesn't have a website to sell arena tickets. Six months into Kenney's administration, the only luxury seats that have been sold were for Bruce Springsteen and Justin Bieber concerts at the Wells Fargo Center, netting just $23,508. Kenney spokesman Mike Dunn chalked up the dismal earnings to a "learning curve" and unexplained legal issues.

Perhaps the city can do better hawking box seats for Eagles games. Don't depend on that happening with the struggling Phillies or striving 76ers. The bigger question, though, is whether the city should be trying to compete with StubHub at all.

Consider this: New York City, with bigger fan bases, decided in 2009 to sell its box seats at Yankee Stadium and the Mets' Citi Field. It, too, expected to earn $1 million a year. But five years later, the seats' annual revenue was reportedly less than $160,000.

Nutter became the first mayor with a written policy on the box seats in 2008. He was motivated by an FBI investigation into whether his predecessor John Street had traded box seats for campaign support. Street denied the allegation, but the FBI did release a secretly taped conversation in which a Street fund-raiser talked about "selling tickets."

Nutter's policy strictly prohibited using the seats for fund-raising and allowed any city employee to request two tickets in the mayor's box every 30 days. The mayor can use the boxes to entertain relatives, friends, or important city visitors. Both Nutter and Kenney have handed out about half the remaining tickets to schoolchildren and charities.

Perhaps spreading goodwill among the needy, schoolchildren, and city workers is the best use of the mayor's seats.