Chicago’s Wrigley Field has erected screens on top of their outfield walls to prevent residents from watching the game from nearby rooftops. Some local business owners have even gone so far as spending big bux to install bleachers on their rooftops and sell tickets!
Even though the Yahoo story doesn’t mention the petition, I’ve just watched the story on CNN and they said that some business owners were circulating one on the grounds that the screens are unsightly or obscure their view. View of what, I’ll bet the petition does not say. If this isn’t stealing, I don’t know what is. People watching the game without having paid for it are stealing, plain & simple.
Yeah, especially when its on broadcast TV. Seriously, why would anyone want to pay to see a Cubs game? I mean, you already know what the outcome’s going to be!
People who see the game without paying for it are stealing? What the hell?
And any satellites that happen to snap pictures from overhead must be stealing too. And anyone nearby who hears the crowd roar and deduces that something nifty happened.
No.
You don’t pay to see the game. You pay for admittance to the stadium while the game is on.
Of course, I’m not in favor of abridging the stadium owners rights to put up screens either, I just want to weigh in on the “no, it’s not stealing” camp.
I suppose that every person that happen to stroll onto the outdoor mezzaine platform of the 7 train’s Shea Stadium station during New York Mets games are thieves too.
Top paragraph, not stealing, I think it’s cool. Bottom paragraph, maybe still not “stealing”, but it doesn’t quite sit right either. Of course, the screens apparently don’t block the view from there anyway…
I also got a nice chuckle out of this:
Who woulda guessed that you might have traffic and fans in your neighborhood when you live next to Wrigley Field?
Stealing may not be the right word, but people are making a lot of money off it, rents in those houses are absurd if I recall correctly. Isn’t Bud even paying to rent one??
Wrigley/Tribune has the right to do what they want, within reason. The screen they put up is not an eyesore. What it accomplishes from what I’ve read and heard is not a whole lot. It’s just the people who were getting something for free can’t now and they’re mad. Too bad. Buy a ticket if you want to see it, go to Murphy’s, or turn on WGN, aren’t practically ALL the games on tv?
Then again, anyone willing to watch the Cubs all these years should get some perks…
IANAL, but it seems to me that there might be an issue of promissory estoppel here – the practice of watching the action at Wrigley from nearby rooftops has been well established over many years of dismal baseball. My first trip to Wrigley was 30+ years ago, and it was an old practice even back then.
The people who own those buildings, having bought (and probably paid through the nose for) them presumably for the benefit of hosting rooftop viewings relied on the (probably implied) promise that the Cubs’ management wouldn’t crack down. Of course, these owners didn’t buy the buildings from the Cubs, Wrigley, or the Tribune, but at least one definition of promissory estoppel includes third-party promises.
