Slashdot Mirror
Favourite Player's Injured? Get a Refund (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Any sports fan will know, or at least appreciate, the disappointment of going to watch your team only to find that a top player has been left out. But what if you could pay an extra bit of money for your ticket -- say, 5-15% on top of the normal price -- and insure the cost of your ticket against such a situation? If your favourite player does not play, for whatever reason, you get your money back. That's the intriguing premise behind Fansure, a start-up currently based in Belmont, California. When I spoke to the firm's marketing manager, Tara Fan, she explained it in the context of a basketball game: "Some tickets are $300-$400 to go to a game. Typically, you're paying that to see someone like LeBron James, or Kevin Durant, or someone like that." It works like this: You buy the ticket as normal. Then, at least 48 hours before the game, you go to Fansure, and you pay them an added percentage. The amount reflects what Fansure thinks is the likelihood of your selected player appearing or not.
Someone like Durant for instance, rarely misses a game for the Golden State Warriors and so the premium would be relatively low. "It would only be, I would say, 8% of your ticket price," Ms Fan explained. "It's like... $30 to cover a $400 ticket. And so that's where the benefit rolls out." If Durant plays, you've wasted your $30, which Fansure pockets. If he doesn't, you still get to go and enjoy the game, and Fansure will refund you the entire amount of the ticket (but keeps the bit you paid for insurance).
Someone like Durant for instance, rarely misses a game for the Golden State Warriors and so the premium would be relatively low. "It would only be, I would say, 8% of your ticket price," Ms Fan explained. "It's like... $30 to cover a $400 ticket. And so that's where the benefit rolls out." If Durant plays, you've wasted your $30, which Fansure pockets. If he doesn't, you still get to go and enjoy the game, and Fansure will refund you the entire amount of the ticket (but keeps the bit you paid for insurance).
This is not gambling, it's just insurance. As a buyer of this "product", there is no way for me to ever come out "ahead".
I buy a ticket for $100. Then I buy insurance for another $10. So I'm in for $110.
Now suppose "my player" is not going to be in the game, so Fansure goes ahead and gives me back the $100 for the ticket, but they keep the $10 premium. So now I've LOST $10.
For it to be "gambling", there has to be some path to come out AHEAD. They'd have to pay the $100 for the ticket, PLUS the $10 premium, PLUS some amount that puts me ahead.
Sure, it is a gamble for FANSURE, as all insurance is. Nothing novel there. But there's just no way this can be considered gambling on the part of the consumer.
Pretty much every form of insurance is not gambling. The idea with gambling is that if things go the way you planned, you come out a winner. But generally with insurance, you don't come away feeling like a winner.
Car insurance: You get into a car accident, and your car insurance pays for replairs. But generally you are still at a loss. You've lost significant time dealing with it. Repaired cars with any significant damage are often not quite the same. When you go to sell the car you are likely to get less for it (and insurance rarely compensates you, fully or even at all, for diminished value. And there's a good chance you'll end up paying more in insurance in the future
House insurance: Your house burns down, and it's a gigantic life disruption. Depending on how extensive the damage and other circumstances, you could be spending more than a year living out of a hotel or rental. Your insurance will pay for a lot of your stuff, but realistically there will be so many things not covered and that you don't even remember to claim. Anything of sentimental value is impossible to replace. It's pretty much impossible to be made whole. In lesser cases, like where you just have a water leak, insurers are fearful of mold so you could end up getting dropped and find your house nearly uninsurable except for the most expensive policies. It can even affect you went you go do sell and the buyer finds nobody wants to insure the house.
Life insurance: If you have a very high value policy, then even with all your expenses incurred it may be possible to come out financially better off...but come on, someone you love has died, which can just destroy your life (especially if kids are invovled...for their entire life they'll never be quite the same). But realistically, in many cases you don't even come out financially positive in the long run when the big money earner is gone from the picture and year after year you chip away at the insurance payout
Medical insurance: Considering the cost of premiums, the only way for medical insurance to not be a negative value investment is to have a lot of medical bills, which generally means someone is pretty sick.
Sports player insurance: I still get to go to the game and still get to enjoy it, but maybe get 90% of my cost of the ticket refunded. And note that unlike other insurances, here I was already happy to pay 100% of the value to do that. So this is really like a positive value return when the insurance kicks in (as opposed to all the above examples, where you pretty much always lose out)