As you might have heard by now, the next four Wednesday home games at Skydome have been designated "$2 Wednesdays." All available 200- and 500-level seats in the stadium have been purchased by a company called Expedite Plus at full price; those tickets will then be sold for $2 each. It's a follow-up to the Blue Jays' own recent "stick it to the WHO" event, whereby all available seats were offered (and quickly bought) for $1 each. In addition, thanks to Coca-Cola and Skyservice Foods, all soft drink and popcorn orders will get free refills.

Folks, something rather odd is taking shape here.

First of all, a word about Expedite Plus. I'd never heard of them before now, though admittedly I'm not based in the GTA and their trucks may well be all over the metro area. E+, as its snazzy Website refers to it, is a courier company based in Milton, Ontario that offers "global critical delivery solutions" -- that is to say, same-day emergency delivery services anywhere in the world. I imagine these services cost a bundle.

Anyway, the founder and owner of Expedite Plus is a fellow named Victor Deschenes, and he's quite an interesting read. He's the kind of person usually referred to in the newspapers as a "businessman and philanthropist," and he certainly has the track record to back up the latter part. Deschenes' company has supported the Harbourside Theatre, the Mississauga News Christmas Fund, and the Port Credit Blues and Jazz Festival, to name just three charitable events. He also sponsored the unusual Expedite Plus Stakes at the Fort Erie racetrack in 2001, unusual because it featured a separate $10,000 prize pot for fans and a $15,000 purse exclusively for the vastly underpaid jockeys.

Deschenes himself clearly would make a fascinating profile in a magazine somewhere -- not many 12-year-olds hang out with the mayor of Toronto and live with Mr. & Mrs. John Diefenbaker for two weeks at Stornaway. But enough about Victor –- let’s look at the substance of the promotion itself.

Expedite is buying up all the available 200- and 500-level seats at full price. This means that unlike last time, Rogers is getting full value for its tickets, rather than just $1 (although it bears pointing out that while the Blue Jays got only $1 for many $10 and $15 seats on SARS Night against Texas, they also made $1 on many seats that normally they never would have sold. It's also worth pointing out that while Rogers Corp. presumably took a bath on the $1 ticket buy, the Blue Jays themselves did quite well -- all part of the same company, true, but two different balance sheets). It’s hard to see this as anything but a huge cash inflow for the corporation: as close to an actual sellout as you can get. So this is a win for Rogers.

The fans also clearly benefit: $2 for 200-level seats is a huge bargain, and even for many of the 500-level seats as well. It’s also worth noting, of course, that these four games are against some of the least attractive teams in the majors: the Devil Rays, Pirates, Orioles, and ChiSox. I’m a little skeptical that the team would be offering toonie ducats for matchups with the Yankees, Red Sox and Cubs. But no matter the opponent, $2 for a big-league ballgame is a deal. So the fans win too.

And Expedite? Well, this little stunt will cost them, conservatively speaking, hundreds of thousands of dollars over the four games. Will they make it up in the free advertising and promotion they’ll receive in return? Well, this forum, which gets about 1,000 hits a week, is reading about them for probably the first time, and we’re very small fish in the sports press pond. And according to this article in Friday’s Globe and Mail, other corporations are lining up to replicate this sort of promotion in the future. So it looks like Expedite wins too.

Now the thing is, to mis-phrase J.T. Kirk, I don’t entirely believe in the win-win scenario. I’m a little bit too cynical that way, though I concede that cynicism may well be unjustified here. Deschenes has established that he’s a philanthropist with a proven commitment to the community, and maybe I shouldn’t be trying to connect political dots here. But Michael Grange’s Globe article points out some of the practical risks inherent in this sort of promotion: for instance, if you constantly sell tickets to your product for far less than face value, people will start assuming that your product isn’t actually worth seeing. Richard Peddie of the Raptors and Leafs says as much, though one would think that discounted tickets is not something he’d like to see the Toronto sports fan getting used to.

But that does take us to the heart of the concern here. If the Jays are willing to make tickets available for $1 or $2 on a semi-regular basis, what does that say about the real value of ticket sales to the franchise? Everyone who’s gone to a movie knows that the real profit is at the concession counter, where pennies worth of cola are sold for $3.50 a cup. Is it any wonder that SkyService is giving out free refills of Coke and popcorn at these Expedite $2 Wednesdays? I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure that if someone gives you something for next to nothing, he’s doing so because he’s going to make his profit off you some other way.

I’m certainly not saying that any of this is below board. If the Jays’ new marketers are behind this plan and future corporate-sponsored discount nights, and they can make it work for both the bottom line and the average fan, more power to them. I have nothing bad to say about Victor Deschenes, a man who puts his money where his community commitments are. And as I’ve said before, anything that gets more people in the stands watching this young and interesting team is a good thing.

But I would like these issues to get explored a little more in the mainstream press. Grange’s article is a good start, but while it answers many questions, it also raises others. Is this really about a company pitching in to help Toronto recover from a bad reputation, or is it simply a clever marketing plan? Are the Blue Jays running the risk of appearing minor-league, giving away tickets in Veeck-like promotions and undermining their current and future fan base? Is there maybe a good reason no other major-league sports team has tried this before? A little more transparency on this subject would be appreciated, as would fewer spin-doctor lines like this one, which leads off the official press release announcing $2 Wednesdays:

The Toronto Blue Jays are pleased to announce that another proud Torontonian organization has followed the lead of Ted Rogers and Rogers Communications in a display of civic pride.

I don’t have any answers to these questions, but I think it’s worth asking them. I’d be quite interested in hearing the opinions of this Website’s visitors on the subject.