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The waiting list to buy Green Bay Packers season tickets is notoriously long. By some counts, the list is over 133,000 people long and the approximate wait time to get Packers season tickets is 30 years, but in reality it’s probably much longer.
For example, this guy put his son on the Packers season ticket waiting list when he was born in 1995 and he was 18,945th in line. 22 years later, he was 5,857th. At that rate, it will take his son around 32 years before he can purchase those tickets. So imagine what the wait time is for someone in the 130,000 range on the list. They’ll be dead before their name is finally called.
We put our newborn son on #Packers season-ticket waiting list in 1995. He started at 18,945 on the list. Now, 22 years later, he's at 5,857. pic.twitter.com/Xdo4X5UPxJ
— Jeff Ash (@JeffAshGB) September 14, 2017
35-year-old Matthew McLaughlin has been on that same waiting list for 10 years and he still has more than 70,000 people ahead of him to score Packers season tickets.
So, in a fit of desperation, McLaughlin posted an ad to Craigslist offering to do pretty much anything to jump ahead in line. Literally, anything.
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“Ultimately, and I’m not particularly wealthy at all,” McLaughlin told the Appleton Post-Crescent, “but I figured that I’d put my savings into this if the right person came around and I can’t imagine a better investment than the Green Bay Packers. I’m that confident it would be a diligent and smart use of my resources, even if they’re a bit limited.”
Here’s what he wrote on Craigslist…
Ok, so I’m in the 70,000s after 10 years on the wait list and am beginning to realize that modern medicine isn’t going to get me to 216 years of age (thanks Obamacare). Therefore, I need a different way to acquire season tickets. Here’s how you can help:
1. If you are currently on the wait list and expect to be called up soon (under 1,000), I’d pay you for your spot. In order to accomplish this, I will legally change my name to yours right before you get your tickets. The Packers will have no idea. I’m not joking. I’ve thought about this for a long time.
2. If you currently have tickets and are a bit older, I’d pay you to leave to me in your will. We’d need to craft a story to make it work, though, since the Packers only allow them to be transferred to certain relatives. I’d cover adult adoption fees, if you wanted to go that route. Again, not joking. As your son, I’ll also send you Father’s Day and/or Mother’s Day gifts.
3. If you are single, man or woman, I will marry you and pay all expenses plus additional cash for your inconvenience. Then we get divorced and you can transfer the tickets to me as part of the divorce decree. We can time it correctly so we maximize our joint tax refund too and take advantage of the marriage benefits.
I’m serious about this. I’ll marry and divorce you, change my name to your name, or become your son. Let’s make this happen.
Go Pack Go!
“So far no one has offered to be my dad,” McLaughlin said a few days after posting the ad, “which is disappointing because I was hoping that somebody out there would take the bait on that. I’m a great guy. I’d be a good son.”
For the record, his father passed away years ago. Oh, and he’s currently married, but he thinks he can work around that if someone offers.
“I wrote this and I didn’t tell anybody about it. Yesterday evening I was taking a bath and my wife sent me a link to a Reddit article about this, thinking I would find it funny. She had no idea that I had written it,” he admitted. “…I came clean and she didn’t think it was a good idea we get divorced for Packers tickets. Which kind of left me wondering, you know, perhaps I need to reconsider things in a marriage I thought was perfect. If she’s not willing to divorce me for Packers tickets maybe we shouldn’t be married.”
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