[Note: The Tennessean published an edited version of the piece below. They shortened the version below somewhat, excluding the legislative history of pro-Ticketmaster efforts to regulate secondary ticket markets and a reference to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s brother and owner of the Cleveland Browns Jimmy Haslam, and they made some stylistic changes. Please read it on their website, comment, and/or share on your social networks as you see fit.]

It’s here: the last home game of the Tennessee Titans’ undignified 2014-2015 season has finally arrived. The months ahead will offer a much-needed period of introspection for a frustrated franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game in over a decade. Many ideas for fixing problems on the field will no doubt emerge when the final whistle blows, but I’d like to offer some free business advice to the Adams family: stop estranging fans through your partnership with Ticketmaster, particularly the Ticket Exchange.

The Titans have a 2-13 record going into this weekend’s final regular season contest. Who wants to pay for the privilege of watching a team, bound only for a high draft pick, duke it out in a meaningless contest with the Indianapolis Colts, who clinched the AFC South Divisional Championship weeks ago, in the cold?

There are some die-hard fans, sure. There are people who love an NFL game’s complementary activities: tailgating, cheerleaders, and the like. Then there are people who couldn’t normally afford a Titans ticket, but would be willing to watch a bad team lose to a really good one, maybe simply because it would be their first pro football game.

No thanks to the NFL and Ticketmaster, those folks will be out in the cold this Sunday.

The Titans partner with Ticketmaster to manage secondary market ticket sales through an online portal called Ticket Exchange. There are other online re-sellers like VividSeats or StubHub, but the Titans and the NFL heavily promote Ticket Exchange as the “official” safe, secure alternative to getting ripped off by a scalper with counterfeit tickets. “We’re doing fans a favor,” they suggest.

Well, if you’re a current Titans ticket holder who pre-purchased tickets to this Sunday’s game at regular prices, you might have trouble re-selling your tickets through Ticket Exchange. The NFL Ticket Exchange Seller Agreement says that “In some cases, [Ticketmaster] may restrict the Listing Price [of resold tickets] to a minimum or maximum amount.” By contrast, the Seller’s Reference Guide for the NHL Ticket Exchange, which the Nashville Predators use, lets ticket holders set their own price floors.

When the Predators have played poorly, hockey ticket holders could recover at least some of their sunk costs by re-selling their tickets on the NHL Ticket Exchange at heavily reduced prices. Titans fans may not have that option; they may be forced to try to convince someone that this Sunday’s game is somehow worth the regular price of a ticket before they can offload their seat.

The Cleveland Browns, whose owner Jimmy Haslam has a brother in politics you may have heard of here in Tennessee, recently set a price floor secondary sales. This lower bound makes it less likely that Browns ticket holders will be able to recover their losses on the AFC North’s cellar dweller’s final contest.

To what end do franchises do this? Jimmy Haslam and the Adamses already make their money on primary ticket sales. What good does it do to make it difficult for people who no longer want to attend a game to sell their tickets to people who do?

To boot, Ticketmaster lobbied extensively in 2012 for legislation in the Tennessee General Assembly that would have brought the full force of law to bear on this non-problem. Thank goodness it never passed.

By forcing sports fans into a pointless, all-in proposition to which there is no alternative, especially when there’s no guarantee of a playoff berth, much less a championship, the Tennessee Titans risk estranging their most valuable commodity: their fans. The modern entertainment business model relies not only on revenues from ticket sales to consumers, but also on revenues from the sale of captive audiences to advertisers. It takes quite a bit of hubris to think audiences will keep buying tickets no matter how many times you hold a gun to their head.

“The customer is always right” as a business strategy can expose a company’s bottom line in the short run, and I understand that. But “sit down, shut up, cough it up, and like it” seems like it could do more damage in the long run.