The Chicago Cubs (and I’m sure your MLB team soon) have created, in my view, a disgusting new concept. What is it? The online auctioning of tickets, and it already has ticket prices skyrocketing. Ticket auctions are here, and your wallet should be afraid.

The Chicago Cubs are testing this online auction on 70 new seats that are right near the Cubs dugout. These 70 seats are being sold via online auction only, with the bidding beginning at $200 per seat. The "lucky" fan that bids must bid on the entire 81-game season ticket, which for starters would be $16,200. The minimum amount of tickets per fan is two, so double that amount to $32,400 for two season tickets.

The rub is that since the Cubs have these seats on auction, there is an online bidding war that has driven the price to over $250 per ticket as of this writing. One of the Chicago Cubs executives told a sports radio station in Chicago that, essentially, one of the interesting aspects of this auction is to determine what the actual value of these seats are.

So, the Cubs fans are actually helping the Cubs do their research, and this auction will establish a much higher price than even the Cubs may have originally determined.

If you think it stops with a few seats and the Chicago Cubs, I have news. This, in my opinion, is the way that MLB, NFL and NBA tickets will be sold, and it may happen sooner than you think. Imagine battling it out via online auction each game. Can’t happen?   

That was actually the original idea of the Cubs for these 70 seats, but they canceled the idea. Conscience got them? Hardly. The Cubs were afraid to take a chance and have a non-competitive team late in the season, thereby making the prices of their tickets free fall. They decided for a nice, safe cash grab while the shine was still on the Cubs 2008 campaign.

So fellow fans, brace yourselves. The NFL, NBA and MLB are, as always, hard at work conjuring up new ideas to separate all of us from our hard-earned money.