One of the reasons why I loved the recession is the creativity of small business owners to get customers coming through the door and filling the empty seats.

This clever idea, from a sports bar owner in Boston, is actually selling season tickets to watch the Red Sox… on television in his bar ?

For a $500 up front purchase price, your sports bar season ticket gets you a guaranteed table and a $25 bar credit each time you show up to watch the game. While not exactly all that enticing of deals when you look at it individually, it becomes a fairly good bargain if you’re a socialite and/or a serious baseball fan since you make your money back after showing up 20 times.

Since there are 162 games in the season, you have the potential to turn a profit on your investment (in terms of beer, hot wings and jalapeno poppers consumed) after 21 games. Looking at it from a purely financial vantage point, I have the potential to double my money after showing up to the bar for 40 games. (Assuming you don’t go over the $25 credit, which will probably occur more times than staying under the $25 credit.)

Of course, there are a few negatives to this kind of deal: many regular season baseball games are played during 9 to 5 workday hours, your wife/girlfriend would probably skewer you for hanging at the bar more than twice a week, etc.

But if you’ve got a group of friends that likes to hangout at the sports bar after work, or maybe you’re in a company with lax rules about how you can spend your departmental “team building” money this year, it might be worth running this idea past your boss or forwarding it to your Human Resources manager.

So what do you think? Clever idea built solely for cheapo companies who don’t want to spring for real season tickets, or a new microtrend that can go mainstream?

Best reads that caught my eye

NPR Planet Money – We Bought A Toxic Asset; You Can Watch It Die

NY Times – Changing Channels, From Cable to the Web

Wall Street Journal – A Star Trader Who Rarely Ever Traded

The Big Picture blog – Vanguard’s Broken Discipline: The Buy & Hold Model [Just for kicks, set your start date in 2000, end in 2009, sell when losses equal 10%, then repurchase after a 10% gain. You'll beat the S&P.]

Frugal Dad – Dividend Investing Supplements Passive Income

Carnivals

Carnivals I participated in over the last two weeks.

Festival of Frugality at Fire Finance

Money Hackers Carnival at Might Bargain Hunter

Twenty Something Finances at LifeTuner

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