Sort of. The nix usually get some benefit out of them, in the case of the dom post it is free advertising I would imagine.
However with free tickets so easy to come by, you devalue your own product if the people who actually end up using the tickets don't have to pay for them. For every one who does use the ticket, there will be another who won't have got their hands on one this time who wouldn't be willing to pay $28 because they've become used to paying nothing - so they just won't go.
If you ask the business you're giving the tickets to, to sell them as part of a package (e.g "movie ticket and a phoenix ticket for $30" or "Big Mac Combo and a phoenix ticket - $25") then at least those tickets are going to people who have then actively paid for them. So you get the sponsorship without devaluing the product, the business probably makes a little bit for every ticket they sell, and they may even come back to buy more if the package deal is more popular than their free ticket allocation.