Sharks to Fans: Continue Bending Over
May 19th, 2008, 8:40 am
So grier gets the season ticket holder pack a couple of days ago, and lo and behold, the Sharks have raised ticket prices again. Not that much of a surprise I guess, but the real surprise is that it was over 10%. Again. We are in section 124, and our first year, 2005-2006, we paid $54/seat. Now, for the upcoming season, we will have to play $67- a 25% increase in only two years. Factor in the roughly $500 I paid for playoff tickets, and we’re talking well over 3 grand a year. I guess I can’t give my wife any crap for shopping now.
Because of this blog and my burgeoning radio career (which don’t exactly offset the cost), I’m almost obligated to renew. I suppose I could move upstairs, but as my mother has often said, a luxury once sampled quickly becomes a necessity. Also, we like the people we sit with, and I’d hate to ditch them. There’s really only one reason why SVSE raised prices- because they could. The market will bear it. I think the games last year were about 98% full, and there’s enough elasticity in the market to handle another 10% increase.
The thing that smarts almost more than the price hike is the fact that the Sharks were 27th in the league last year in payroll, and over $5M below the league average. Only Columbus, Nashville, and Phoenix spent less. That’s not going to change. So for our extra ten percent we’re likely to see some players run out of town (or not re-signed) because the Sharks don’t want to spend to the new cap limit, around $56M. I can imagine some very testy questions being posed tomorrow night in the Ice Insights discussion.
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Hasn’t the cap grown at about the same rate?
This doesn’t quite seem like a chicken-and-egg discussion, but if you’ve got to overpay players to come to your team, then you raise ticket prices, then the league sees more revenue (cap goes up), then players get more, so you’ve got to “overpay”. Or does it start with the league seeing more revenue?
The answer to your first question is no- the cap has grown more– about 43%. If the Sharks raised prices strictly according to the cap increase, I’d be paying about $77/ticket.
As to your second point, It is a bit of chicken-and-egg discussion, to be sure. But it’s not as tied to salaries as you think. If you look at the top 10 team valuations reported by Forbes, the percentage of gate receipts to overall revenues is at or less than fifty percent. Corporate money is at least as responsible for growing league revenues. Which is why teams like Nashville are in so much trouble- the TV revenue slice is tiny, and they need big corporate sponsors to have positive cash flow.
I’d say the raising of prices is partially due to what the market will bear, and partially to keep up with the Joneses. Thank God we got cost certainty, huh?
As a Leafs fan, I’m going to have to go out on a limb here and say… Suck it up Sharks Fans.
We have to pay a lot more than $54 a seat to sit in the 100 level (well over twice that much in fact). Actually to be entirely honest, the only time I’ve ever sat in the 100 level to see a hockey game at the Air Canada Centre was to watch a St John’s Maple Leafs Calder Cup playoff game against the Provedince Bruins like 5 years ago.
You also actually get to watch a decent team night in and night out. We on the other hand get to watch the skating train-wreck that is the Toronto Maple Leafs.
I understand that rising ticket prices might bother you a bit, but you have a long way to go before you’re in the upper tier of prices. In fact, San Jose is well below the NHL average for ticket prices. So “bend over” is a bit extreme… more like “pony up for the fact that we’ve produced a contender for the past 5 years straight.”
I guess it was just a matter of time before I got a dose of cold, hard reality. Toronto does have the highest NHL ticket prices though, yes?
Although the same sport, the popularity and scrutiny of hockey here and in Toronto are quite disparate. I’d almost equate the loyalty (or lunacy) of Leafs Nation with Raider Nation or 49er Fanaticism. If I were a member of those, I’d be paying at least twice what I’m paying for Sharks tickets to sit in a stadium with 3x the seats. Anyway you slice it, and whatever sport is doing the cutting, $100 a ticket is a hell of a lot of money.