Preseason - should tickets be full price?

[sean_miller]

Last season a hockey fan in Calgary voiced his opinion during a call-in show that he didn't like paying full price for a ticket when the most of the top payers from both teams were not playing. Pat Steinberg was apalled by the comment (he's a company guy), and cut him off. Someone tried to agree with that caller later and he refused to take any more calls with that type of negative comment. I agreed with the caller. Why would you charge me more for a playoff ticket, recognizing that a more meaningful game is worth more, then charge me regular season prices for a meaningless game that's barely more entertaining than an intersquad game.

The NFL preseason featured sketchy play by a lot of players not destined to be on the roster. Do people who attended an NFL preseason game feel they got their money's worth?

[Golfingdad]

I look at it another way.

First of all, I think that people who go to pre-season football games are either a) season ticket holders, b) friends or colleagues of season ticket holders who got the tickets free or cheap, c) somebody who bought them on stubhub or ebay from a season ticket holder, or d) a crazy person.

And, if you figure that the season ticket is sold as one big entity - you have to buy all 10 games if you're buying a season ticket - then it doesn't really matter what the price on each ticket says.  If all 10 tickets say $100, or if the eight regular season games say $110, and the 2 preseason games say $60, you are still paying $1000.

On the face of it though, yes, it would be hard to make the argument that a pre-season game was "worth" the same as a regular season game.

P.S.  Sean, I hope you are planning something big four posts from now???  (Whoops, shows my math skills ... I was reading 9696 as 9996.  Doh!)

[zeg]

I agree, but it's easy enough to remedy by market forces. If you're not willing to pay the price, skip the game. There's not an objectively fair price, except what the market will bear.

The thing that I would complain about is when a team that has locked up its playoff situation decides to throw away the rest of its regular season games by resting/protecting its starters. This happened a few years ago with the Colts. Anyone who had paid ahead for one of the last couple games got screwed out of actually seeing an honest competition. Unlike the preseason games---which you know when you buy the tickets are just warm-up/exhibition---ticket buyers were misled into paying full price for a joke game.

[sean_miller]

I guess it's moot now with the lockout, but CHL hockey is still going to be played and we're (my daughter and I - she's 6) really getting into local high school football. She likes the cheering (a bit loud at times) and the demographic of the crowd (very young people as opposed to those who can afford full price NHL tickets). We're looking forward to the local college volleyball and basketball seasons too. This year's NHL lockout could be the best thing for our local minor sports teams!!