Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Carnage
We mean covering costs of games we can't attend.  |
Makes sense!
That's obviously much more reasonable of an expectation, and I can completely understand why many people would rely on that to justify / afford their tickets, makes total sense.
The only thing I'd say is I'm getting an undertone of the Flames are clearly pricing too high and making a mistake as people observe those opportunities drying up, and I don't think that's actually the case. From a Flames perspective, when the market is vibrant enough that a STH holder can easily break even on the games they don't attend, that likely means that the Flames have undersold their product at the start of the year, because it indicates the market demand is bigger than their supply, given there are line ups of people willing to purchase off market tickets. That's even extrapolated further if STH are able to sell un-used games at a profit.
The goal of any business would be to intersect their demand and supply lines, that's how one maximizes profit (basically, obviously more complicated than that). Calgary is a hockey market, no disputing, and is a big enough city to support the team. So the only two factors really that are going to influence the demand of tickets are Successful team, and local economy going well. Currently the local economy isn't great, and the team isn't a dud, but hardly a success yet. Given that's the case, it's a given that the Flames tickets are going to be harder to move, and is likely an indication that the Flames have potentially slightly over priced their tickets (unless they are actually able to fill them with waiting list clients).
However, it's close to impossible for the Flames to predict demand before the start of a season, because of the wild card that is "team success". True they can know the local economic situation, but they are "betting" on how the team will do in the upcoming year on driving demand. End of the day, for STH what it likely means is in years where the economy and the team is doing well, we probably underpay for tickets based on a supply and demand model. In years where the fate of the team is less sure, and the economy is bad, we likely overpay. In the long run, it likely evens out, and is the only way to guarantee tickets when you might really want them.
All that said, totally understand that peoples individual situations might only allow them to afford tickets when team is good and economy is good because it allows for the money back on sold games.....which is tough to swallow for hard core fans when that situation doesn't present it's self
