Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason14h
This is my biggest gripe as well.
If you check this forum alone, you can get Tues or Wed tickets to a lower demand opponent very cheap. Park in the 5$ lot and each have 1 beer, and the whole night is under $100 for 2 people.
But when the playoffs come, all the fans who don't support the team every night want in on the fun!
I'd be fine to have a lottery where you only get entries from buying regular season games (1 entry per ticket per game you attended) and sell those at the STH price.
But to expect the Flames to lower prices for fans who actually don't support them financially when they are struggling or during non peak games?
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There are multiple posters I could quote but I'm just going to quote this one.
How does the fact that STHs have to sell for less than FV and sometimes less than cost during the regular season relate to playoff prices being outrageous? I'm not sure why you and others seem to think there is some correlation. Especially since if posts on CP are to be believed, the cost of STH playoff tickets barely went up at all and are literally hundreds of dollars below the FV.
Someone posted that their costs is like $120/ticket for whites (?) and the FV is $249. Seems like you'll make back any money you didn't make during the regular season.
You specifically mention fans who don't support the team financially when they are struggling or during non-peak games, but you only referenced not being able to sell tickets on the secondary market, which sounds like you are more concerned those fans wouldn't support you financially, not the flames. If you were concerned about the flames you would have referenced the direct market and attendance figures. Buying off the secondary market doesn't help the flames at all, they have already collected that revenue, it only helps the people trying to sell their tickets.
But I'm gonna get back to STH holders in a second. Let's start with a few other things.
1) Supply and Demand doesn't actually apply here, at least not in the sense a lot of people are using it. Definitely not in relation to the cost of tickets in the regular season as set by the Flames. I'll come back to the secondary market later. That's because the Flames don't lower prices when the team stinks or the building isn't full. So first people really need to stop saying that this is a purely capitalistic supply and demand issue. It really isn't. That's why it can be frustrating. When the team stinks or the weather is bad or the opponent sucks, like a Thurs night game in Nov against Colorado, the Flames don't lower prices. So to say this is purely what the market can bare is false. There is no open market here. Ticket prices only go up, never down.
2) I've already addressed the fact that the Flames aren't a normal business model in my previous post, especially in relation to their attempts to extort public money to help their bottom line. I won't go into detail again but it is worth mentioning why people feel entitled to not have prices double for the 1st round of the playoffs.
3) Describing this as people feeling entitled or that it is their "right" to have cheap ticket is a little unfair - except as it relates to point 2) and my previous post on why the Flames could be argued do owe it to their city to make tickets affordable. This is about regular fans just voicing their displeasure that ticket prices are too high. I don't see why that's wrong.
4) STHs. This one is tough because I definitely don't want to paint all STHs with the same brush, but it is totally wrong of those in this thread (and others) complaining that they are sacrificing during the season and as such feel that the non-STHs have no right to complain.
Being a STH is a risk. In exchange for tickets way, way below face (and often market) value, you have to buy the whole season. Now most STHs that I know, and I was one myself for about 5 years, don't plan to attend 41 games. So what do STHs do? Well we sell our unwanted tickets for a profit to help subsidize our costs. Most seasons I was a STH I was able to attend about 15 games a year for FREE. After I sold the other 25 games for FV, plus what I'd charge the person(s) I took with me (I usually gave them a price below FV but a bit above my cost), I was able to go to Flames games for several years totally for free.
Was it a pain to have to put up several thousand dollars months in advance with no guarantee that I'd be able to sell them? Did it suck to have to sell some games below face or give them away? Sure but I certainly wouldn't complain about it on CP like I was making some noble sacrifice.
I sold all of my tickets on CP. I didn't scalp any of them. And I never just kept all the Friday/Sat/Rival/Original 6 etc games for myself, as several people who sell on CP do. I would sell premium games right along with the Thursday night games in November against the Avs. I'm not saying this because I want to say I'm better than others, it is your prerogative what games you sell. The point is that I was not willing to risk taking a full loss on any of the less desirable games. As such, I made the choice to sacrifice some of the premium games to package them with the less desirable games to ensure all my tickets would sell.
Now, I'm not sure what any of that has to do with the Flames pricing their playoff tickets to non-STHs extremely high and non-STHs complaining about that pricing. But for whatever reason, it keeps being brought up in this thread. Only thing I can think of is that a few of you STHs (who have said as much) feel like it is vindication to be able to make several hundred dollars per game for your sacrifice of taking a loss a few times in the last few years. Otherwise, why do you care that fans are complaining about prices and what does you paying way, way less than we do have anything to do with it?
At the end of the day the STH relationship on CP is mutually beneficial. STHs get to sell their regular season and playoff tickets for a tidy profit (most of the time) and diehard fans get to avoid paying the ridiculous ticketmaster fees. It is really a great thing that benefits us both and having been on both sides of the situation, I'm glad that a forum like CP exists to help fans avoid the rip off that is ticketmaster and other scalping sites. But I never would pretend that me selling my tickets on CP was some noble sacrifice. I was making a profit, a reasonable one and I would never ask the mods to let me sell my tickets for even higher so I could further extend that profit. Before I was a STH I liked knowing I could come here and get FV tickets, even if I knew I was helping subsidize a STHs costs and even if that person was only selling the M-Th games against non-premium opponents, and I gladly reciprocated when I was a STH.
But what I won't do is pretend just because STHs take a loss sometimes on the secondary market, that somehow the non-STHs deserve the insane prices for playoff tickets. I don't think those two things have anything to do with each other. The risk I take as a STH is known to me and I don't begrudge non-STHs for not becoming STHs. No non-STH ever told me I was a whiny entitled brat for being a STH and paying a lower price than they did. And I'll never call them entitled and whiny for wanting playoff tickets to be set at prices that seem reasonable.
Demand does go up during the playoffs and for some STHs I can see how it is frustrating that for parts of the year you could barely give your tickets away, and now you've got friends and family hounding you for cheap tickets, but that isn't what this thread is about. This is about regular fans, who don't have access to season tickets, for a variety of reasons, complaining that the Flames have over leveraged their advantage and have left regular fans out in the cold.
What reason could you possibly have to belittle fans who are upset they can't afford to go? Are you really that bitter that those fans may have not sacrificed their money during the season to go and you had to sell for a small(er) profit or even a loss?
