Interesting Ticket Charts of the Day

[RonCo]

Compiled off of StatsPlus data...make of them what you will?

[jleddy]

Everything looks copacetic, at least in terms of inverse relationships and basic supply and demand principals, but that HUGE drop in average attendance in 2037 is bizarre...what's up with that?

[crobillard]

Everything looks copacetic, at least in terms of inverse relationships and basic supply and demand principals, but that HUGE drop in average attendance in 2037 is bizarre...what's up with that?

So that was my first offseason back in the league and if I remember correctly, that was when a topic was revisited about ticket prices and revenue in the league. I think Ted or Ron wrote the original article basically saying increase your prices dummies because while you'll take an initial hit, it will increase your revenue eventually. I think ticket prices in Edmonton were something like $8.25 or something ridiculous like that when I took over the team in 2036, so I took the advice to increase my ticket price to $15.00 (or so) seriously. If several teams did the same thing, the league would see a pretty large overall drop in attendance.

[RonCo]

Ted wrote a piece on the forum, and justin had a bit in the media guide.

[jleddy]

I remember reading the forum post and media guide article...didn't know it was directly related to the 2037 dip. Just seems rather drastic.

[RonCo]

Here's what i see...ticket prices went up about $2 on a $16 basis in 2037, and attendance fell about 300,000 heads per team in the year. That seems like a natural event to me. All total, though, ticket revenue edged up, though until last year it wasn't quite record setting.

[CTBrewCrew]

Everything looks copacetic, at least in terms of inverse relationships and basic supply and demand principals, but that HUGE drop in average attendance in 2037 is bizarre...what's up with that?

So that was my first offseason back in the league and if I remember correctly, that was when a topic was revisited about ticket prices and revenue in the league. I think Ted or Ron wrote the original article basically saying increase your prices dummies because while you'll take an initial hit, it will increase your revenue eventually. I think ticket prices in Edmonton were something like $8.25 or something ridiculous like that when I took over the team in 2036, so I took the advice to increase my ticket price to $15.00 (or so) seriously. If several teams did the same thing, the league would see a pretty large overall drop in attendance.

Thats like an 82% increase in one year! Yeesh How did that impact ur bottom line innthe first season?

[crobillard]

Everything looks copacetic, at least in terms of inverse relationships and basic supply and demand principals, but that HUGE drop in average attendance in 2037 is bizarre...what's up with that?

So that was my first offseason back in the league and if I remember correctly, that was when a topic was revisited about ticket prices and revenue in the league. I think Ted or Ron wrote the original article basically saying increase your prices dummies because while you'll take an initial hit, it will increase your revenue eventually. I think ticket prices in Edmonton were something like $8.25 or something ridiculous like that when I took over the team in 2036, so I took the advice to increase my ticket price to $15.00 (or so) seriously. If several teams did the same thing, the league would see a pretty large overall drop in attendance.

Thats like an 82% increase in one year! Yeesh How did that impact ur bottom line innthe first season?

Dropped from 2.9 mil in attendance in 2036 to 1.26 mil in 2037. Total revenue went from $78.8 mil in 2036 to $88 mil in 2037. $8.1 mil of that in 2037 was a decent playoff run. 2038 I won the Landis and grew to 3.08 mil in attendance with $131.1 mil in total revenue, $21.8 mil coming from the playoffs. Last year dipped down with poor performance for most of the year and then selling off assets that I wasn't going to resign. 2.36 mil in attendance and $106.23 mil in total revenue with $3.6 mil coming from the playoffs. I'm a big supporter in increasing ticket costs, even for a small market, low FI team like mine.

[RonCo]

I've been doing a lot of work on this topic this AM. Edmonton is an interesting case, and doesn't actually match a lot of others because of that Landis run.

Here's data I've pulled out of StatsPlus...(the "+" categories are relative to the year previous)

Edmonton's 2036-2039:

Team	Year	Ticket Prev	Wins Prev	FI Prev	Ticket+	Ticket Now	Win Now	FI Now	Win+	FI+	Att+	Gate+	Budget+
EDM	2036	7.8584	65	42	-0.3721	7.4863	64	44	-1	2	-25314	-1278654	-5000000
EDM	2037	7.4863	64	44	10.3091	17.7954	96	47	32	3	-1635792	808400	35000000
EDM	2038	17.7954	96	47	-2.1981	15.5973	93	60	-3	13	1812344	25484372	0
EDM	2039	15.5973	93	60	1.8639	17.4612	83	44	-10	-16	-716311	-6769455	4000000

2036: The team was coming off a 65 win season, and had a Fan Interest of 42. Over the season, prices went down $0.37. The team didn't do anything on the field and lost $1M in ticket gate from the previous season.

2037: After wining 64 games and with a 44 Fan Interest, the team raised its rated through the roof ($10.30 increase). This was accompanied by, however, a 96 win season. Despite winning 47 more games, the ticket price drop kept people from coming to the park to the tune of losing 1.6M in attendance (gate revenue was up $800K, though). Fan interest increased only 3 points. From other things I'm looking at, I'd guess a much lower price would actually have been beneficial to the build (maybe a $2-$3 increase rather than a $10 one), but in the end, Edmonton powered through this because...

2038: Now we're talking. A Landis winner is a big assed deal, and you see it in increased attendance that blows the door off the stadium (a 1.8M increase that essentially recovers last two season's losses. I note, though, that the Edmonton average ticket price also dropped $2.20 over the year--which is a nice goose. I note also that Edmonton's Budget (which got pushed $35M in the off-season prior, did not budge in 2038-2039.

2039: Fresh off the Landis, and with a rising 60 fan interest, the front office bumps average ticket price up $1.86 (to $17.46). They then proceed to lose 10 more games, drop 16 of those fan interest points, and see a reduced ticket reveune stream of $6.77M.

NOTE: I'm not including playoff revenue in the conversation because I'm moderately sure that playoff revenue will not affect budget in the following year.

---------

I agree that if you win a Landis, you can get away with mega-price increases. But Edmonton is really unique in the group I'm looking at in that you see no other low-win, low-FI teams that rise up and win a Landis. Most other examples I'm seeing suggest big price increases (more than $2 in a season on average) are fraught with risk.

[RonCo]

Here's Vancouver over the same years...they are interesting because their fan interest has been middle 50s (fairly low), but their prices have been fairly high. Note how ecah time they drop their prices, they make a lot more money and therefore gain future budget, and how each time they raise prices, they lose attendance, gate, and budget.

Note here: "Budget+" is a hard item to relate directly to the situation because it is dependent upon last season's non-playoff revenue that is then adjusted by off-season events that this study can't capture).

Team	Year	Ticket Prev	Wins Prev	FI Prev	Ticket+	Ticket Now	Win Now	FI Now	Win+	FI+	Att+	Gate+	Budget+
VAN	2036	18.5456	61	59	2.6843	21.2299	69	54	8	-5	-847851	-12179001	-11000000
VAN	2037	21.2299	69	54	-1.4742	19.7557	75	54	6	0	310858	4194318	8000000
VAN	2038	19.7557	75	54	4.8584	24.6141	68	50	-7	-4	-458117	-3349618	-3000000
VAN	2039	24.6141	68	50	-2.8455	21.7686	63	53	-5	3	463005	6740097	8000000

I'm not convinced that high prices help in this situation. In fact, I see Taylor has dropped them to $17 for the season ticket period, which I would guess is wise--and maybe would have been even wiser to drop them further.

[RonCo]

I need to figure out how to present the things I'm looking at and thinking about in a digestible fashion, but at present I'm coming to think that the big push to drive ticket prices up is probably not really good policy across the board. Instead, I'm thinking there are obvious times it's a good practice, and other times where it isn't--and, in fact, there are times even when you are running pretty low ticket prices when there are advantages to dropping them fairly dramatically.

Like all things ... the answer seems to be "well, it depends."

[RonCo]

Here's Hawaii--a team with very low fan interest and who hasn't been winning, but start with middling-high prices ($16):

Team	Year	Ticket Prev	Wins Prev	FI Prev	Ticket+	Ticket Now	Win Now	FI Now	Win+	FI+	Att+	Gate+	Budget+
HAW	2036	16.1589	63	47	-2.3373	13.8216	60	46	-3	-1	240555	571912	-1000000
HAW	2037	13.8216	60	46	1.9121	15.7337	62	47	2	1	-208222	-563973	5000000
HAW	2038	15.7337	62	47	-2.6071	13.1266	74	47	12	0	242162	23804	-2000000
HAW	2039	13.1266	74	47	-0.8972	12.2294	84	58	10	11	772137	8139791	9000000

2036: they cut ticket prices by $2.34, bump attendance and make an extra $500K despite winning only 60 games.
2037: they raise prices back up by almost two bucks and lose that attendance and revenue.
2038: They cut prices by $2.50 and win a few games, bringing back some fans and making a pittance more.
2039: They cut prices by $0.90 and win more games, bringing in three quarters of a million more fans and $8M more in gate revenue

I suggest if they hadn't bumped prices in the 2037 ticket price frenzy, you could argue they would have been better off--perhaps even bumping FI a point or two in the process (which I think has value overall).