Author Topic: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?  (Read 4568 times)

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What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« on: May 10, 2012, 09:20:05 AM »

Offline jgod213

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I just went ahead and bought 2 balcony tix for tonight's game for $50 each.  There appears to be a surplus of these tickets available through mutiple outlets. 

My question is - what's going on here?  I remember just a couple of years ago when you couldn't even get into a regular season game for anything under $60.  I mean i paid $140 for my ticket to game 2 of the Bruins-Caps series!

We're talking about playoffs here! On top of that, (although i don't believe it myself) this could be the LAST GAME that this core group plays in the TD Garden!  Why isn't there a demand to see this team?

My only theory is that the Celtics have played so well over the past couple of months that people have already dimissed the Hawks and are looking forward, and therefore don't want to spend money on a foregone conclusion.

I don't much care for that line of thinking.  But regardless i think the C's handle their business tonight.  Can't wait to lose my voice and be useless at work tomorrow!

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Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2012, 09:20:45 AM »

Offline Fafnir

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My wife was commenting on the same thing, unfortunately I live in Omaha......  :(

Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #2 on: May 10, 2012, 09:32:20 AM »

Offline Potapenko Boxout

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lot of reasons

1. people arent going to sink money into the Hawks series - first round series generally never get bang for the buck.

2. there has only been a 2 day turnaround and since most people did not anticipate a game six, everyone is kind of scrambling


3. celtics artificially jack up the face value of any tickets that are not season ticket holder tickets

Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #3 on: May 10, 2012, 09:42:22 AM »

Offline jgod213

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lot of reasons

1. people arent going to sink money into the Hawks series - first round series generally never get bang for the buck.

2. there has only been a 2 day turnaround and since most people did not anticipate a game six, everyone is kind of scrambling


3. celtics artificially jack up the face value of any tickets that are not season ticket holder tickets

I don't understand the "sinking money" arguement.  Where do you draw the line with that? Is paying for regular season tickets sinking money? Is paying for second round tickets sinking money? or is it just the first round?

For $50 i'm pretty positive that i'm going to get bang for my buck - a game 6 close out game at the Garden in one of remaining few games i'll ever attend with this core group of players.

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Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #4 on: May 10, 2012, 09:49:01 AM »

Offline Chris

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This is a big reason I had to drop my season tickets.  The demand has disappeared, so it has become a real hassle to get rid of tickets to games I can't make.  The market is saturated, and there just is not the demand the was a few years ago. 

It might be a little different for the playoffs, but I have a feeling anyone who wants to buy tickets on the secondhand market are going to be very happy, at least compared to a couple years ago. 

Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2012, 09:57:09 AM »

Offline Rondo2287

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Red sox tickets are going for $3.44 tonight on stubhub.  Crazyness
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Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #6 on: May 10, 2012, 10:08:24 AM »

Offline CelticG1

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I think its cause of the Hawks. Has everyone heard every media outlet complain about just how boring and how bad the hawks are? I think that coupled with the foregone conclusion that we will win this series.

Im not sure if I see this changing dramatically in the second round with either the 8th seed sixers or rose-less Bulls.

The NBA is all about star power and those teams just don't have it. I mean who really cares about seeing joe johnson, josh smith, Igloudala, Deng.

Obviously die hard Celtics fans don't care who they are playing but an extremely large portion of people who attend games and buy tickets aren't diehards.

Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #7 on: May 10, 2012, 10:24:29 AM »

Offline StartOrien

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This is a big reason I had to drop my season tickets.  The demand has disappeared, so it has become a real hassle to get rid of tickets to games I can't make.  The market is saturated, and there just is not the demand the was a few years ago. 

It might be a little different for the playoffs, but I have a feeling anyone who wants to buy tickets on the secondhand market are going to be very happy, at least compared to a couple years ago. 

I think more than any other sport, there are a ton of bandwagon fans for the Celtics. And most of them, are the ones with money.

The year Garnett was out I was able to get playoff tickets against the Bulls twice for 30-35 dollars day-of off stubhub before tickets skyrocketed to 3 digits once it was deemed 'the greatest series of all time.'

I too am going to the game tonight via stubhub ($50, 5th row corner balcony) and suspect that ticket prices will remain about the same for a while.

Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #8 on: May 10, 2012, 11:08:32 AM »

Offline guava_wrench

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Red sox tickets are going for $3.44 tonight on stubhub.  Crazyness
162 games, mostly slow and boring. To be expected when the team isn't winning and weather is not so nice.

You can't fill sports venues without the support of fair-weather fans.

Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #9 on: May 10, 2012, 11:14:48 AM »

Offline jgod213

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Red sox tickets are going for $3.44 tonight on stubhub.  Crazyness
162 games, mostly slow and boring. To be expected when the team isn't winning and weather is not so nice.

You can't fill sports venues without the support of fair-weather fans.

No i think craziness was the right term.  Sox are close to setting the record for most consecutive sellouts across all 4 sports (fudged numbers for sure - but still) and you can jump on stubhub and drop $5 for a ticket right now. Crazy. 

What a weird time we're in right now.  Celts playoff tix for $50.  Sox tickets for $5.  What's going on around here?

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Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #10 on: May 10, 2012, 11:17:24 AM »

Offline CelticG1

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Was it just me or were the crowds both those games pretty pathetic? Doesn't that give an indication at all?

Ill be there tonight and I hope it will be as loud as some of the regular season games I went to like NY, Miami, and Lakers.

Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #11 on: May 10, 2012, 01:30:46 PM »

Offline lightspeed5

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game 2 was on NBA tv. that should have given you a hint at the demand for this series.

Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #12 on: May 10, 2012, 01:52:32 PM »

Offline Chief

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I live in TN and the only thing I can remember like this situation is the Atlanta Braves of the 90s. The first years of the Rally Hat Braves, you could not get a ticket in the post season. But they went so much that you could eventually get fairly cheap World Series tickets in the later years. Especially after the strike.
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Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #13 on: May 10, 2012, 02:06:10 PM »

Offline southshorematt

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Most fans in Boston are fair-weather... the same people who were "HUGE" bruins fans are now getting back into the Celtics since they have a change to make a serious run. These same people were the ones who wrote them off and trashed them all year long.

I've had no problem selling the first 3 home games for WELL above face value.  Demand has spiked recently because of the bruins CHOKE JOB and the red sox being a giant bag of suck


BTW the Fenway sellout streak is the biggest joke in sports...

http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-04/news/31575397_1_sellout-ticket-office-fewer-tickets

Re: What's the Deal with Ticket Prices?
« Reply #14 on: May 10, 2012, 02:58:09 PM »

Offline bdm860

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Most fans in Boston are fair-weather... the same people who were "HUGE" bruins fans are now getting back into the Celtics since they have a change to make a serious run. These same people were the ones who wrote them off and trashed them all year long.

I've had no problem selling the first 3 home games for WELL above face value.  Demand has spiked recently because of the bruins CHOKE JOB and the red sox being a giant bag of suck


BTW the Fenway sellout streak is the biggest joke in sports...

http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-04/news/31575397_1_sellout-ticket-office-fewer-tickets

I think in every city, the majority of fans are fair weather.

And I think every team fudges the numbers the same way the Red Sox do.  For instance I lived in Dallas from 2004-2006, and went to many Mavs games (including the one where they gave everyone a free plane ticket!).  Many games were farrrr from sold out (I often walked up and bought tickets minutes before tip off no problem, and saw many empty seats inside).  Yet they claim to have the longest sell-out streak in the NBA right now.

Quote
--Dallas closed out its 33-game home schedule Friday against the Golden State Warriors with another sellout. The Mavs have now sold out 432 consecutive regular-season games at American Airlines Center, which is an NBA-best sellout streak. The streak began on Dec. 15, 2001 and Dallas has sold out an additional 58 playoff games during that stretch.

See, the Mavs fudge the numbers the same way.

Also been to WWE matches where they claimed it was a sellout, but saw large bunches of available seats.  In fact, for a while they claimed Wrestlemania III set attendance records with 91,173, but some claim it was a made up number:

Quote
Wallask: Finally, last question here. They often mention the attendance of WrestleMania III was 93,173  and they’ve really hammered that number for years. However you reported in the Observer many years back, that the real attendance was closer to 78,000 or so. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Meltzer: Sure. I remember — it’s funny, because at that time in ’87, I was getting all the gates of all the WWF shows from WWE. And they would say like, “Blah, blah, blah, blah” and they gave me the gate of $1,599,000.  And I said, “What was the real attendance?” And I just remember it’s funny because they just said there were 2,300 freebies. But I was never actually told 93,173, and it was sort of like, well, what was the real number. And just kind of the subject was changed. So, I just figured 93,173 was probably the real number. Nobody else had ever questioned it. It wasn’t like anybody came up with a, you know — like now, now every year at WrestleMania they announce a number and six weeks later I get the real number, and it’s 8,000, 10,000, 12,000 different. They make up the number to have the record for the building, even though usually they don’t have the record for the building because they got the big stage. For a football game, you actually can get more people for a football game than you can for a WrestleMania, than if you have a Final Four or something like that at some of these indoor stadiums, where you don’t have the big screens or anything. You draw out far, far more people.

So ya, I would take just about any attendance streak or record, not just Red Sox ones, with a grain of salt.

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