Supply and Demand … What a Novel Idea!
According to Sports Illustrated:
Next season, San Francisco Giants fans buying single-game tickets for an April game against Milwaukee might pay half as much as they would for a weekend game with the rival Los Angeles Dodgers later in the year.
The club is trying something new with ticket sales in a few tough-to-sell upper-deck outfield sections of its waterfront ballpark for 2009: cost based on demand.
The walk-up sales price for up to about 2,000 seats could even go up or down on game day.
Granted, this is only an experiment in San Francisco, but what if the St. Louis Cardinals decided to do this as well? I would love for you to comment.
Busch stadium avg daily occupied seats
2008 96.38%
2007 99.72%
2006 96.85%
2005 87.95%
2004 75.76%
2003 72.33%
2002 74.85%
2001 76.34%
2000 82.92%
1999 81.16%
I think theyd do fine. the cardinals organization is an amazing well oiled marketing machine, that happens to be selling baseball tickets. they could generate the same mindless fervor amongst its target market even if they were promoting renaissance fairs.
Comment by vroman — December 17, 2008 @ 4:46 p.m.
also, theres already supply and demand for tickets. thats what scalpers are for. however this model just lets the stadium owner capture that surplus, and crowd out scalpers. in the fixed-ticket model, the stadium has say 40,000 seats and avg price is say $15. so they have max daily income of $600k. on low demand games, they just suffer opportunity cost equal to the unsold tickets. on high demand games, they make their $600k, but lose the surplus spent on scalpers, ie if there were 40k ppl all willing to spend $20, then the scalpers as a whole make $200k, rather than the team making $800k.
in system where team tiself offers variable demand pricing, the more price-sensitive casual fans who just want to see *a* baseball game, regardless of quality, will be driven to the lower-quality games. the net result is that attendence should be higher across the season, and the avg ticket price will be about the same, so higher revenue for the team. but this is what we expect when the scalpers get crowded out, bc the city’s baseball viewing budget hasnt changed, whether they are casual or hardcore.
Comment by vroman — December 17, 2008 @ 5:12 p.m.
I touched on some of this in an earlier blog entry…
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — December 17, 2008 @ 5:35 p.m.
Cubs have done this for at least 3 years. Premium teams like the Cardinals, Mets, Brewers and American League teams warrant higher prices. Hasn’t impacted Wrigley’s attendance either.
Comment by Mike — December 18, 2008 @ 6:51 a.m.