Friday, February 12, 2010

No hike in Cubs ticket prices...but....

The Cubs didn't raise ticket prices this year...

But they will be getting a heck of a lot more money from ticket sales this season.

The Cubs are actually charging a lot more for tickets for a number of games this year.

Let me explain:

Ticket prices have remain the same and look like this:
Type Platinum Gold Silver Bronze
Club Box (Infield) $100.00 $90.00 $70.00 $55.00
Club Box (Outfield) $90.00 $70.00 $60.00 $40.00
Field Box (Infield) $90.00 $70.00 $60.00 $40.00
Field Box (Outfield) $70.00 $55.00 $50.00 $30.00
Terrace Box (Infield) $63.00 $54.00 $45.00 $27.00
Terrace Box (Outfield) $52.00 $46.00 $40.00 $22.00
Upper Deck Box (Infield) $63.00 $54.00 $45.00 $27.00
Upper Deck Box (Outfield) $52.00 $46.00 $40.00 $22.00
Terrace Reserved (Infield) $42.00 $32.00 $25.00 $14.00
Terrace Reserved (Outfield) $36.00 $29.00 $21.00 $14.00
Upper Deck Reserved (Infield) $27.00 $20.00 $14.00 $10.00
Upper Deck Reserved (Outfield) $22.00 $18.00 $14.00 $8.00
Bud Light Bleachers (General Admission) $54.00 $45.00 $36.00 $22.00
Dugout Box $315.00 $290.00 $180.00 $110.00
Bullpen Box $225.00 $200.00 $160.00 $90.00
Bud Light Bleacher Box $76.00 $67.00 $55.00 $36.00
Family Section $70.00 $55.00 $50.00 $30.00

Here is the issue: the Cubs have four different price levels based on what they consider to be the higher demand games and here is how the game levels have broken out between last year and this year.

Year Platinum Gold Silver Bronze
2008 14 games 34 games 28 games 5 games
2009 26 games 30 games 19 games 6 games

The Cubs have almost doubled the number of Platinum games while cutting the number of Silver games by 9 (with only minor adjustments to Gold and Bronze games).

That average price of a Platinum ticket over a Gold ticket is about $10...spread that out over 40,000 seats for 12 extra games and you get $4.8 million. This is a very conservative number considering many of the games added to the Platinum list are basically replacing Silver games.

The Cubs are also converting 6 of the luxury boxes over to the new mezzanine club/lounge which will have 71 tickets selling for an average of $300 a game. Doing the math, that would be $1,725,300 if they sell them out. I'm just taking a wild ass guess here, but that is probably a lot more than they would have gotten for renting out the 6 luxury suites. Probably $1 million more...(just guessing).

Then there was the announcement that came out yesterday...

The Cubs will be having a pre-sale of tickets for all 81 games that will go from February 15th until the 18th. I'm not sure how many tickets will be available for each game, but they are likely to sell out very quickly. The catch about this is that those tickets are being sold at a 20% premium over the list price. Now let's just say that they choose to release a couple thousand tickets for each game...at an average price of say $50, the premium would be around $10 a ticket. Spread that across 81 games and the Cubs get another $1.62 million.

Now all these are rather conservative estimates and in no way accurate. What this demonstrates is that the Cubs, without raising ticket prices, are going to be bringing in over $7 million more this season (assuming the tickets all sell out). And that is money that will be coming out of the pockets of us fans.

One last note on tickets...the Ricketts family has made approximately 800 more tickets per game available for sale this year (many via season ticket packages)...this is due to the fact the Tribune company doesn't have to set aside a large number seats for their own use any more. Those tickets could also create a large amount of revenue for the team. If we conservatively estimate that those tickets average the price of a terrace box seat, the Cubs could make another $3 million from them this season.

So, technically prices have not gone up, but on average we will be paying more for games this year and the opportunities for lower income families to get affordable tickets this season will decrease significantly.

But this is the cost of being a high revenue team. And it is something we will need to live with.

Update: One thing that I also forgot about was the Amusement Tax which has been separated out from the general ticket price this year. Go over to WPBC to see more about this. (and read a similar well written blog entry...great minds think alike!) Thanks, CCD, for the heads up!