At the NFL meeting in Dallas earlier this month, a cadre of teams met to discuss something other sports have taken the lead on: pricing tickets to a team’s 10 games differently, depending on the quality of opposition and whether it’s a preseason or regular-season game. In the past week I’ve spoken to executives of three teams about it, and one told me: “I’d say as many as half the teams in the league are thinking about instituting it for 2014.”
I do not, however, see this solving the problem of the NFL charging full prices for preseason games. It is possible that a team charging, say, $750 for a full-season ticket (eight regular-season games, two preseason games) would still charge $750 next season. But the team could put a face value of $50 on the two preseason games, $100 on the most attractive two home games and $75 on the six remaining regular-season games.
None of this is set in stone. Team are still discussing it, and the NFL will not make a hard-and-fast policy about what any team does with tickets. But the way this was explained to me by a source with knowledge of several teams’ plans is that it would address the value of tickets on secondary markets like StubHub and Ticketmaster. A preseason game, rightfully, would have a lower base price than a decent game in November. And the best games would start from a price point much higher than preseason games.
Here’s the way it could work—and we’ll use Kansas City for an example. Let’s say a good Chiefs’ season-ticket costs $1,000 for 10 games in 2014. The Chiefs have an attractive home slate next year. They could take visits by Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and the cross-state Rams, call them Tier 1 games and put a face value of $150 on those tickets. They could make the next four most attractive games Tier 2 at $100, and then call the final regular-season game and two preseason games Tier 3 at $50. (Those are my approximations, no one else’s.) This would really help teams with a lot of single-game tickets to sell. A team like Buffalo, for instance, could put a premium price on the Patriots game and a much lower price on a game involving a less desirable team.
“I think you’ll see teams experiment with different price points the next couple of years,” said one executive of a team that will likely change pricing next season. “Then I think you’ll see the real final product in two or three years, when teams find out from their fans what they want the most.”
