The following item is from Phil Mushnick's column in today's New York Post. http://www.nypost.com/sports/41457.htm Pats to Fans: Drop Dead . . . Now! It just doesn't end; it's all predicated upon patrons reaching a financial breaking point, surrendering to the next fool in line. The NFL champs, who charge $35 to park, have already raised tickets $10 to $26. Top ticket is now $125, full payment due by March 31. There's more. The Pats will now charge from $2,000-$5,000 per ticket to will season tickets to a subscriber's survivors. Seriously. Otherwise, upon the subscriber's death, his/her tickets become the property of the Pats. Seriously. The Pats call this pass-away plan the Pass It On program. Seriously. Flowers not included. "It's all predicated upon patrons reaching a financial breaking point." Wasn't a lesson learned with the Revolution? Raising ticket prices based on the new stadium, and nothing more. Raising the parking prices based on the new stadium, and nothing more? The Patriots have the benefit of being three time Super Bowl winners with a huge waiting list for season tickets, so they have a seller's market. The Revolution are not a seller's market. The organisation did a positive thing by rolling back the prices of season tickets. We have yet to see if it will have a positive impact, or if only the choir takes advantage of the deal. But at least they are trying something to stay in business. If they try and squeeze every nickel out of Revolution fans, they'll only serve to drive away those that still remain. Anyone Know what parking will cost this season?
That's not going to help to get people to come to the games. There should be a rule that the price to park your car can not exceed the price of a ticket!
Parking is $15 for Stadium owned lots. It is $12 per game if you by a season parking pass. IIRC, some of the other lots (which The Bob hasn't bought yet) may charge $10.
As has been mentioned by others, parking is going to stay the same from what I understand at $15. Also, while I do agree with you on the latter statement, it is possible to have more than one person in your car you know! Then the price for parking per person isn't more than your ticket.
Big Frank - Trying to compare what the Krafts are doing with the Pats and what they are doing with the Revs pricewise is apples and oranges. The Pats have a season ticket waiting list of 40,000 names. If someone doesn't like the deal, there are 10 others waiting to snap it up. Given that their are only 10 home games (including pre season) and many Pats fans make a day of it (3 hours of tailgaiting before and after), asking to shell out $ 125 per game is not so outrageous. $ 125 for a Bruins ticket, given there are 40 or so home games is a lot harder to understand. Hopefully, the Krafts make even more bucket-loads of money on the Pats in the future. That way they are more likely to stick with losses associated with other teams that use Gillette. Why do you think the Revs lowered their ticket prices this year ? Because they want to lose more money ? They are trying to find a price point at which the market will accept their product. I wouldn't expect that food or parking will be lowered similarly since it seems that those ancillaries are where the Krafts will try to make their $. Now, if only they could get some Revs gear in the Pro Shop than they really might rake it in !
I've gone to many a Pats game in an SUV and never paid that amount. I'm not sure where you got that info. Also, for those that don't know ... please remember that this price cut is a one-year deal only. They'll be going back up next year ... to what? Who knows.
I got that figure from the girl you pay to park at Gillette. It was at a Revs game though, so maybe she was all wrong.
There was an article a while back about a family who had a group of Pats season tickets for something like 35 years. They were in the father's name, but at some point he passed away, and the now-adult kids continued to pay for and use the tickets like they always had. At some point it came to the attention of someone at Pats Central that the original owner had passed away, and therefore, his heirs could no longer claim the tickets. Some NFL teams do allow people to transfer tickets to family members, while others do not. The Patriots argued that they didn't allow this because of the long waiting list (even if you die, you still don't necessarily come off the ST rolls), and this was unfair to people on the waiting list--if the team stays good for many years, what are the chances that someone on the list would never get tickets? Unless of course, the team followed the 49ers footsteps in 5-10 years, and lots of people bailed, but then the tickets wouldn't have the value/status that they do now. One of the other differences is that the Patriots did not charge a "personal seat license" which has been quite common in most of the newer NFL stadiums. Basically it means you pay a fee ($1,000 or more per seat) just for the right to buy season tickets, which by themselves can be over $1,000 a pop. Just trying to be balanced here... Tom
Dr. Jay, If you go back to my original post in this thread, you will see that I brought up the points about the different marketing factors for the Patriots and the Revolution. So I'm assuming that you read the entire post. The point that Mushnick was making was the price gouging going on in the Patriots organisation, of which the Revolution is a subsidiary. His point was directed at the Patriots. I was making a more general point, that price gouging drove Revolution fans away but they can get away with it with the Patriots. There are other ways to price gouge. I give the organisation credit for rolling back season ticket prices, because they had to do something. The question becomes: will it work and increase gates, or will it just lower the prices for those that would have bought them anyway. If it is the former, great. It it doesn't bring in more fans, this franchise will be in big trouble. Right now we don't know what the answer will be, but again, I give them credit for trying. If the game day tickets aren't also lowered, and/or parking prices rise, then they would be defeating the whole purpose of lowering season ticket prices by gouging somewhere else. We'll have to wait and see how things pan out. It is if the driver pays the entire parking fee. If I'm bringing four kids, I'm not asking them to chip in. I still say it should never cost more to park your car than it does to buy an actual ticket for the game.
So a family could have six season tickets for 35 years, then the one person whose name the tickets are listed in happens to pass away, and they can take away all six season tickets? Why couldn't they just take away one of the tickets? After all, the other five are still with us. I wonder how Patriots accounting would like to have 68,000 individual season ticket accounts? Because that is what it could come down to. Maybe people with multiple tickets will start putting them in the name of the youngest member of the group? Or start transfering them if someone is unhealthy? I can just see this scenario happening: "Uh, George, you know you're not looking too healthy these days, and you're not getting any younger, so we want to have our season tickets listed in Tom's name instead of yours." They may be opening a can of fish that was better left shut.
Being a season ticket holder for the Pats, I know a lot of others that are also unhappy with this policy. In theory, I understand their decision (because of the fact that they have so many people in line). But I just believe that if/when I have kids, and choose to bring them to Pats games with me, and it becomes a tradition ... they shouldn't have to pay $5k just to change the name on the tickets.
Big Frank has lost his way. Why do people bother with thoughtful explinations to his misguided rants? if i saw him on a street corner spewing this drivel about how the pats tickets prices are somehow correlated with the price of tea in china - i'd either a. cross the street, or b. buy the poor man a sandwich and ask him if he needed a ride to the shelter.
While what you're saying is true Tom, I have done the research and found out that had the Krafts done a PSL, while there would have been a lot more grousing to start with, it would actually have been cheaper for current season ticket holders. Don't forget, the Patriots were already the most expensive ticket in all of sports, even prior to the price increase. My season tickets (originally) at the new stadium were $75. Let's say that a $2k PSL had been set up originally, and ticket prices had only gone from $49 (last year at the old stadium) to $55. Over 10 years, and not including a price hike, I would have paid $7,500 either way ($55/game, 10 games, 10 years, plus 2k PSL, or $75/game, 10 games, 10 years). Making the assumption that the PSL had only been $1k, I'm actually paying more over a 10 year span without having to pay for the PSL. Now when you put in price hikes, the amount paid will actually be higher based on the % increase (75 to 89 would equal 55 to 65). Also, having a PSL would allow me a lot more freedom to resell a ticket than the current team policy.
I'm not defending the policy, but I'm just saying that there was some sort of thinking behind it, agree with it or not. Suppose you were a big-time Pats fan and were on the waiting list for season tickets since the Parcells era. Suppose you were maybe 200 names deep at that point. Now the list is what, 10,000? How much attrition do you think the Pats really have on their season ticket list? Sure, someone may move out of the area, lose their job, have a kid or two and can't justify the cost any more, so they have to give them up. Big Frank on the list moves up, and eventually gets a chance to buy tickets. But suppose you were in that situaion and could transfer the tickets in your name to someone else. Since you did your friend a solid favor, you could certainly go to the odd game every now and then, but not every week. Menawhile, poor Frank the Fan will never move up the list unless the team really hits the skids and at that point, who even cares? The Krafts set this policy in place to allow those on the waiting list to have a better chance. If someone does as you suggest and transfer them to another family member, fine, but they won't do it willy-nilly if it costs them some money. Then again, what financial incentive is it to have high turnover in season tickets? Sure, there may be some isolated incidents of people being "grandfathered" in, but really, if they sell the ticket to you or to me, what do they care if we both are paying the same amount? Say what you want, but you can't always assume that every single decision, as flawed as it may be, is designed to squeeze one more nickel out of someone. Tom
The board's organisation toady weighs in, with nothing to offer, as usual! Must have me confused, there ToM. Wouldn't be interested in going to a Patriots game if I got a free ticket and was driven to the turnstile. Consider the following: if someone has six season tickets, do the tickets belong to one person or to all six people? If it is all six people as individuals, then how can they take the tickets way from the other five if one of them passes away? If one person has six tickets, and uses five of them to bring different people each game, perhaps for business purposes, then that would be a different story. But how would they know which scenario it was? In the first scenario, they would be holding five regular season ticket holders' tickets for ransom because the person in the group that held the tickets died. Having one person coordinate six tickets is actually doing the Patriots a favour, so they have one account instead of six individual accounts. If there was no waiting list there would be no death fee to transfer tickets to another name. Maybe instead of collecting a fee they should be forcing them to buy Revos seasons tickets!