I'm wondering whether the Breakers might be restricting the availability of lower-priced, walk-up tickets on game days when attendance is low, to drive people into the higher-priced seats? - At the opening home game, only Category I ($25) tickets were available. Attendance was only 4,804. (But, I got there late, about 20-25 minutes after the game had started.) - At the second game against LA, all three categories of tickets were available, and I was able to get a Category III ($13) ticket. Attendance was 8,031. - At the most recent game, only Category I and II tickets were available, and I ended up buying a Category II ($18) ticket. Attendance was 4,241, and the Category III sections were definitely not full. If a family of casual fans were to go to a game expecting to pay a certain price for tickets but find themselves having to pay more, it could make them more cautious about attending games in the future.
The way I understand it is that only Cat. I & Cat. II are available for walkup sales for all games. As for Cat. III they are available for purchase either by phone or for on-line sale only. They can be purchased on gameday you simply need to print your tickets on-line. I could be wrong but that is my understanding of the way the Breakers are doing things. I think part of the reason the Breakers do this is for the fans who bought the season ticket vouchers for Cat. III seats, it makes it impossible to predict how many of them might show up for a given game or how many vouchers they will use so I think they like to have those seats in reserve just in case.
We only sell Category I ($25) and Category II ($18) tickets at the stadium on Game Day for the reasons that Ben James Ben speculates, plus the fact that we do not want to harm our season ticket holders or advance game purchasers by allowing casual fans the opportunity to purchase the cheapest possible ticket and then move into higher priced seats by "poaching" them. If fans are willing to purchase tickets in advance, then we are willing to offer a lower-price Category III ticket. Thus, the availability of $13 tickets for advance sale only. We made an exception at the 5/2 game against the Sol because virtually all of the Category II seating was sold out in advance. We did not feel it was fair to fans to only offer $25 seats at game time, so we expanded the game day availability. Ultimately, both Category I and Category II seats ended up selling out entirely for that game. Andy
Thanks for the clarification. The Breakers might want to mention this policy on the web site, so fans know what to expect. The web site could couch it in terms of "plan ahead and save money". I'm more of a casual fan who usually doesn't commit to attending until the day of the event (including the upcoming June 14 game), but I'll keep advance purchases in mind.