August 23, 2007
2008 Pricing Comparison Confusion
Good Deal or Raw Deal?!?
It turns out that a lot of people are confused about the new Rapids ticket pricing deal...not the least of whom is myself. As prices relate to what we've paid in years past, things get a bit confusing.
In the post a few days ago, we compared traditional MSRP on 2007 tickets to 2008 tickets.
As many of you know, by purchasing 2006 season tickets, you would be grandfathered in for pricing for 2007 (in some fashion, obviously seats aren't exactly the same). Our estimate is that this pricing was in effect for approximately 1200-1500 season ticket holders. The other 2000+ season ticket holders that signed on for the first time for 2007 would, presumably, pay the normal 2007 rates listed in my last post.
(note: the Rapids announced they had sold 3500 or so season tickets as of a month or so after the Beckham announcement).
I don't have the comparison 2006 prices off-hand to throw into the mix to see if your ticket prices are going up or down. The comparison becomes more difficult (although favorable) when we realize that parking was included for all customers in 2007.
To increase complexity, if you are a member of Class VI, a new price was negotiated, giving us season and 1/2-season VIP Midfield seats at the less expensive Premium price ($450 vs. $540). This was better than the carryover rate from 2006, and could be based on that carryover rate...
Finally, the C-Firm was given an interesting new package price ABOVE the 2007 prices for their seats, ostensibly including extras worth *much more* than the extra dollars they would spend ($330-ish? vs the normal seat price of $270). Bus rides to Salt Lake (one-way?), beanies and hats and scarves and other stuff like that. I'll leave it to them to decide whether they got value for money.
I also seem to remember that season ticket prices in 2007 went down sometime in May, so the graphic we show in the post a few days ago was an *updated* version of 2007 season ticket pricing. Again, this is from memory, but I do recall a change.
So, for 2008, how will you make out? Sorry, but each of us will have to answer that for ourselves.
Just focusing on the finances and not on the *value* of tickets to see our management ruin the team further in 2008, I'm currently doing worse than last year. In fact, my invoice I received is for 24% more than last year.
I'm hoping that our account exec will be able to clarify some of this once he's done dancing on the piles of bonus money he's getting for Beckham sales day.
Posted by BilFish at August 23, 2007 08:25 AM