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The economic woes of hockey fans: Minnesota Wild raise ticket prices

Time to crack open little Johnny’s piggy bank.  While you’re at it, you better check the cushions of your couch and under the seats in your car.  And to top it all off, you may have to start living like you did back in college, meaning eating nothing but ramen noodles.

While the average fan is having to think how they’re going to pay their mortgage/rent (hopefully most of them aren’t in the sub-prime loan mess), car payment, student loan payment, college tuition, groceries (especially when staples like rice are being rationed), gas (and in the Twin Cities Metro area, regular goes for anywhere between $3.71 and $4.13 a gallon), and the list goes on and on, the Minnesota Wild announced back in May that ticket prices were once again going up.  The hefty price tag for season tickets becomes yet another decision many will have to figure into a tighter and tighter budget.

Some fans were under the impression that the new owner, Craig Leipold, had mentioned he wasn’t going to raise ticket prices for the upcoming season.  Imagine their surprise when the story broke on WCCO News (CBS) on May 9th.  The reality of the matter hit even closer to home when season ticket holders received their invoices in the mail.

To get an idea regarding the frustration of the fans, one only needs to read the message boards at the official Minnesota Wild website.  There is a twelve-page thread about the hike in ticket prices.  In those twelve pages, one sees the full gamut of the situation.  Several have stated that they’re going to have to forgo season tickets this year.  Many of those have been with this team since the beginning.  Some are rushing around trying to find others to split seasons with.  Strangely enough, there are some fans that are arguing the whole “supply and demand” issue, as if season ticket holders aren’t aware of that concept.

Almost all tickets will go up between $2-4 dollars, depending on where those seats are located.  The $4 raise is being felt in the lower bowl.  In the upper deck, tickets along the side will increase $3, while the upper ends are going up $2.  While two dollars may not seem like much, one needs to remember to multiply that by the number of seats over the course of a 41 home game season.  What has many fans even more up in arms, is that the price on the Club Level will not be changed.  One of the members of the Wild.com message boards did point out the fact that season ticket holders on Club Level sign a three-year contract that locks their price in.  However, why don’t the other season ticket holders get to lock their price in?

Another bone to pick that the fans have is that the Wild while consistently raising prices have not brought in consistent, quality free agents, have not made progress in the playoffs beyond the first round the past two attempts, and fail to draft well.  The question has become, “where is the money going?”  While the Wild have had a few good free agent acquisitions such Cliff Ronning, Andrew Brunette, Brian Rolston, Mark Parrish, Niklas Backstrom and Kim Johnsson, their free agent record is abysmal with players like Daniel Tjarnqvist, Scott Ferguson, Jason Marshall, Brad Brown, Randy Robitaille, Kirby Law, Ray Giroux, Andrei Nazarov, Marc Chouinard, as well as making a big deal about taking chances on Euroleague stars Steve Kelly, Petteri Nummelin and Andre Lakos.  Then there’s the past two playoffs.  During the 2006-07 season, the Wild were too weak and got out-muscled and pushed around by the Anaheim Ducks.  This season, while they were tougher the Wild couldn’t find away around the Colorado Avalanche.  That’s kind of hard to do, when one’s go-to guys, namely Marian Gaborik and Pavol Demitra can’t score goals.  Finally, one must wonder what the deal is with the Wild’s scouts.  The Wild pretty much have to depend on their first-round selections to pan out, and even that has become a crap-shoot with the failure of A. J. Thelen and to a degree Benoit Pouliot.  The most recent bust pick by Minnesota was the pick of Ondrej Fiala in the second round by Minnesota in the 2006 draft.  Fiala will be re-entering the draft, as Minnesota failed to offer him a contract. 

If the money isn’t going to quality free agents and it’s not going into player scouting and development, where is it going?  While the gas companies are made to occasionally sit before the United States Congress (and even then there’s little if any recourse), hockey owners and general managers don’t have to be accountable to anyone.  It will take the fans to speak with their dollars to make a difference.  While we need gasoline to get to work, etc., we don’t really need hockey tickets to survive.  They are a luxury item.  While I like the fact that the Wild have sold out all 321 home games in their short history, it’s going to take attendance issues for the upper management to take notice.  Until then, Joe Fan will have to take the hit.  Of course, this is the same team that dared not offer its fans (the same ones it boldly declared to be “the Greatest Hockey Fans in the World” by retiring the #1 jersey during the team’s first regular season home game back in 2000) a discount after the lockout.  That right there should have been the writing on the wall.

All this makes me wonder how much DishNetwork and DirectTV will raise the price of NHL Center Ice this year.  Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.  I don’t need to give the satellite and cable companies any excuse to raise their prices.  Nor do I need to give ownership another idea.  If fans stop going, it might just prompt ownership to pull a Bill Wirtz and not televise home games.

I guess I should count myself lucky.  I actually like ramen noodles.  Now I need to go stockpile bags of rice for the imminent economic armageddon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 9:53 am and is filed under NHL Editorial, Wild Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.