Premium Pricing Coming to Comerica Park
By Mike McClary in Featured,Fungoes | 2 comments
I’m surprised it took this long, but the Tigers have announced that they are implementing “premium pricing” for selected games at Comerica Park in 2009:
The team said it is raising tickets prices for 21 of its 81 home games on 40 percent of the seats. The raise will affect single game tickets. It will not affect full or partial season tickets.
The games affected will include three-game series with the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox as well as Friday and Saturday games in June, July and August — plus Opening Day.
The premium game adjustment will range from $2-$7 per ticket.
The first time I’d ever heard of this concept was 10 years ago when I lived in Denver. The Rockies quickly figured out they could charge more for Cubs games — and games against a handful of other teams — at Coors Field. (My memory is failing me but I think the Cardinals and Dodgers were considered “premium” as were inter-league games against the Red Sox and Yankees.)
Here in Phoenix the Diamondbacks charge more for interleague games — even the series against the Tigers in May featured that nice 10-percent increase — as well as games against the Cubs. (The NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes double the price of some tickets for games against the Red Wings at Jobing.com Arena.)
I suppose you can’t blame the Tigers for taking this step. The games they’ve tapped as premium likely would sellout anyway (and they’ve sold off sponsorship to every half-inning on the broadcasts and plastered ads all over CoPa), so why not take advantage of a full-house to help pay for a soaring payroll?
The only unfortunate thing about this is that they haven’t announced price cuts for games against the Orioles, Mariners and Pirates.
What do you think?
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Doug | Nov 15, 2008 | Reply
I’m OK with the premium pricing (as you say, it’s become a common practice), but I’m not OK with the additional price hikes on tickets. I think they’re certainly running the risk of having some fan backlash this season due to the economy and other financial implications in this state.
Don’t make the fans pay for the sins of poor talent evaluation last season. You had your best year ever at the CoPa in terms of attendance, so whatever shortfall you encountered needs to fall on your profit-and-loss statement, not on the backs of the fans.
Jim Craddock | Nov 17, 2008 | Reply
I’ll be looking for my rebate check for all those Royals game I usually get stuck with.