The Packers have raised prices for the fourth straight year, with an average increase of $3 per seat, per game. Packers CEO Mark Murphy, the closest thing to an owner that the publicly-held team has, defended the move.
In a way that could make things a little awkward next month when the owners get together in Orlando.
“Quite honestly, the teams that are last or at the very bottom of the league in terms of ticket pricing aren’t the type of teams we would want to model ourselves after,” Murphy told Mike Vandermause of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. “They’re there because they haven’t had success on the field, or they have terrible stadiums, so it’s a number of factors.”
In other words, there’s a supply and demand dynamic to pricing, and the teams at the bottom aren’t there because they want to be. The Packers, whose season-ticket waiting list extends beyond the life expectancy of the American human, can afford to bump the price point.
“It’s really a balancing act,” Murphy said. “On one hand we want to be affordable, but on the other hand we want to be fair to the other teams in the league.”
Fairness to the other teams comes from the 34-percent chunk of each ticket that goes to the league-wide pool that is shared by all teams equally. The more money teams generate from their tickets, the more money the rest of the league makes from the visiting teams’ share.
Since the Packers have no owner (and since owning stock in the team isn’t really ownership), any profit gets reinvested into the team. Which is the way it should be.
Which will help the Packers from becoming one of those teams at the bottom of the pricing structure, who either play poorly or play in a poor venue.