Rovell: 2009 is “The Year of the Sports Fan”
I just read Darren Rovell’s (the sports business reporter at CNBC - and most recently with ESPN) article, “The Year of the Sports Fan,” in the New Republic. His key theme is that a silver lining in the current economic situation is that sports fans should expect to see more lots more TLC from their teams.
Darren mentions that, in recent years, many teams have been focused on corporate accounts, with premium tickets and services out of the reach of the typical fan. What a difference a few hundred corporate bankruptcies and slashed client entertainment budgets can make. He notes teams are now scrambling - freezing prices, lowering prices, and its promotional cousin - discounting multi-game packages, to reach out to the regular fans. All good news for fans, of course.
He also notes that the ticket resale market has exploded. He gives examples, using StubHub data, of how market prices in the resale market have declined year over year. Of course, this has happened as well on many other resale web sites, such as eBay, TicketNetwork, Razorgator, and hundreds of licensed ticket brokers. Teams and leagues now even endorse resale partners such as StubHub and Ticketmaster. More good news for fans, as they are free to buy and sell to their advantage.
When fans have less money, they will be more careful how they spend it. On the one hand, going to live events is clearly a luxury. On the other, particularly in the current environment, experience has shown fans value experiences they can enjoy to help them escape their day-to-day worries. At FanSnap, we know ticket market prices are always a function of supply and demand. For popular perceived-to-be unique events, the market value of tickets usually exceeds the original face value. For other events, the market price can dip below face value.
Fans certainly do not lack for choices! In this economy, season ticketholders will be selling many more of their tickets to individual games - tickets they used to use, give away, or eat. Now those tickets are a good source of cash, in a time when some can really make use of it. All this new supply should put downward pressure on market prices.
What a great time for fans to have access to a ticket search engine!
Mike
