I knew this would happen. I got a survey from the Packers a few months ago and they were asking ticket holders opinions on a bunch of stuff including PSLs. They focused on higher prices for the new seats. they didn't mention changing the PSL price for current seats other than to say if they raised the price for the new seats it would not be passed on to current ticket holders as well unless we surrendered our seats to move into the new section.

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my dyslexia was kicking in and I almost misread what you were doing. 😊

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Said this before and I'll say it again. If you've got 80,000 on the waiting list, big price raises are what you should be doing.

No one is entitled to pay that much under market value.

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Good point. The Packers could be raking in tons more money and clear out the waiting list, but it sure would piss off the loyal ones who have been there supporting the team for years faithfully buying season tickets. That act alone has the potential to tarnish the brand which they have worked so hard to build. Not sure if the increase in ticket revenues is worth the trade off.

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I have said it before now I will make it plain. Kiss my ass.





If they jacked the prices to an exorbitant amount I would turn in my tickets and I would be done with them. I enjoy the Packers. I don't need the Packers. I wouldn't even watch the games.

Thing is I was on the waiting list for 20 years. It was about 50,000 when I signed up at age 18 and increased to over 60,000 when I got my seats. I don't feel sorry for someone else having to wait like I did.

The logical move is not to break the people with ridiculous prices. Put in more seats. They are looking at increasing the seating to 100,000 or more at some point in time. That makes more sense than trying to see how many people you can alienate.

Keep in mind most of the current ticket holders have been following them for more than 20 years. They have been with the team in lean years. The vast majority of the people on the current waiting list have been following the Packers since the 90's. There is no guarantee they will stick with the team if/when they have another dry spell. And yes I realize there are some people who inherited their tickets. They didn't have to wait. But they too have been long time Packer fans. If "dad" had the tickets until his health failed or passed away most likely the new owner is over 30. Most likely he grew up following GB.

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We poor economist types. We're so misunderstood.

[grin1]

And how many of those 20-year-buyers go to every game? And how many of them end up selling several tickets a year to recoup nearly the entire cost of that year's ticket? Why should that windfall go to the patient "people who waited" rather than to the Packers organization?

I went to Packers games several times when I was young, during those long decades of imitating Minnesota and its mediocrity. We never had season tickets. We always paid a premium over the ticket price. The Packers organization did not get the benefits from that extra price. Who did?

The wait is far longer than 20 years now. There are what, maybe, 100,000 people alive who have or will get season tickets in their lifetime. You're lucky to be one of them. I envy you. But there are how many millions of people who are Packer fans. People who've been Packer fans all their lives and will never see a game in Lambeau yet buy tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of Packer products. How are they better served by giving 100,000 of you a good deal on resellable tickets rather than putting the money into operations?

And what about the people of Brown County who didn't vote for the sales tax increase for Lambeau renovations? Were they better served by a Packers organization who for years has sold tickets at below market price? If so, why wasn't the vote unanimous? Why did they have to be coerced into paying the tax by the "democratic process"?

I've been a buyer beneficiary of below market prices several times in my life. I won't deny it -- I like it when I am. Everyone does. If I were a season ticket holder I'd be saying exactly the same things you are. I admit that.

But there are real costs involved to those who don't get to buy at that lower-than-market price and to those who don't sell at the higher, market price. And those costs, total, are invariably bigger than the benefits you, I, or other "winners" receive.

I've been waiting on the list for Packers tickets for almost thirty years. And if the price is $400 per game when my name comes up, I likely will have waited those years only to say "no thanks." That will make me very sad. Even angry.

But that's life. If the market then will bear $400 per game, the Packers organization ought to be charging $400 a game. And I, who am not willing to pay the market price, should be watching (or ignoring) the Packers another way. I and my heirs are not entitled to special treatment just because I was willing to put my name on a waiting list 30 or so years ago and support my team through Bengston and Devine and Starr and Gregg and Infante and Rhodes and Sherman and Tagge and Hunter and Del Gaizo and Patrick and Whitehurst and Brown and all the rest.

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Many of those "devoted" Packer fans for 20 years also almost exclusively sell their tickets at 200%+ their retail value as simply a way to make money, and very rarely attend games. Not to mention the various corporations that have multiple season tickets to their name and are only used as business tools. That's the reason I get free tickets when I go to games. A corporation I'm friends with gets almost 10 tickets for each home game. An image sticks in my head of the CEO flaunting a hand of tickets out and being like "Hell, I can't GIVE these things away." They are supposed to be used to persuade clients to use their services. This is not uncommon at all, and is ubiquitous with other less devoted fan bases around the NFL.

Aside from corporate affairs, as I mentioned, there is a LARGE percentage of people who view Packer tickets as simply a small investment. With demand as high as it is, who wouldn't want to become season ticket holders? Worse case scenario, they can make enough money to ensure that the one game they attend is free. Some of the prices the tickets sell for are unbelievably inflated. I may have only been on the waiting list since the 90's, but I was a young kid then, so it's no different than someone else being on the list several decades ago when they were young. I'll follow the Packer's regardless, as will anyone that is "truly a fan." It doesn't matter what time period they starting following the Packer's. Sure, there will always be bandwagon folks that jump ship during rough times, but as I said, not 'true fans.' It's not that easy to just stop following a team and a sport we really like.

I'm pretty much with Wade on this one. I don't see the Packer's raising ticket prices to an unfair amount above market value. It's business and that's how these things work. Perhaps it might alienate a certain portion of the fan base, but there will almost certainly be someone else more than willing to take their place, especially when the Packer's are competitive. I do also agree that more seats should be the goal as well. Keep the ticket prices somewhat around market value and continue to add seats. Seems like good business to me (and it's always about business above all else, despite what some may like to believe).

Commenting on both Wade and Dodd’s posts-

How many go to the game? I can’t speak for the entire stadium nor the “Green Package” But the people who sit in my section about 80-90% show up for the games. So it is not fair to say “Many of those "devoted" Packer fans for 20 years also almost exclusively sell their tickets at 200%+ their retail value as simply a way to make money, and very rarely attend games.” Do you have any proof of this Dodd or are you just making it up as you go? I have been there and can speak from experience. What further proof? Go to Stub Hub. As of now the highest number of tickets for sell is about 2700. Out of 73,000 that is 3.7%. I know it is still early but after looking for tickets in other years I seriously doubt it will double. There are other ticket brokers but many of them own their own tickets. Still with all of them I doubt it is more than 10%. Let’s even bump it to 15% that is not a “LARGE percentage”. In anything in life you will find 10-15% on the edge of the Bell Curve. The two of you look at the fringe element and act like they are the norm. As I said, FROM EXPERIENCE I can tell you it is not so. Please give me your proof that will contradict this.

Now the markup you mention- you do realize most of the excess price goes to the broker don’t you? There is simply no way for the Packers to suck up all the excess profits on tickets. Sure the ticket holder receives something over and above the face value but almost half of the price of the tickets ends up in the broker’s pocket. It doesn’t matter if the tickets sell for $75 each or $300 when they are re sold there will be a substantial markup on the tickets. That is a given. Just because there are a million fans does not mean they all want to go to a game. In the past 10 -15 years I have talked to a lot of people who say they would prefer to watch the game in from of their tv. They may go to a game or two in their life but even if they had the opportunity they would not want to buy tickets to every game year after year.

Green Bay is not selling the tickets below market price. They bump their prices every year or two. Their goal is to remain in the middle of the average price. They do a pretty good job of it.

I am somewhat at a loss to figure out what corporations owning tickets and them giving them to their customers and employees have to do with anything. I have received comp tickets from various places many times in my life. (Never Green Bay tickets. Usually baseball games.) It doesn’t matter what the price for tickets are, that is going to always happen. Raising the price to $300-400 a seat will probably see more corporations owning seats not individuals.

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Obviously a "large percentage" is relative. I can say from experience that most the games I have been to, a good bit of the people around me are not the season ticket holders. I haven't collected data on it so I can't specifically quantify it for anyone, but I would say about 20+% of the people around me bought the tickets online or got them from some other source, often at very high prices. Whether the extra money goes to a broker or not is kind of irrelevant in Wades argument, as it's still money not going to the Packer's.

As for the corporations owning tickets, it was just to say that many of the tickets, whatever percentage that may be, whether it is 10 or 30%, are not privately owned in some sacred sense by die-hard Packer fans for 20+ years. The minority doesn't define the majority, sure, but I'm not sure that changes any of the original arguments.

As for saying the Packers do a good job of keeping tickets around average price, well, exactly. I expect them to continue to do so and the main point is that I would not be surprised, nor could I seriously blame them, for charging far above the average price. It's a business and as I said in my original post, raising prices will continue to alienate some, but there are going to be plenty willing to step up and take their place for the foreseeable future. I'm not going to stop going to any games or stop watching them period. That just seems silly to me. Sure, if they start charging outrageous amounts far beyond the average, perhaps I could be offended. Until then, it's business as usual and just seems like everything else in life to me. It's not surprising in the least. As long as the Organization can do it and continue to fill the stadium each week, more power to them I suppose. If that begins to change, then perhaps rethink the policy. I'm not saying I agree with it or it's what I would do personally, but I can understand it.

Depends on what you mean by "market price". If by the term you mean "the average price paid for NFL tickets," probably not.

However, it seems to me that that's the wrong price to look at. The relevant market is the market for Packer tickets, not the market for NFL tickets. If GB has a waiting list in the tens of thousands for season tickets, and Jacksonville can't sell out their stadium even with selling individual tickets, then GB tickets should sell at a premium to Jacksonville tickets, not at roughly the same price.

If you have twice as many people willing to buy season tickets as there are season tickets to be sold, you have what the economist calls a "shortage." And markets have one built in mechanism for getting rid of shortages -- it's called a price increase. And the more the shortage persists, the more the price increase called for to eliminate the shortage.

As for brokers getting the money, that just highlights that the Packers aren't charging enough. Brokers make their money because they know there are a substantial number of buyers who are willing to pay more than the seller is asking. Game watchers who are willing to pay more than the Packers are charging.

I don't know how the split goes between the ticket holder who sells to the broker and the broker who sells to the ultimate watcher. But if it goes to *either* of them, it isn't going to the Packer organization. Their combined profits are what Dodd and I are talking about -- those combined profits are the real monies that Packer management is leaving on the table.

How many tickets are resold? I don't know. How much of an increase will the market bear before that shortage falls significantly? I don't know. That's what the economist calls a problem of elasticity -- and charges tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to estimate. But I do know that if the shortage hasn't started to fall (and indeed has doubled or tripled in my lifetime), then the price increase hasn't been big enough.

I can understand the Packers wanting a waiting list as a form of insurance when the next stretch of "lean years" appears. But a waiting list that is bigger than the total number of seats available for any game? Why?

That is bigger, by far, than any expansion of the stadium might be contemplated? Suppose GB finds a way to add 25-30 thousand seats. They'd *still* have a waiting list that is on the order of 50,000 names! That's serious over-insurance. That's paying $100,000 for a $50,000 term life insurance policy.

It'll keep brokers feeling good. The more life insurance he sells, the more the life insurance salesman makes.

But the job of the Packers shouldn't be to ensure profits either for season ticket holders or for ticket brokers. It should be to maximize its return so that it can provide the best possible product.

The Vikings had to ask for public funds for their new stadium because they knew that the return on investment wasn't high enough to get outside investors, and because they knew they couldn't raise a half billion through ticket price increases either. But if the Packers had reacted to that shortage of tickets (which existed through most of the bad years, too) with bigger price increases, instead of keeping them down as they did, they could have had on hand a lot more wealth when the last expansion (or the next one) comes around. They wouldn't have had to go to Brown County and get that extra sales tax to pay for it.

If the Packers were a for-profit enterprise, they would have been ripe for a takeover decades ago. As a non-profit, with that "American Legion Post" provision, they of course have been insulated from the Carl Icahns and Boone Pickenses of the world. But their being a non-profit doesn't change the fact that they're assets are capable of financing much more spending on salaries, stadiums, and fan services than their current ticket prices obtain.

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