TORONTO –Amid the uproar that’s briefly overtaken Toronto over a steep hike in the price of admission to see actual playoff hockey in this city this spring, there’s a reflexive response among some: What did you expect?
The furor is sure to fade as fast as a puck drops when action gets underway at the Air Canada Centre, but for the present, fans starved of post-season hockey for the past decade are miffed.
“The prices for Leafs playoff tickets are disgusting,” Chris Zealey, a university student, shouted into the Twittersphere Thursday morning, shortly after playoff tickets went on sale across the league. “Most true #leafs fans will never be able to support their team.”
“Just to show how much the #leafs love their loyal fans, they raised their 1st round ticket prices by 75% over regular season prices,” a fellow going by the handle @GregFear24 punched out.
A post over on SI.com asks whether the move is embarrassing for the franchise, or brilliant.
It’s neither, marketing and economics experts say, rather a coldly rational function of supply and demand. Fans will complain, but they will also pay up.
Despite the price jump – and a temporary technical hiccup that disrupted sales on Thursday – the first batch of Leafs tickets were gone moments after the limited number were offered to the public.
“There’s just relatively so much more demand here,” David Soberman, a marketing professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto said.
Yet that still means $218.20 minimum to get inside the doors of the Air Canada Centre on May 3, the earliest potential date for the team’s first-round home game debut.
The average regular season game at the ACC costs a group of four upwards of $630, according Illinois-based Team Market Research, a substantial discount to what they can expect to pay through the first round – even assuming food and beverage prices aren’t altered.
Few will be surprised to learn the Leafs are the most aggressive in the post-season price hike category.
In Canada, entry level prices to see the Vancouver Canucks’ first round series are $123, a 44 per cent hike. Montreal Canadiens tickets start at comparatively paltry $63—but that’s still a 46 per cent jump from regular season prices.
Soberman says the owners of the Leafs, Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment (which is jointly controlled by telecom giants Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc.) have done extensive market analysis to test how much people are willing to shell out.
Surveys and demographic analysis have been undertaken throughout the season to gauge sentiment and establish a base price on postseason tickets, he said.
MLSE also enjoys a monopoly over a hockey-mad and relatively affluent captive market that considers itself the epicenter of the sport.
Soberman said a city and region the size and makeup of the Greater Toronto Area could easily accommodate a second NHL franchise, something that would help limit sticker shock on tickets come playoff time.
“It is a market that I will say is underserved in the number of professional hockey teams. It’s really a market that could support two if not three times,” he said. “There’s always going to be a jump but it might not be as high.”
A group is proposing to build an arena that would serve as rival on the northern ledge of the GTA in the city of Markham, but it’s an outside shot at best at the moment.
And until that changes, fans – including Soberman – will be forced to pay up. And they appear quite willing to do so.
“I’m one of those guys who would pay the 75 per cent,” he admitted with a laugh. “Assuming I could even get a ticket.”
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