Fluid Tickets v. 3

Two years ago, the Washington Wizards rolled out a program called the Fluid Ticket Program, a way for season ticket holders to trade in their seats which they couldn't or didn't want to use for whatever reason and get store credit, so to speak. Today, the Wizards announced the continuation of that program for the third year but just like last year, they tweaked it a little bit.

During the first year of its existence, the program was awesome because it allowed season ticket holders to trade in below market value games (like say...Phoenix on a Tuesday) and recover the full value of your purchase price for later use. The bad news here was that you no longer had tickets to that game; the good news is you could easily trade in a few games or throw in few extra bucks and get an upgraded seat to a different game. 

Now this all wouldn't work very well if there wasn't a pretty good inventory of available seats. Fortunately during the first year, there was, including a boatload of all-inclusive VIP seats. It allowed folks like me who wanted the occasional VIP experience to get it fairly affordably, especially since the Wiz had been finding any way and every way to limit common riffraff 100 level season ticket holders like me from getting any sort of access to all-inclusive lounges.

Last year, the team tweaked the program a little, including placing a cutoff date for returns at the end of February. That meant pretty much no available inventory during the last six weeks of the season which meant no opportunity to upgrade. Last year's inventory in my opinion was less attractive than the first season, primarily because the people in the VIP sections weren't trading in their tickets as much. My suspicion here was that some people got caught with a balance on their accounts at the end of the year which quite clearly according to the program rules got returned to the team. The other realization I'm sure some of the VIP ticket holders had was that there was nothing to upgrade to. They already had the best seats in the building; what were they trading in their tickets for? Credit? For what? Worse seats than they already had?

Now the program is back and it's worth covering the new rules and what it likely means, good and bad, for season ticket holders. I'm writing this assuming VIP experiences are essentially not available. Over the summer the Wizards cut back the number of VIP seats dramatically which effectively raised the price point on these seats significantly. Unless the team is offering VIP upgrades that don't come with seats (i.e. just buying wristbands but sitting in your regular seats), I'm thinking the Fluid Tickets Program is unfortunately all-inclusive free this year. Time will tell on that one.

Can't imagine I'm getting an upgrade like this out of the Fluid Ticket Program this year; too bad.

Before we get to this year's rules, you access the program the same way you did the last two years: by using the Wizards app on your smartphone. Open the app, click on "Arena" at the bottom of the screen and then hit the Fluid Ticket Program tile shown in the picture at the top of this post.

If you used the program the last two years, you'll know the Wizards gave each season ticket holders some seed money to start them off with some discounted upgrades. That was a nice touch. It appears that perk is gone this year. It appears this year you gotta buy in with your own cash. That, quite frankly, sucks if its true. I checked the app earlier today and saw no obvious balance in my account. It appears it's true.

Some parts of the program are the same as last season, including the cutoff date of February 28 and the fact that any balance you have at the end of the season gets returned to the team. My prediction here is that there will be limited inventory at the end of the season but at least there's some time for you to use your leftover balance by that point in the season.

The timing of returning your tickets has changed for the better and for the worse. First, there are no returns allowed within 48 hours of tipoff. That means no more last minute returning for credit when your tickets don't sell on the secondary market. Planning on doing that for tomorrow's game? Better drop the price now, because it's already too late to get team credit. However, if you plan ahead and return your tickets to the team more than seven days before tip time, you will get a 15% bump. Assuming there's a decent inventory, that might allow you upgrade easier than in past seasons.

The last advertised change is that there's a limit of 10 games per season to trade in. I can't imagine this is a big deal. There are only 28 games before the February 28 cutoff date anyway and if you are using the program that much, you should probably consider getting your tickets some other way because it's likely cheaper. I also assume that this rule means there's a limit of 10 transactions. I have two sets of tickets on my account, I assume if I can't make it to a game, I would need to trade in two sets of two and that might count as two transactions even though it's just one game. I can't imagine my situation is anywhere near typical.

If, other than the rules above, the Program works just like it did last year then I can see only two ways season ticket holders could possibly use this in a smart way: (1) to use money you already spent to buy extra tickets to games when you need more tickets than are on your account and (2) to trade in a few games you can't attend for the change to get an upgraded seat to a future home game. This last one only works if there are better seats than yours available, meaning folks in the 400 level (and maybe the 200 leave) are likely the only ones who can realistically take advantage of the program in this way.

There is one unknown here and that is it appears you can use this program to upgrade your tickets the day of the game but won't see available inventory for an hour before tipoff. It might be worth keeping an eye on this feature which I believe is new to the program this year.

My expectations for this program are pretty low this year. I got a lot of value the past two years by smartly trading in some worthless tickets for some pretty cool upgrades but I'm assuming the change in the all-inclusive profile across the arena is going to significantly affect this program. We'll see what happens over the course of the season but if it's going to work the way I think it's going to work, it's just one more case of declining benefits for those of us who show up year after year. Oh well...