Season Tickets vs. StubHub? 2018 Report

This is the fourth of four posts I'm writing to wrap up the 2017-2018 NBA season and then I'm putting this thing on hold for the summer, or most of the summer anyway. Yes, I know the NBA season is still going on with the Finals about to start. It's just not going on for me. After a series of heightened expectations for the Wizards this season, the team historically underperformed and in the process revealed itself to be poorly constructed, complacent and with little freedom to improve without some creative moves that actually pay off, something that has been sorely lacking these past ten seasons or so. I'm tired of writing about this mess, so I'm taking some time off to detox.

Every year since 2014, I've written a blog post about the cost of Wizards tickets on the secondary market. This year is no exception. I believe it's important to track and report this data, especially considering the extreme hikes in season ticket prices that some of us have experienced over the past few years, including this one. The important thing for me to understand here is whether Wizards tickets on the open or secondary market can be had for less than what season ticket holders pay, which is supposed to be a discount over the market price, although the Wizards, and every other team out there, will advertise it as a discount over the gate price. The open market is more important.

First, let's re-set the conditions of this data gathering I do every year. I have two sets of season tickets for Wizards home games over at Capital One Arena, one pair in Section 109, Row E and one pair upstairs in Section 415, Row C. Both these seats are in what I call the corner sections, but which over the years the Wizards have gone back and forth on between corner and center. The focus of this exercise is to validate the price of my tickets. I know it's selfish but it's my damn blog, although in the process I assume this reporting is helping Wizards fans in general feel confident or not so confident about the price they pay for their tickets.

It's important to note a few things here. (1) The price of tickets on the secondary market is variable. The price of tickets rise and fall based on how the Wizards are performing, whether stars on the visiting team are injured, the night of the week, whether the Washington NFL franchise is playing and even when you decide to buy. There's a lot of unpredictability about this thing. My data was captured anywhere from a few days to a few weeks ahead of time for each game. I didn't shop for the highest or lowest prices; I just took what I found when I looked. I believe over time and having done this for years that this won't affect the big picture that much.

(2) Listed for sale doesn't mean sold. The fact that folks are pricing tickets at a certain price level doesn't mean they are selling at that price. Overall, I guess you could argue this may yield slightly higher results and thus make it seem that the secondary market appears more robust than it actually is. I don't share that opinion. If you want a ticket to go to a game, you are either going to pay the advertised price or not. In addition to tracking this stuff, I actually sell on the secondary market sometimes. I believe after doing that for several years, I have a fairly good nose for this stuff.

(3) Don't become a ticket reseller based on this post. The prices reported here for ticket sales do not reflect the money delivered to the seller. Remember that StubHub (which is the source of this pricing data) takes a cut as does every other secondary market seller. I don't want anyone out there buying season tickets and then getting annoyed because I said you can sell Wizards tickets at a profit. While the results reported here show that Wizards tickets are slightly more expensive overall on the secondary market, the margin is not enough for you to be profitable as a regular seller. Want to sell your Wizards vs. Warriors tickets? You can probably make some cash, if you believe that you are actually paying the same amount for each Wizards home game (news flash: you are not and some of your tickets are worth about nothing).

Over the prior four years I've done this, the price of season tickets has proven to be cheaper than the secondary market every single year. This year is no different. For trending purposes, I have found season tickets in the lower level to be 30% (2014), 48% (2015), 29% (2016) and 26% (2017) cheaper than those available on the resale market. For the 400 level, the trending has been slightly to significantly lower at 25% (2014), 46% (2015), 17% (2016) and 19% (2017) cheaper than on StubHub.

Here are this year's results:

• Purchasing Section 109, Row E seats for the entire 2017-2018 season cost me $3,400. Purchasing approximately equivalent seats on StubHub would have cost me $4,681. Season tickets are 38% cheaper. It's worth noting that next year's seats in my location will cost $4,080, which about splits the difference between this year's costs and the resale market.
• Purchasing Section 415, Row C seats for the entire 2017-2018 season cost me $1,530. Purchasing approximately equivalent seats on StubHub would have cost me $1,737. Season tickets are 14% cheaper. This is an extremely slim margin, lower than I've ever found. Next year, these tickets will go up to $1,700, essentially wiping out any discount over the secondary market. This is a hugely significant point!

As I have done in the past, I have included the cost of preseason tickets in the cost of my season tickets but not in the resale cost. These games are worthless yet the team continues make season ticket holders pay for them at half the cost of a regular game. It's disgraceful and shouldn't continue. There is no Earthly reason why season ticket holders should be made to fork over the cost of an additional 1.5 games (3 preseason games at half price) when they've spent a lot of money of 41 regular season games.

The results above make lower level season tickets seem like a bargain (they do not make upper deck seats seem like a bargain). But are they really? Just like in prior years, the average cost continues to be driven up by some marquee games. Want tickets to see the Wiz play Golden State? By my research you'll pay $345 for a seat similar to mine downstairs. Cleveland? $262 or $293 depending on whether you wanted to attend in November or December. This of course represents a significant dilemma for the season ticket holder who feels he (or she) is paying too much and wants to recoup some cash via resales. Yes, you can get a significant portion of your investment (please don't laugh at that word) by selling off your Warriors or Thunder tickets but then you also don't get to see those games in person.

On the flip side, if you wanted to go see a bunch of games at Capital One Arena below season ticket holder prices, you can. I have 15 games on my spreadsheet with resale prices below the average season ticket holder game cost, including getting in to games against Phoenix and Utah for less than $47. Remember, I'm paying $80 per. You could also quite easily have attended more than half the games this year in seats comparable to mine for less than $1,500 or less than $72 per contest. The story in this paragraph and the one prior are true every year and likely always will be.

Of course one of the biggest benefits of being a season ticket holder is the guarantee of the right to purchase playoff tickets at what (if the team makes it far enough) will eventually be a deep discount. Don't believe me? Check out the graphic at the top of this post for the (at the time I took the screenshot) then unavailable home game one in Houston for the NBA Finals. The pricing is, shall we say, robust. Of course it also won't happen since the Rockets lost Monday night to the Warriors. Still don't believe me? Check out the pic below showing Stanley Cup Finals tickets for a Capitals home game. Yes, I know folks are crazy about the Caps and there's a lot of years of playoff losses inflating those prices but they are still crazy high.

In playoff years, I typically track the secondary market values for postseason games also. This year, I did not because (a) I was pretty much checked out at this point and (b) I figured the Wizards weren't going far and I was right. I will say that if you intend or need to sell your playoff tickets that timing can be everything. People make emotional decisions during the playoffs. Game 6 tickets vs. Toronto might have sold well if they were available right after a game 4 win at home. Just saying...

If the risk / reward of skipping or attending the regular season game vs. the Golden State Warriors is a head scratcher for the average Wizards faithful, the playoffs represent a sort of double jeopardy. These tickets typically will represent a good resale potential (although not as much as marquee games against regular season opponents in some case; nowhere close actually) but these are the games that you want to attend. Going to the playoffs is why you buy in the first place. They are also the most expensive tickets you will ever buy from the team. Sorry for the no results this year on this one.

So that's my report for this season. I'm not the only one who writes about this stuff. You can get a little bit different take on this whole situation by reading WizKid's report on this whole situation. And in case you read that and end up feeling that he and I are in totally different spots, I'm not sure that's true. Ultimately the analysis of whether this purchase is worth it is a personal one. I can easily make the case as WizKid does that my season tickets are not worth it. After all, is beating your heart against a brick wall for 18 years with just one division title to show for it really worth it? We all have to make that decision for ourselves.

I will say in closing, though, that the math behind an upper deck season ticket purchase considering the price hikes next year really is to the point where it no longer works. The team has to stop raising these prices. Other than the playoff incentive (meaning first or second round exit given recent history) and a couple of other season ticket holder perks, the numbers don't really work at all here. I did renew my upper deck tickets next year; I don't think I will if the numbers are similar next season and there's another price hike.

Season Tickets vs. StubHub? 2017 Report

One of the most important non-basketball aspects of being a Wizards season ticket holder for me is getting some sort of understanding of how much the tickets I pay for every year are worth on the open market. Plain and simple, I want to know if I'm paying too much. To that end, for the past three seasons I've tracked the cost of tickets approximately equivalent to mine on one or two secondary market sellers. A little late, maybe, but welcome to year number four of the same series.

Let's start with a recap of the conditions of this experiment. Firstly, I have two sets of Wizards season tickets at Verizon Center: a pair of seats in the lower corner in Section 109 and another pair a little higher up but almost directly behind those 109 seats up in Section 415. My lower level seats are in row E; my uppers are in row C. Both, in other words, are in the lower portion of each section. This is important because my price comparisons here are based on section and row, not just section.

As an aside (feeling ADD today...) I've been asked over the years a bunch of times why I have two sets of season tickets. I started this years ago so I could bring someone to a game now and then without my friend Mike (with whom I share the bounty that is being a Wizards season ticket holder) missing a single minute of home hoops action over at 601 F Street. Nowadays, it helps give me some flexibility in managing the total cost of my season ticket experience while still attending (hopefully) every game. Until it gets just too darned expensive, I'll keep this arrangement for a while.

Back to the controls. In checking the cost of the secondary market, I'm looking for seats that are close to or better than my season tickets. That means to me in the center five sections of the arena and in the lower 10 rows and lower 7 rows of lower and upper sections respectively. I came up with 10 rows downstairs by doubling the distance from the hockey boards (where row A is) figuring those seats are about equivalent below that level; I came with 7 rows upstairs because row G is the last row short row formed by the exits to the concourse. It's a bit random, I know.

In past years, I checked both StubHub and Ticketmaster as sources for pricing. This year, I didn't and of course it's Ticketmaster's fault. I found their site so clunky and awkward to deal with at the beginning of the season that I just abandoned any input from their resale site.

Finally, the timing of a purchase on the secondary market could affect pricing drastically. Buy too early and you'll be dealing with folks that are willing to part with their tickets only for exorbitant prices. Buy really close to the event and you may find prices dropping as sellers try to unload inventory rather than taking a total loss. Buy really really close to the event and you'll find not much inventory at all and be at the mercy of the limited supply. This year, I checked prices once per month towards the beginning of the month but usually about a week before the first day. I'm sure there were bargains later as well as price spikes later.

How much is a ticket to a Wizards game again? Flex pricing makes it hard to tell.

So what gives this year? Let's get right to the big picture results. As I've done in past years, I'm comparing the average resale prices to the per game price for season ticket holders based on the total cost of a season ticket averaged over 41 regular season games. That means the cost of preseason games (which have pretty much no value to me) gets added to a typical game. I did not do research on preseason games on StubHub. If I could delete the preseason games from my package I happily would.

• Purchasing Section 109, Row E seats for the entire 2016-2017 season cost me $3,400. Purchasing approximately equivalent seats on StubHub would have cost me $4,070. Season tickets are 26% cheaper. Last year the same study revealed season tickets were 29% cheaper. For the second straight year (the year before it was 46%), the gap between season ticket cost and secondary market cost has gotten smaller for these seats. That's not a good trend.
• Purchasing Section 415, Row C seats for the entire 2016-2017 season cost me $1,275. Purchasing approximately equivalent seats on StubHub would have cost me $1,566. Season tickets are 19% cheaper. Last year the same study revealed season tickets were 17% cheaper. A larger gap is better here. That's encouraging (except that the Wizards upped the price of these seats next year).

On an absolute dollar basis (it's difficult to understand pricing trends using percentages of changing baselines, or the team increasing the season ticket cost year over year in this case), the value of a resold Wizards ticket last year was higher than the prior year, after a one year (non-playoff year) dip. Over the last three seasons (starting with the 2014-2015 season) the cost of a 100 level ticket like my season tickets has trended from $109 per game to $96 per game to $99 per game. In the 400 level those three year numbers are $38 then $35 and back to $38 this year. People pay to see winning teams is the message here.

As always, the devil is in the details. First, the numbers above are what the prospective customer would pay for a ticket on the secondary market, not what the seller would receive. So all you fans (or non-fans) looking to invest in a whole boatload of Wizards season tickets for a guaranteed profit need to remember that the ticket selling site takes a significant commission on these things. You won't make money using the numbers I'm reporting here.

Trend-wise this past season there was one really noticeable one: tickets re-sold better at the end of the season than in the beginning of the season. The Wizards 2-8 start had a lot to do with this; they didn't even hit .500 again until New Year's Eve eve. But another part of this has to do with the NFL, oddly enough. My data's always shown that ticket resale values remain lower while football is being played, especially if Washington's football team is still in playoff contention.

If you were to purchase tickets to Wizards home games before NFL Conference Championship weekend, you'd be paying an average of $76 per game for tickets comparable to mine downstairs at Verizon Center and $27 per game for a 400 level seat. That's cheaper per game than I paid for a whole season. Buy all the games after that time and your per game price on StubHub would be at $132 and $54 per game. Pretty big jump. And yes the Golden State game was in the latter part of the year as was a Cleveland game but there was a Cavs game in November too. D.C. is a football town; what else can I say?

If you were looking for bargains this past season, you could find them. Particularly against less popular teams on weeknights. The lowest prices on my list were mid-week games against the Charlotte Hornets and Phoenix Suns ($31 in the lower level and $12 upstairs). And yes, both those games were during football season. Want to buy just the Golden State game? Well, your per game price is going to skyrocket vs. a season ticket holder but (a) you are not shelling out money for the whole season and (b) you can probably afford a higher per game price if you are only buying one game. That's why there's a season ticket holder discount for buying in bulk. That same season ticket holder will be paying more for that early December Phoenix game.

Finally this year, the Wizards made their return to the playoffs so I have some playoff data to report here.

Now, you would think that playoff reselling would be a sure fire bull market, right? Not so much. Two years ago, I bought extra tickets to the second round series vs. the Atlanta Hawks thinking the same thing. I priced them high and kept them there as the Wizards took game one on the road in Georgia. But the market crashed after John Wall broke his wrist and the Wiz lost game two. Consumer confidence in the Washington Wizards secondary market is fragile. I actually lost money on the extra tickets I bought.

This year, Wizards season ticket holders looking to sell playoff tickets probably made out pretty well. Except for the fact that the whole point of buying season tickets is so you can get guaranteed playoff tickets that is; sure you can make some money, but you probably don't want to miss these games. Why suffer through an 82 game regular season to just make a quick buck when the action heats up?

The results in the postseason? I paid an average of $106 per game for my lower level seats over six playoff games (all wins by the way!!!). My StubHub data suggests that someone looking on the secondary market would pay almost double that or $206 per game. The results upstairs were similar. I coughed up an average of $41 per game. The secondary market price looked about 2.5 times that number at $106 per contest. Pretty good returns if you are willing to skip everything meaningful about the NBA season.

If I'm predicting the future (and I've been historically awful about that), I'm thinking next year the resale market will be a lot more robust, primarily because the Wizards elected to keep season ticket holder pricing the same in a lot of locations in Verizon Center. But if there are lessons to be learned here it's that the team needs to play well in order for the resale market to be hot and the casual fan would get better value for money before the end of January. I'm still upset at the price hike upstairs. I'm interested as to how that will compare with the resale market.

Season Tickets vs. StubHub? 2016 Report

It's almost the end of June. The NBA season is over tonight. The NBA Draft is Thursday and everyone's looking forward to the start of free agency. And free agency is all the diehard Wizards fan has had to look forward to for the last two plus months. Let's get this thing started and move on to the 2016-2017 season. But before I put last season to rest for good, it's time for my third annual secondary market ticket pricing report. Spoiler alert here: Wizards fans should feel less positive about their season ticket purchase last year than the prior two years. Success on the court and rising prices are the likely culprits here.

To refresh everyone's memory or to introduce newcomers to the concept, for the past three seasons I've tracked the price of Wizards tickets on the secondary market. I published my first set of results two years ago; last year I did the same thing. Since I realize there's only so much we can stand to read in our ADD world these days, let me summarize the results the last two years on a big picture level.

For an upper deck seat in the front of the center five sections of Verizon Center, buying Wizards season tickets represented a 25% savings over the secondary market during the 2013-2014 NBA season and a 46% savings one year later. For a lower level seat in the front of the center five sections of Verizon Center, buying Wizards season tickets in a corner section represented a 30% savings over the secondary market during the 2013-2014 NBA season and a 48% one year later. The cost savings increase was remarkable between the two seasons because the saving increased despite the Wizards deciding to raise prices for most seats in 2014.

Got that? Good! Now before we get to last season's numbers,  perhaps a little perspective is in order. First, I changed the conditions of the experiment a little bit. The last two years I tracked pricing at two different points in time: once about a week ahead of gameday and once on the day of the game. I decided that the results yielded by that tracking provided me with no useful data so I abandoned it completely. I am doing this primarily to understand if I am getting the kind of value I need out of my season tickets; tracking pricing at two different points in time for every game didn't significantly change that evaluation for me.

Secondly, both StubHub and Ticketmaster this year provided total price information without having to move beyond the initial stadium screenshot (previously StubHub was the only one doing this). Because they did, I tracked pricing on both sites and can report that information for both the consumer and the seller here today.

Thirdly, just like in 2014, the Wizards again raised prices in 2015 (as they did this year too). For the comparison offered here (which are the specific seats I purchase) there was a 20% increase in lower level tickets and a 40% increase in upper level tickets. A 40% ticket price increase with no corresponding increase in secondary market prices might wipe out the savings promised by the team as part of their season ticket sales pitch.

Finally, there's no playoff comparison this year. Why is that? Because the team didn't make the playoffs this year. Next year, Wizards fans will be paying out more money on the promise of getting better. We'll see how that works out for us.

Ticketmaster's enhanced pricing feature, showing prices with all fees from the first screen.

So after all that, let's see how the secondary market compared to the discounted season ticket pricing. Just like the last two years I've done this, I'm comparing the price of similar location secondary market tickets to my specific season ticket locations. For the lower level, that means the first ten rows of the center five sections; upstairs, that means the first seven rows of the center five sections.

• Purchasing Section 109, Row E seats for the entire 2015-2016 season cost me $2,805. Purchasing equivalent seats on StubHub for each and every regular season game (no preseason; preseason has no value) would have cost me $3,930. Season tickets are 29% cheaper. That's a lot different than the 48% I reported last year.
• Purchasing Section 415, Row C seats for the entire 2015-2016 season cost me $1,190. Purchasing equivalent seats on StubHub for each and every regular season game (again, no preseason) would have cost me $1,440. Season tickets are 17% cheaper. Just like in the lower level but actually way worse, that's a lot different than the 46% I reported last year.

 

The results above are just for StubHub. For tickets on Ticketmaster's site, including their resale NBAtickets.com site, secondary prices are a little higher: on average 6% higher in the lower bowl and 10% in the upper deck. That doesn't wholly surprise me: when you buy on Ticketmaster you are getting a guaranteed ticket. As awesome as StubHub's customer service is and as many times I have bought tickets off their site without any problem whatsoever, they can't guarantee the seat you buy is authentic because they don't own the original ticket.

Concentrating on the StubHub pricing only, secondary market tickets during the 2014-2015 season cost an average of $109 in the 100 level and $38 upstairs at Verizon Center. Last season, these numbers were $96 and $35 respectively. So secondary market pricing for Wizards tickets dropped even though the team raised prices. Next year better be a really good one for the Wizards, since my 109 seats suffered a 21% increase in price this past February. The Wizards (and I) can't afford another price drop on the secondary market. If that trend continues, pretty soon my tickets will be more expensive than the resale market, despite the advertised benefit of cheaper than gate prices.

The results above consider attendance at all 41 home games. Most fans don't do that. Some only go on weekdays after work; some go only on weekends when they have more time; and some just pick the best opponents to go see. It's important therefore to consider pricing of other scenarios, which I've done each of the past two years as well. Last year, looking at some different scenarios yielded consistently good results for Wizards season ticket holders. This year, the lower level made out fine: any of the three scenarios listed earlier in this paragraph showed at least a 29% savings vs. the secondary market.

Not so much in the upper deck. Upper deck tickets against the best teams in the NBA (the four conference finalists) were a bargain for season ticket holders. But attending weeknight games (Monday through Thursday) was not. In this scenario, season ticket holders were afforded only a 15 % savings over the secondary market. Considering the Golden State game and one of the two Cleveland games were on a weeknight, that's troubling. That means there were a lot of weeknight games in the upper deck which had essentially no value whatsoever. That matches my personal experience last year. There were lots of weeknight games I could neither give away nor sell tickets to.

As I've already mentioned, one of the advertised benefits of being a Wizards season ticket holder is the opportunity to purchase tickets at a discount, although the specific discount over the gate price is never written down. This should be a benefit for a couple of reasons. First, if you can buy tickets overall cheaper on the secondary market why would you ever buy season tickets unless you really loved other benefits or were really attached to your seats. Secondly, diehard fans can't possibly be expected to pay the supply and demand secondary market price for every game. The reason why some games are more expensive than gate prices is that there are folks out there willing to pay a lot of money to go to just the one game they want to go to. Season ticket holders would never be able to afford that scenario for every game. The discount is a key to retaining diehard fans who show up game after game no matter who or how well our team is playing.

So what does this all mean for Wizards season ticket holder subjected to yet another price hike? Well for one, your season tickets are likely still cheaper than secondary market prices but the team better perform better than they did last year or it might be that way for long. The results this year represent for me a reversal in trending. It also means based on last year's data that you are for sure paying more than some dude buying off StubHub for a midweek game against Brooklyn, Milwaukee or some similarly undesirable (read: they have no committed fans either) team. Skipping these games surely means selling at a big loss or eating the cost entirely.

I re-upped both sets of my season tickets this year but I thought hard about it. I actually considered just renewing my upper level seats and then buying selectively a la carte on the secondary market to a predetermined overall spend limit that I would be comfortable with. I thought that would allow me to watch a lot of games in the lower level during weekdays against weaker teams (including a VIP game or two) based on a depressed market and lower my overall spend. That's an idea I might reconsider each year, especially since I know prices will continue to likely rise all over the arena. For now, I believe season tickets are a bit cheaper but as those prices get higher and higher, other options become way more attractive. All we need now is a couple of franchise altering free agents. Ha!

Want to see the Wiz vs. Nets this past April upstairs? $11 would get you in. Season ticket holders paid $28! Ouch!

The Price Of Admission

It's mid to late January 2016. In about a month, the Wizards will likely be publishing the new pricing for the 2016-2017 season and I (along with every other existing season ticket holder) will have to decide whether the price of admission to games next year is worth it. For sure this year, there are a ton of variables influencing this decision, perhaps more than a typical year. These include the price cut ownership offered a lot of season ticket holders a few years ago, the performance of the team on the court (and especially at home) this year and the shiny promise of enough cap space to tempt a brand new marquee free agent who may or may not decide to sign here.

On this last point, I understand Kevin Durant is at the top of everyone's wish list but let's be realistic here, folks. There's only one team going to get KD, and there are tons of teams with cap space and that assumes he even wants to consider leaving Oklahoma City. I'd be pretty ticked off if a promise of KD affected season ticket prices for next year only to find out we end up getting this one of this offseason's second tier free agent for the max price.

I've written in this blog before defending the price of Wizards season tickets set by management. In both 2014 and 2015, I published my own research about the price of my season tickets vs. similar tickets available on secondary ticket market king StubHub finding season tickets to be appropriately cheaper than resale tickets. I have also defended the price increase for the 2014-2015 season and comparison shopped Wizards tickets vs. other team and found pricing through that same season to be clearly towards the bottom of the league. Throughout the almost four years I've been writing this blog I've been sticking up for ownership on the subject of ticket prices. Until now.

While there's no debate in my mind that 100 level seat prices that saw almost a 50% price cut in 2011 will still justifiably creep up towards their pre-2011 cost, I have a different view on the 400 or upper level seats. The point of this post is to argue that there should be no price increase in the cheapest seats at Verizon Center for this coming season.

There are currently three different pricing levels in the 400 level. The center five sections of the 400 level are priced at either $28 per game (for the lower half of these sections) or $24 per game (for the upper half). The remaining 24 sections upstairs are all priced at $16 per game. For each one of my 16 seasons as a Wizards season ticket holder, I have purchased a full season in the lower half of the center five sections in the 400 level, first in Section 402 and currently in Section 415. These seats have seen a precipitous increase in price during each of the last two seasons and I believe it might be time to put the brakes on.

When I first bought these seats for the 2000-2001 season, they cost me $10 per seat. That price held for two seasons before the team decided watching Michael Jordan in his second (and last) season was rightfully worth an extra $5 per game. When Jordan was (also rightfully) run out of town by Abe Pollin, the $15 price tag stuck until the 2008-2009 season when the price went up a buck to $16 per. Then two years ago the team decided to ramp things up a lot, adding a $4 (or 25%) increase for 2014-2015 and another $8 (or 40%!!) for this current season. So that's a 30% increase in cost over 14 seasons and a 75% increase over the past two. Hmmmm...

This ticket pricing thing is no doubt complicated stuff so I've always watched the secondary market as an indicator of whether or not I'm getting value for my money. Over the past two years, upper level tickets using season ticket holder pricing have been tracked by me as 30% (two seasons ago) and 46% cheaper (last season) than secondary market pricing. Based on that data, I could reasonably defend ownership's decision to raise prices to the level seen this year.

This year the data says something different. Through tomorrow night's game vs. the Miami Heat (home game 23), I could have bought a ticket on StubHub for each home game in a location comparable to my current upper deck season tickets for about $32.50, just $4.50 more per game than I pay by buying all 41. And that includes the artificially inflated Lakers game secondary market price caused when Kobe announced his retirement five days before the game. 

Compare those prices to the pricing available through StubHub for the first 23 home games last year and you find a $4 per game drop in ticket prices over the previous season. Now, no doubt this is likely directly related to on court performance this year but to me, these results are pretty conclusive: it only cost $4.50 more to see a game buying a la carte on the secondary market. Considering there's no obligation to spend money on worthless preseason games, the difference is actually less.

The Wizards have always touted a reduced per game price for the season ticket holder. This year's numbers from my secondary market research show that savings is about 15%. I think the Wizards intend it to be more than that. I certainly would argue it has to be when I'm watching the Wiz take on Milwaukee or Minnesota mid-week and I have to sell me second set of seats for $5. I think it's time to freeze upper deck pricing for 2016-2017 and maybe beyond. I hope the Wizards agree with me. I guess we'll find out in a few weeks.

Season Tickets Or StubHub? 2015 Report

During the 2013-2014 NBA season, I tracked the price of Washington Wizards tickets on the secondary market, specifically on StubHub, and compared the price of those tickets with the cost borne by Wizards season ticket holders. I did this as a means of justifying my commitment I make each spring to my favorite basketball team and to make this information available to existing and potential new season ticket holders considering taking the journey I've taken with the Wizards in the last decade plus. Spoiler alert: it might be a bumpy ride.

The results of my first season tracking pricing on the secondary market were interesting. Generally speaking, I found the price I paid for my lower level corner seats were 30% cheaper than the resale market and my upper deck tickets in pretty much the same spot in the arena as I buy downstairs were 25% cheaper. I warned though that the price increase imposed by the Wizards for my seats this past season (10% downstairs and 25% in the upper deck) might come pretty close to those available on StubHub and that the secondary market would need to keep up to make the Wizards faithful feel like they were getting value for money.

Not surprisingly, this past season, I did the exact same thing.

Just to refresh everyone's memory about the controls of this experiment, I am seeking to compare the prices of Wizards tickets in the first ten rows of the center five sections of Verizon Center's lower level and the first seven rows in the center five sections in the upper deck at VC with tickets available for sale on the secondary market. Why these locations? Well, because I hold season tickets in the fifth row of Section 109 and the third row of Section 415 and I want to know how my tickets compare more than any others. I consider tickets a few rows behind mine could roughly be considered equivalent to what I have.

I took data at two separate times, just like I did in the first year I did this: one week ahead of game day and the day of the game itself. This allows me to get a handle on trending data as game day approaches and see if there is any advice I can offer the secondary market purchaser about when to pull the trigger and invest in some NBA tickets. For the record on this one, overall there is about a 3% price drop over that last week. More desirable games do not drop; less desirable ones drop more. I still think if you find tickets you want at a price you are willing to pay, you should grab them. That's what I do when I'm traveling to watch the Wizards.

Finally, I ignore other factors about seat location like the fact that my seats are aisle seats toward the center court side in both levels or the fact that in Row J in the lower level, you probably can't see, hear or be heard like I can from row E. Now you know where I sit, stop by and say hi sometime; bring beer as a gift if you are feeling generous. Budweiser in the grossly oversized 25 oz. can is preferred by me when at Verizon Center.

Just like last year, StubHub was my preferred site to comparison shop. StubHub is a great site for this work because they display the final cost of tickets to the consumer, rather than hiding all sorts of fees behind an attractive low low price like other sites sometimes do (nbatickets.com run by Ticketmaster comes to mind). I did track pricing on nbatickets.com this year but the data is less useful because of that site's general unwillingness to show their hand. While the Ticketmaster data is useful to some degree, they kept switching the format of their pricing throughout the year. I was impressed towards the end of the season that they started being more transparent about pricing (see the photo above), but by then it was too late to get a complete set of data.

So let's get to the results. I'll present just as I did last year.

• Purchasing Section 109, Row E seats for the entire 2014-2015 season (including preseason) cost me $2,337.50. Purchasing equivalent seats on StubHub for each and every regular season game (no preseason; preseason has no value) one week ahead of the event would have cost me $4,476. Season tickets are 48% cheaper. Wow!
• Purchasing Section 415, Row C seats for the entire 2014-2015 season (including preseason) cost me $850. Purchasing equivalent seats of StubHub for each and every regular season game (again, no preseason) one week ahead of the event would have cost me $1,566. Season tickets are 46% cheaper. Also wow!

The results for this past season show a huge discrepancy between the cost of tickets to the season ticket holder vs. the cost of tickets on the secondary market. Last years "cheaper than" percentages were 30% and 25%. This past year season tickets were a real bargain compared to StubHub. This season also saw a large jump in "per game" pricing on the secondary market: lower level tickets averaged $109 per game ($72 last year) and upper level tickets averaged $38 ($22 last year). I placed quotation marks around per game because we all know prices fluctuate by game. A game vs. the Cleveland Cavaliers does not cost what a game vs. the Milwaukee Bucks costs.

Now, before the Wizards get any ideas about hiking ticket prices (well, they've already done that so...), the season ticket holder SHOULD get a discount. Remember we are the team's bread and butter and shouldn't be forced to pay market driven prices in advance for a product that may or may not deliver that value. Some of us buy and show up every game regardless of team performance. We don't get money back on our purchase when the team stinks. At least nobody's given me any cash back yet.

Now the short answer above considers a scenario where you attend all 41 home games per year. But some folks (can't imagine why not) don't want to do this. Just like last year, I looked at various other scenarios for buying games a la carte from StubHub. In every scenario (vs. the best teams in the NBA, going only on weekdays, going only on Fridays and Saturdays) I looked at, the cost of tickets this year was consistently about 35% or more higher than the 2013-2014 season. Considering the 10% / 25% hike that season ticket holders were subjected to, the value is actually pretty good. But again, it should be.

Last year I considered how many games you could attend if you only had $200 to spend. In 2013-2014, you could buy seven lower level games or 20 upper level games. This past season, your $200 would only get you five lower level games or 13 upper level games and you'd spend a lot of time watching the Orlando Magic and Indiana Pacers on Monday through Wednesday nights. This data is not surprising considering the overall increase in secondary market pricing. Your $200 doesn't go as far this year as it did last year.

Finally a word about the playoffs. Last year I noted that the difference between the regular season and playoffs were striking in terms of secondary market value. This year, I'm making the statement but for the exact opposite reason. In the 2014 playoffs, Wizards tickets were hot. Or maybe Chicago Bulls vs. the Wizards tickets were red hot and those for the Indiana series were a little cooler but still smoking. At least until the game three loss against Indiana when all the bandwagonners decided they didn't want to play any more.

This year, not so much. Last year's playoff market would have cost me 3-5 times what I paid as a season ticket holder. This year, that gap shrunk to less than three times the season ticket holder rate, specifically $992 lower level on StubHub vs. $393 STH pricing for all five games and $400 vs. $142 upstairs. The drop in my opinion is strictly based on our opponents. Toronto and Atlanta are not as sexy as Chicago and Indiana. Last year, the Wizards were selling additional seats for season ticket holders for up to $125 for upper deck Indiana seats. This year, I bought some extras for game three vs. Atlanta (on a weekend night no less) for $50 and had to end up selling them at a loss. Playoff seats were definitely tough to move this year.

So what does all this mean for the season ticket holder considering lower level corner tickets went up $11 per game (20% increase) and upper level center tickets went up $8 per game (40% increase)? Well, I think it means if you are planning on attending every Wizards home game, you are going to spend more money next year over this past season just like you did last year vs. the previous season. Your tickets were way cheaper than the secondary market and if trends hold, they are still cheaper next year than the prices on the open market this past season. If that's any comfort, that's great. In the end, you are still spending more. Eventually, you might even get priced out of your seats so some fair weather fan can scoop them up. Not an uplifting thought.

Now if you like holding season tickets but not going to all the games, then the chances are you can unload the tickets for some games you don't want to attend at or above what you paid for them. Don't get your hopes up for Minnesota on a Monday or Toronto on a Tuesday but if you are looking to skip a Friday game when Cleveland's in town, you may make a tidy profit. I suppose the Wizards may end up resenting this but I hope they don't. Season tickets can't possibly be priced at open market prices by game; we can't afford to pay the top dollar price for every game like people attending one game per year can.

I still think the price of Wizards tickets is very affordable. Based on the increase for the 2015-2016 season and my season ticket comparison shopping this past March, I believe the Wizards are right in the middle of the pack (maybe 15th or so) when it comes to season ticket prices across the league. I also think the price of Wizards tickets will continue to rise over the next few years assuming the success of the current team continues. I wouldn't be surprised to see hikes like the ones this past offseason go on for another two or three years. I'll be back at Verizon Center for at least 39 or 40 games next year and I'm sure I won't think I'm wasting my money. Not next year anyway.

NOT my seats at Verizon Center.

Ticketmaster Strikes Back

The Washington Wizards 2014-2015 home opener is scheduled for one week from today. The opponent is the Milwaukee Bucks, which seems like the easiest home opener opponent we could have been handed, and that's a good thing. Of course, it looked that way last year when we drew the Philadelphia 76ers in this same spot and that didn't work out so well at all. If there are two relatively easy things the Wizards could do to improve their record over last season, it would be getting off to a better start (like better than last year's 2-7 record over the first nine) and stop losing games to clearly inferior teams at home (think Philly, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Boston and Cleveland again).

The start of pro basketball in the District again means it's time for the secondary market for Wizards tickets to start heating up again. Last year, I tracked the price of seats similar to my season tickets in the upper and lower decks of Verizon Center vs. prices on StubHub. I priced equivalent tickets one week ahead of time and then the day of the game to see how the cost of the tickets I have bought from the team for the last 14 years compared to a la carte buying on the open secondary market. The results, which I thought were interesting but lacking of any sort of long term trending data, were posted on this blog in July of this year.

I'm intending to track similar data this year using pricing on both StubHub and nbatickets.com. StubHub's pricing is easy to track; the price shown on their website is the price you pay. I'm not sure how I will track pricing on nbatickets.com because there are a series of hidden fees you can only see upon checkout. Not surprisingly, since the words "hidden fees" were used, nbatickets.com is a Ticketmaster enterprise. I've decided to track prices on both sites this year because I perceive a change in market share away from StubHub and towards nbatickets.com. I'm not tracking pricing anywhere else because my perception is these two sites get the lion's share of the NBA secondary market business.

Big picture-wise, there are some small but potentially significant differences between the two sites. As of the beginning of the 2013-2014 NBA season, StubHub charged sellers 15% commission, whereas nbatickets.com charged only 5%. I assume most of the commission difference was collected by nbatickets.com from the buyer, although I could be wrong. I'm not sure it matters. StubHub this summer decided to change the seller commission to just 10% but then make it up on the buyer side. My belief on this change is that it will not lead to more money for the seller because the market won't tolerate prices going up and will self correct itself when sellers realize they are just going to have to cut their prices (and thus lower their commission) to last year's prices.

The bigger difference between the two sites is on the risk side. Ticketmaster owns the tickets that are being re-sold so they have the ability to cancel the original tickets and re-issue new tickets to the buyer, meaning there is no chance of the buyer's tickets being fake or having been re-sold multiple times on multiple outlets. There is less risk for the seller also; there's no way the buyer can come back to the seller and claim the tickets are invalid. StubHub can't offer this assurance; they put measures in place to combat this sort of risk but it's not guaranteed. Few things in life are, I guess.

I have bought and sold tickets on both sites and while I have always been nervous about the tickets I bought on StubHub working, I have never (repeat, NEVER) had tickets fail. There has never ever been a problem. On the seller side, though, I have had issues. One was my fault: I accidentally uploaded the wrong tickets once and the buyer didn't notice until they got to the gate. I lost a sale on that one but to StubHub's credit, they didn't punish me financially like they could have. The other was strictly a false claim by the purchaser. I sold some New York Jets - New England Patriots tickets a couple of years ago and received an email from StubHub that the buyer claimed my tickets didn't work just as the Jets went down 35-0 in the second quarter. Once again the customer service from StubHub was exemplary and they resolved the claim without my input after looking at the facts (I assume they told the buyer that they didn't believe him). I love StubHub. Their customer service is fantastic and they aren't a sort of inherently evil monopoly sort of thing like Ticketmaster but the guarantee isn't there. Just saying.

During the 2013-2014 NBA season, both StubHub and nbatickets.com offered buyer instant access to their ticket purchase. This year, that has all changed. Ticketmaster, it seems has a new policy that is affecting ticket availability on the market (and not just the secondary market). Instead of offering Wizards season ticket holders the ability to download and print the tickets they have spent their hard earned money on, this year we can only download three days before the event. While Ticketmaster's stated reason for this is to control the number of copies of tickets out there and increase security for ticket purchasers. I have to speculate this is in part or in whole aimed at producing a re-selling advantage over StubHub.

When purchasing tickets on StubHub, there is sort of a reassurance behind the "Instant Download" note next to the tickets you are buying. Maybe it's an instant gratification thing but I think it's more related to the fact that if I buy something, it's mine right there and then. I think that kind of emotional connection is important and positively affects purchases on StubHub. This year, you can't get that unless it's 72 hours or fewer before the event. If you buy or sell earlier than that, the Wizards season ticket holder has to remember to upload three days before the event time. That has to, in my opinion, affect sales on StubHub.

Just a couple of other notes about this policy. First it's clearly not NBA wide. I bought some tickets for the Wizards - Raptors November 7 game on StubHub and have had the pdf tickets for weeks now. Secondly, it appears this policy is being applied to the primary market in some areas. I am planning a trip to south Florida in mid-December and bought tickets to see the Wiz play the LeBron-less Heat while I'm in Miami. I paid my money, but Ticketmaster says I can't have my tickets until 72 hours before the event. That is surely going to inconvenience me because I will be in a hotel for a couple of nights before the game and I'll likely have to get my tickets printed some other way. That for sure doesn't increase my ticket security because I'm asking someone else to print them for me.

So why do I care about all this? There are a couple of reasons. First, I am very concerned about the Wizards one day pricing me out of my seats. There is a trend in sports ticket selling toward market driven pricing (the team calls it "dynamic pricing" which adjusts the price of tickets up or down depending on market demand and which sounds way cooler than it really is) and I think that is dangerous for the season ticket holder if applied the wrong way. I have sat through many many many bad Wizards seasons in the 14 years I have bought season tickets and dutifully shown up game after game to watch my team win or (mostly) lose while spending far above market value to do so. I think that's worth something. I am not a guy who just bails on the team when they start losing. I show up.

If we move to a clearly market driven pricing structure, that means that when the team is really good (if we ever get that far), the price of tickets could skyrocket and that could potentially hurt the season ticket holder. There are people out there willing to spend all their basketball dollars for years just to see one important game. I believe it's important to see every game, so I have less money to spend on just one game. I'm hoping we never get there; I love the season ticket holder discount based on buying an entire season at once. But if we do, I'd really like to see how my tickets' worth measures up to the market.

Secondly, Ted Leonsis has talked a few times in meetings with season ticket holders about the value of our tickets on the secondary market as a benefit to the season ticket holder. As the team gets better, the cost of tickets should increase (I agree with this) and therefore will be worth more on the secondary market. There is much about this statement that is true but if the value of my tickets is ever less than the market value of the tickets, then I think the team and our owner should know. I'm hoping he reads My Swag Was Phenomenal in his spare time before he goes to bed at night or something.

I'm hoping me tracking ticket prices this year results in the same findings as last season, namely that buying season tickets offers a 15% or so discount over market value. The cost of my lower level seats rose 10% in the offseason and the cost of my upper level tickets increased by 25%. That's a lot of escalation to overcome but our team may just be good enough to do it. I'll let everyone know the results in about July or so next year.

Season Tickets Or StubHub?

A couple of years ago, I read an article on Dan Steinberg's DC Sports Bog about some dude in Frederick who bought Wizards tickets on the secondary market (in this case, StubHub) for 30 cents per ticket. That was not the first time or the last time that I have read something on the internet either implying or outright stating how foolish it is for Wizards season ticket holders to invest in a full season package. I love Dan Steinberg's work; I think his account of the Wizards-Cavaliers game from November 18, 2009 is still one of the finest pieces of journalism I have ever read. Having said that, I do think there is little room for the type of cynicism expressed or implied in his 30 cent ticket article. I hope I can explain.

As a Wizards season ticket holder who has been paying for full season tickets for the last 14 years, I bristle at these sorts of articles. I realize that probably wasn't Steinberg's intent here but it still rubbed me the wrong way, much like the apparently incredulous fan post on Bullets Forever this past season when season ticket renewal notices were mailed. Like we didn't know ticket prices were going to go up in a year the Wizards made the playoffs after a five season absence behind the All-Star emergence of John Wall? Come on, get real folks!

One of the things that gets me fired up about these sorts of one-sided arguments is that the same people who point out the availability of cheap secondary market tickets for a Tuesday night game against the Milwaukee Bucks are never on their blogs or whatever other outlet they have when the Miami Heat or the Oklahoma City Thunder or whatever other team is in vogue right now visit Verizon Center. In those cases, the cost of tickets on the secondary market is double, triple or quadruple what we as season ticket holders paid for our seats. In those weeks, the mockery of the season ticket holder is mysteriously absent.

So I started wondering…are Wizards season tickets a good deal from a strictly economic going-to-games perspective? Throw out all the other variables like access to exclusive events and other sorts of perks and just focus on the cost of tickets game by game over a 41 game home slate. Would I be better off just picking up some tickets for every game on StubHub or nbatickets.com? Before I continue to be incensed by cynical rhetoric, I thought I should know if my gut was right on this one. The temptation to check this out was just too great. So I didn't resist. This past season, I tracked the relative cost of Wizards season tickets vs. comparable seats on StubHub. Now that the Wizards season is over, I think what I found out is worth sharing.

In the last 10 years or so, the rise of the internet and I suppose relaxation of ticket re-sale laws (although I haven't checked this out at all) have revolutionized the ticket resale industry. I have both sold and bought tickets on both StubHub and nbatickets.com; these sites allow me to sell some of my unused Wizards season tickets and buy tickets of more or less my choice when traveling to Wizards road games. StubHub is sort of self insured so to speak and offers purchasers their money back should tickets sold on their site be counterfeit; they hold the seller's credit card number and charge the seller (assuming the credit card is still good, I guess) if there is any issue with entry into the arena from the purchaser. nbatickets.com is even more secure; that site is owned by Ticketmaster and tickets are re-issued to the buyer which are unique from the original tickets. There's no risk to either the buyer or seller in this scenario. Other than the risk of horrendous Ticketmaster fees I guess.

Before I get too far into the details, I should lay out the controls I've used to conduct this study. All good experiments need controls after all. I centered this experiment around the seats that I own, meaning when I was tracking prices, I was tracking prices for seats which I considered roughly equivalent to the seats I own as a season ticket holder. Just to be clear, I hold two pairs of seats for Wizards games at Verizon Center: one in the fifth row of Section 109 on the aisle and one in the third row of Seciton 415, also on the aisle. I love both these sets of seats; I've moved seat locations three times each in the upper deck and lower deck to get these seats and I'm not giving them up easily.

So for the purposes of this exercise, I considered equivalent seats in the lower level to be any seat in the center five sections in rows A through J and I considered equivalent seats in the upper level to be any seat in the center five sections in rows A through G. My logic here is any seat in the center five sections twice as far back in those sections and my seat could be considered roughly equivalent. I did not get hung up on fine points like aisle seating or the fact that I can hear stuff on the court from my lower level seats that I might not hear five rows further back.

The other control I placed on this experiment was timing of data collection. Ticket prices fluctuate with time. I believed that prices generally stay higher than they need to be until very close to the date of the game. Therefore, collecting data weeks in advance of the event would yield artificially high numbers and collecting data the day of the game would result in artificially low numbers. My experiment ended with slightly different outcomes but I'll get to that. I tried to pick two data points: the first set of data I intended to collect would be one week before the day of the game and the second set the morning of the game. I managed to do the first for all 41 games. That data is solid.

 

I didn't do so well on my day of game data gathering. I tripped up on six or seven games in that category just due to life getting in the way. I forgot to check StubHub the day I traveled back from Iceland for the Clippers game in December and there were a few more along the way where I just flaked out. My initial impulse here was to artificially substitute what could be considered representative data from other similar games but that felt too much like the Jurassic Park scientists filling in the missing dinosaur DNA with frog DNA and we all know how THAT worked out. As such, I'm relying on my week ahead data only. The day of game data is useful to discuss overall trends but not to talk specifics.

 

Two final points. First, I chose StubHub for this experiment and not nbatickets.com because my perception at the beginning of this past NBA season was that there were more tickets available on StubHub and more ticket buyers used StubHub than nbatickets.com. The prices posted on StubHub are also the final price to the buyer, so it was way easier to track pricing on StubHub. We can debate whether my perception was true or not but it doesn't really matter. I only tracked prices on StubHub. For what it's worth, my belief is the gap has closed over the course of this season. Secondly, I did not track prices for preseason games although I included the price in the season ticket holder cost. I consider preseason games, which are half price for season ticket holders but mostly worthless, completely valueless.

 

So after tracking the price of 41 Wizards home games over the course of a five and a half month NBA season, here is the short answer:

• Purchasing Section 109, row E season tickets for the entire season (including preseason) cost me $2,100. Purchasing equivalent seats on StubHub for each and every game one week ahead of the event (not including preseason) would have cost me $2,965. Season tickets are 30% cheaper.
• Purchasing Section 415, row C season tickets for the entire season (including preseason) cost me $672. Purchasing equivalent seats on StubHub for each and every game one week ahead of the event (not including preseason) would have cost me $899. Season tickets are 25% cheaper.

 

Now, the short answer above assumes you want to go to all 41 home games. I do want to do this every year but I realize not everyone does. There are some finer points to the study, some of which show some real benefits of purchasing on the secondary market. Let's look at five other scenarios, some reasonable and some pretty far fetched, all using pricing information from one week ahead of the event:

• Maybe you like but don't love (I know...it's hard to imagine) the Wizards and just want to go to about half the games but only the most popular (i.e. most expensive on StubHub for the purposes of this post) visiting teams. For the price of season tickets, you could have attended 18 lower level games or 19 upper level games without exceeding the price of an entire season (which is 41 games), which pretty much says you should just go ahead and bite the bullet for an entire season, unless you like sitting in a different seat each time you head to Verizon Center.
• On the other hand, maybe you really don't care about the Wizards and just want to see games against the four conference finalists and nobody else. Of course you would need some sort of crystal ball to know who were the conference finalists in that same year, but attending every Wizards game last year against the San Antonio Spurs, Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Indiana Pacers (total of five home games) would have cost you $864 for lower level seats and $284 for upper level seats on StubHub. That's about 3.5 times this price of the season ticket price for those games but of course you then don't have to purchase the other 36 regular season games. Definitely better buying a la carte if you just want to attend five games but the price per seat is steep.
• Let's say you work downtown and only want to go to games on non-weekend workdays (suspend belief for a minute please that there is actually someone who thinks this way). Buying tickets for all Monday through Thursday games on StubHub would cost you $1,130 for lower level seats and $321 for upper level seats for 19 games. That's an average price of $59.50 in the lower bowl and just less than $17 in the upper deck, pretty comparable to season tickets but still slightly more. If this is what you want, buying game by game is probably the way to go.
• The counterpoint to my last bullet above is fans that want to attend only Friday and Saturday games because they don't want to have to get up to go to work the next day. There were actually more home games on Friday and Saturday this past year than there were on weekdays. For those 20 games, you'd pay almost as much in both upper and lower levels than you would by buying season tickets for a whole season: $1,669 downstairs (vs. $2,100 for season tickets) and $544 upstairs (vs. $672). Probably should buy a whole season if you are looking for weekend only games; you could probably get the rest of your investment by selling weekday games on StubHub.
• Finally, let's say you have limited funds (who doesn't, right?) and want to stretch your dollars as far as possible. Here buying on StubHub makes a ton of sense. You could attend seven games in the lower level for less than $200 total (rather than $350 at season ticket holder price). That same total expenditure in the upper level would be stretched out to 20 games, which amounts to less than $10 per game (vs. $16 for a season ticket holder). If you are looking for midweek games against Orlando, Boston or Charlotte, this is definitely the way to go.

In the regular season based on the data presented above, there are definitely advantages to buying individual games on StubHub and to buying an entire season, even when you don't consider the added benefits of being a season ticket holder, which I think are considerable. However, when you get to the playoffs, there's no comparison whatsoever. The five home playoff games this year cost me $355 for lower level seats and $114 for upper level seats. The cheapest I could have bought playoff tickets a week ahead of time on StubHub was $1,213 for all five games in the lower level and $643 upstairs. Those prices are about 3.5 times greater downstairs and over six times as expensive in the upper deck. Even with the prices dropping precipitously (by over $60 per ticket according to my data) for games four and six against Indiana in the second round after all the bandwagonners jumped off, the season ticket holder prices cannot be beaten here.

 

Finally a word about buying a week ahead of time as opposed to waiting the day of the game to buy. My numbers showed only five games dropped in price significantly in the regular season as the day of the game approached. The two largest drops were for the Lakers game in November (presumably consumers knew Kobe wasn't playing and just waited for prices to drop) and for the Pacers game late in the season when the bottom fell out of Indiana's game. In some cases, it actually would pay to buy earlier, especially for games against popular teams.

 

I think the prices of Wizards season tickets are insanely low and I am sure ownership knows it. Next year, the price of a full season in the lower level has increased to $55 per game and the price of upper level seats has gone up by $4 a game to $20, the highest those seats have been priced since I've been a season ticket holder these past 14 years. Buying a full season on StubHub this year in the upper deck would have cost a little less than $22 per game; buying downstairs would cost about $72 a contest. In a couple of years, assuming secondary market demand stays the same (it won't, but likely to a point), we may see these prices cross and StubHub buying become less expensive. Until then, I think my season tickets are a great investment, even though that investment sometimes does not pay off at all. You can bet I'll be tracking this next year.

The spreadsheet I used to keep track of all this stuff.