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!

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.