After raising ticket prices 7.8% last year, because even bad teams still attempt to make money hand-over-fist, it appears the Lions are going to go back to the well of good faith among hardy Detroit fans and try to raise ticket prices.
Lions president Rod Wood says the team is 24th in average ticket price and would like it to be 16th, bang average, so further hikes could be in the offing.
“I would like to get to the point where we’re at least average, because unless we’re average, we’re going to be struggling to compete nationally with other teams that have more resources from investing in things that help the football team,” Wood said Thursday night during a question-and-answer session with season-ticket holders at Ford Field.
Ticket price increases are never welcome, especially after the team continues to under-perform, which really means Lions average ticket prices should 31st in the league with the amount of losing they do, but sadly things never work like that in reality. Wood says its because the team needs the revenue to be competitive in other areas of the NFL business.
“We’ve already done a lot of things you might have heard about in Allen Park,” he said. “We got a new weight room, we’re redoing our hydro room, we’ve hired a nutritionist, we’ve hired more coaches for the coaching staff — adding to the resources to support Jim. All that comes from money outside the salary cap.
“Everybody has the same salary cap, more or less, within reason of how you manage it. The rest of our resources come from things other than the salary cap, including ticket prices. And in order to be competitive, we have to be competitive financially. Other teams have raised ticket prices 20 or 30 percent per year to try to get up to that league average. I did not want to do that to our fans, so I took a very thoughtful approach. I know it wasn’t met with a lot of applause, but it was for a reason.”
The Lions have raised ticket prices in each of the last three years, and four of the last five. They averaged 61,347 fans per game last season, good for 29th in the league and meeting 94.4% of Ford Field’s capacity.
[MLive]