At the end of each season, teams assess where they are in terms of the market and set season ticket pricing. That pricing is a delicate balance of trying to cover operating expenses, a rising salary cap, and finding the fine line of what the market can bear.
Some clubs will remain flat or even reduce ticket prices if the team is struggling, while others will increase to capitalize on recent success. The degree of change is often dependent on a multitude of factors. Regardless of the situation, every fan base will say the same things whenever season ticket pricing is released. “The increase was too much.” “They’re pricing out the fans that have been here forever, supported them through the dark days.” “Don’t they realize how much emotional investment I’ve put into this team?!”
Now that we’ve hit the slower time of the offseason, I decided to see how the Dallas Stars season ticket prices stacked up. In part one of our dive into season ticket prices, we take a look at the Central Division. Prices presented in the table below represent averages within a given section, and aren’t meant to encompass the various levels of prices for differing venues. Prices for Canadian teams have been converted using an approximate $0.75 CAD = $1 USD conversion rate in order to make pricing comparable. All pricing was pulled off of each team’s season ticket pricing seat maps, and are for full season prices only.
Here’s a few things we can draw from looking at the pricing within the Division:
- Dallas has one of the lowest overall average ticket prices within the Central Division. Only the Nashville Predators and Winnipeg Jets have a lower average price.
- The Chicago Blackhawks have the highest average season ticket price, and it isn’t even close. The St. Louis Blues are second, with the only other average ticket price over $100.
- In general, the Stars have the lowest upper level season ticket of all Central Division teams.
- Outside of glass tickets, Stars season ticket prices are lower than the divisional average across all levels. Season tickets range from 15% to 37% lower than the divisional average.
- Glass tickets for the Stars are the second highest in the division, which isn’t all that surprising. Dallas likes to “see and be seen” so it makes sense that seats in the prime TV locations would be priced relatively higher than other seats in the arena.
- The Stars have some of the lowest club level seats in the division. Club level in the American Airlines Center are on the platinum level, and similarly placed seats in other arenas with club access generally average over $100 for other teams, while the Stars have club level pricing less than $100.
In the second part, we’ll look at how the Stars compare to the Western Conference and then we’ll finish off by looking at the entire league. Did any of these prices surprise you? Where do you think the Stars will stack up versus the West? Versus the league?