MINNEAPOLIS – The Timberwolves announced Monday that they will launch their new season ticket sales campaign on Friday, March 9.
The campaign, titled "Everyone's Talking About the Timberwolves," will feature several new pricing options – totaling 17 price levels – as well as a reduction in some of the discounts that the team had put in place to attract season ticket holders when the team was struggling.
"As more and more fans join the discussion each day, we're excited to offer additional options, all at an exceptional value," Timberwolves president Chris Wright said in a release. "The time is now for people to get on board and join the pack -- before someone else does."
The Timberwolves are in a unique position as they launch this year's campaign. In recent seasons, when the team was struggling, management reduced season ticket prices to attract fans. But as the Timberwolves' attendance increases this season and the team has a chance to make the playoffs for the first time since 2004, simple economics and common sense dictate that the years of what are now obscenely low ticket prices will come to an end.
The Timberwolves currently rank 14th in the league in attendance, averaging 17,285 per game at home. That's a 13.4 percent increase over last year's attendance, the largest increase of any team in the NBA. With six sellouts so far this season, the Timberwolves have sold out just one fewer game in the first 39 of the 2011-12 season than they did in all of 2006-07. Wright said that there's a "growing, insatiable appetite" for tickets to these games, and the numbers support that assessment.
So though prices will increase as a whole, those higher prices for season tickets are not seen at every tier. The new prices actually reflect a 6.4 percent decrease in the cost of the most expensive price level, a 1.6 percent increase in the cost of the most expensive non-courtside packages and the addition of a package in which the average individual ticket price is just $5.
So far, nearly 90 percent of the more than 8,000 current season ticket holders have renewed their packages, and the team hopes to get that number up to about 91 percent by the end of the renewal period this week. It also hopes to add about 2,000 new season ticket holders, which would put demand back to what it was for the 2004-05 season.
The biggest challenge for a team like the Timberwolves is to capture the revenue that's implicit in a renewed demand like the one the team is seeing this year. In a way, though, the team's resurgence could not come at a better time as far as what the team is equipped to do financially and technologically. Only in recent years have teams truly been able to capture the prices of tickets in the secondary markets online, which is crucial for setting baseline pricing. For instance, by looking at secondary markets, the team can see which tickets are selling at below face value and which are exceeding it. A look at StubHub's listings for Wednesday night's game against Portland shows that the cheapest tickets are selling for $2 – well below what they should – but the most expensive ticket, for a lower-bowl seat, was on Tuesday selling at above its face value. Knowing this helps teams better determine how to price their tickets and how to classify seating categories.
That's why next season, the Timberwolves will have 17 different seating classifications, a far more segmented stadium price-wise than this season. For instance, some closer seats in the lower bowl will be priced more aggressively, while ones farther from the court will sell at a lesser cost than in 2011-12. The team also uses dynamic pricing, a system in which tickets are more expensive for games against certain opponents and cheaper for games against less popular teams. Purchasing season tickets lessens the effects of the price hikes inherent in dynamic pricing, as the tickets are sold with an average price per game. For example, a season ticket holder will see an average price of, say, $35 on his tickets. However, for a game against a team like the Lakers, that same ticket would be sold individually for far more than the $35 per game price on those season tickets.
It's economics, and it's far more complicated than the simple mechanics of sports. But pricing is only one of the challenges Timberwolves management faces in this new campaign. With an ever-increasing season ticket holder base, the team must work to maintain the customer service it's become known for in the years of less demand. However, the club has been working for years to become what Wright called "50-win ready," implementing new customer service initiatives to combat the downside of increased demand.
The campaign, which will go through the regular season with the advertised prices, couldn't begin on a better night. Friday's game against the Lakers will no doubt be a sellout, as will four of the team's next five games, Wright predicted. As much as pricing and advertising and all the promotions that the team no doubt has planned matter, there's no better way to sell a team than with a string of sellouts – and perhaps even a few big wins.
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