‘At some point it gets too expensive’: Warriors fans reckon with Chase Center prices

‘At some point it gets too expensive’: Warriors fans reckon with Chase Center prices

Kathleen Pender

For the first time in 20 years, Larry Schonbrun won’t be in the stands when the Golden State Warriors open their regular season Thursday night. Instead, he’ll be watching from his home in Berkeley.

Schonbrun is among the roughly 30% of season ticket holders who gave up their seats when the team moved from Oracle Arena in Oakland to San Francisco’s new Chase Center. That allowed fans on a long wait list to buy about 2,000 seats at Chase.

Schonbrun would have faced a steep increase in ticket prices, plus a one-time “membership fee” amounting to $75,000 per seat. Parking, which was free with his tickets in Oakland, would have cost $45 a game in San Francisco.

But the main reason he dropped out “was the idea of having to commute, either by car or BART,” he said. “Equally important,” the team couldn’t guarantee where his seats would be “vis-a-vis the bench.”

In Oakland, his three seats were two rows behind Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, close enough to see — and sometimes hear — him interact with players, and to observe teammates talking, or not talking, to each other.
His old tickets cost $750 each per game. At the new arena, the team offered comparable seats for $1,200 each, but couldn’t say where they’d be in relation to Kerr.

Many longtime season ticket holders faced steep ticket price increases when the team moved to San Francisco because they lost what essentially was a loyalty discount.
In Oakland, the team had a tenure-based pricing system that resulted in long-term holders paying less than newer ones in similar seats, said John Beaven, the Warriors’ senior vice president for ticket sales. In San Francisco, it “brought everyone to the same per-game ticket price” within each pricing sector “to reset and provide equitable value to all members.”

As a result, some ticket holders paid more for an equivalent seat at Chase and others paid less.

In partial recompense, the Warriors gave fans who had season tickets since 2012-13 a discount on the membership fee. The discount varied depending on seat type.
“Typical savings ranged from 15 to 20%,” Beaven said in an email.


Schonbrun said he was told his $75,000 fee was discounted by $10,000.

The team also gave long-term season ticket holders first crack at choosing seats in the new arena.

Helen Grays-Jones, who has had season tickets for 30 years, belongs to a group that shared four eighth-row-center seats at Oracle and had to pay significantly more at Chase. In the past, when her group had unused seats, they sometimes donated them to a Big Brother foster youth program. In the
future, “we’ll sell them,” to help recoup the price increase, she said.

Although many people buy season tickets in a group, only one is the official holder and signs the membership agreement. The contract requires the holder to purchase tickets for all 41 home games and three preseason games and gives them the “opportunity” to buy their same seats for playoff games. They also get a chance to buy seats for some other events at Chase Center ahead of the general public.

Membership fees, which the team had never before charged, went toward building and operating the privately financed Chase Center. About half the seats had a membership fee of $15,000 or less, half cost more, Beaven said. He added that the first five rows now include food and beverages; they did not at Oracle.


A membership is similar to the personal seat license many professional
sports teams sell when they build venues, but with two differences.

The Warriors have promised to buy memberships back at their original price, without interest, after 30 years. The team says it is the first pro franchise to make such a guarantee, which is backed by a “newly formed entity” whose only asset is the “exclusive right to market, sell and license (Warriors) memberships,” according to a copy of contract.

After the first season, memberships can be sold — but never for more than the original price. Typically, seat licenses can be traded at any price, but the team is not obligated to buy them back.

With a few exceptions, the Warriors must approve any sale or transfer. Beaven says that’s to make sure memberships aren’t sold to ticket resellers
or fans “who had been ejected on multiple occasions.”


Buyers could finance their membership fee through the team, at an interest rate of 7.5% per year. The team also promised that season tickets won’t increase by more than 7.5% a year during the first five seasons at Chase Center.

The membership contract requires season ticket holders to resolve any disputes through arbitration, giving up their right to sue in court and participate in a class-action lawsuit or arbitration.

“It seemed like buying a time-share in Mexico,” Schonbrun said of the Warriors sales pitch.

When Jeff Kaufman, a 30-year season ticket owner, saw the terms of the new
contract, he also was ready to bow out. But Brian McCroden, who had been buying one-third of his tickets, wanted to continue and “couldn’t do it without me,” Kaufman said.


At the old arena, their two fifth-row center seats cost $375 each per game. Comparable ones in the new venue would have cost $600 each, plus a $35,000 membership fee.

“I love basketball, but at some point it gets too expensive,” McCroden said.

So they brought in two more partners, who will buy one-third of Kaufman’s tickets for a few years and then buy his membership. In the meantime, Kaufman will keep a third of the tickets and McCroden and another new partner will buy the other third.
“I did want to see them playing in the new stadium, but I didn’t want it to go on forever,” Kaufman said.


To further economize, the group moved back two rows, which brought each ticket price down to $500 per game, plus a $29,000 membership fee.

A group headed by Mitchell Shapson also saved money by relocating. At Oracle, their lower-bowl corner seats cost $185 each per game. Comparable seats at Chase would have cost $275, he said. So they moved to upper-bowl seats that cost $110 each, plus $6,500 per seat in membership fees, which they all split.
John O’Toole had been part of that group but dropped out.

“I was very upset that they were leaving Oakland after so many years of us being loyal fans through thick and thin. They did it for money and cachet, as is always the case,” he said. “I also found out there was a substantial seat license, which priced me out, as it did for a lot of people who live in Oakland.”


O’Toole said he’s “very sad about it. It’s something I have been part of for a long time. My wife and I went to all these games. The guy in front of us brought his 3- and 4-year old kids. We watched them grow up and become more and more hard-core” fans.
In the new arena, “I’m afraid the Warriors won’t have as rabid a fan base. I think corporations will buy a lot of the tickets and give them to employees and customers. They are not necessarily basketball fans or Warriors fans.”

Although he suffers from “pangs of regret,” O’Toole said he made the right decision. “The irony is, I want them to be good. I’d like to see them in the playoffs and threatening for a championship again.”

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