Another reason no one could outbid the Knicks for Melo. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/sports/basketball/24garden.html The article is mainly quoting people from the expensive seats (which are *more* than doubling) -- ppl with seats for over 30 years. example: $330 to $900. They have until May 13th to decide to renew.
Sports are made to be enjoyed... This is ridiculous. Having to pay almost 1 grand per seat? Wow, that pretty much makes it impossible for the average Joe to ever get a chance to sit front row at the Garden. I wish sports could be more about the sport than the business...
Glad the Rockets probably won't do that anytime soon. We have enough problems filling in the seats as it is...
crap..pretty much all my live NBA viewing comes from 4 good Knicks seats from a friend that are face $300, probably no way his firm renews now and I'm done with free knicks games.
Sports are interesting. Economically the outlay for Melo is similar to what it was before the trade (due to the cap/lux. tax) but now the Knicks are charging way more. Are the fans getting output for their money? Because the knicks aren't spending any more money to bring in more revenue. It just sounds like a raw deal for the fans.
The Knicks should charge whatever maximizes their revenue. If that means having the games played before a single seat whose owner pays them more than the combined ticket sales they get under their current pricing plan, so be it.
Well, this isn't an excuse, but it IS Madison Square Garden, and not your ordinary stadium. Plus, this is the first time the Knicks have made it into the 'offs for a while, AND they have Carmelo + Amare. PERFECT business decision by whoever is doing this, charging this much for a seat.
To be fair, this isn't your average seats but THE premium seats in the garden. To be honest color me surprised these seats only cost 300 bucks before. If their reasoning though is solely because of Melo and Amare they're in for a surprise.
The article is about the first 10 rows or so, not row 1. The 50% increase is the average for the entire stadium. Everyone is facing huge increase. The first 10 rows or so are actually facing about 75%. The $300 is not the Spike Lee seats. Those are already well over $1,000. The result of this is more of these seats will go to scalping firms and sold to tourists...mostly. The culture of beachfront property.
Indirectly, I think up to about row K are mostly corporate seats, what will happen, most likely, is that the companies will probably retain the seats but stubhub more of them to recoup their losses on the price increases, rather than giving them to employees & hangers on (like me )
Can't blame the Knicks, really. Lots of Wall Street bailout dollars that can easily pay for those court-side seats.
