Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
December 03, 2008
Changing Prices

Via The Hardball Times, The Giants take a small step toward dynamic pricing of tickets:

The club is trying something new with ticket sales in a few tough-to-sell upper-deck outfield sections of its waterfront ballpark for 2009: cost based on demand.

The walk-up sales price for up to about 2,000 seats could even go up or down on game day. The change would be minimal, say somewhere between 25 cents and $2.

Team president Larry Baer calls it "dynamic pricing" and figures it might just become the way of the future for professional sports franchises. The Giants have partnered with a software company that will make it possible to quickly change the ticket prices based on the popularity of a given game -- not to mention weather, a possible milestone or a player from a visiting team who brings extra interest.

"We're going to experiment with this a little bit in a few sections of the park," Baer said. "What this really is, is the ticket business is changing dramatically and quickly. There's a chance we might wake up 10 years from now and tickets will be priced according to demand, like the airlines."

I'm glad to see MLB teams continue to move in this direction. The embrace of a ticket broker last year was the biggest move in this direction, but this type of dynamic pricing should lead to more fans in the seats, and more fans means more concession money. I wrote about this at Baseball Prospectus in 2007 (subscription required).


Posted by David Pinto at 08:20 AM | Tickets | TrackBack (0)
Comments

If pricing wasn't based on demand before, what was it based on? Magic?

Posted by: WillClark4HOF at December 3, 2008 11:48 AM

This isn't really new - it often costs more to see a team host the Yankees than the Royals. Other sports do this as well.

Posted by: Phil at December 3, 2008 12:21 PM
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