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Like a lot of teams in this rough economy, it’s going to be a challenge for the Jets to sell all of their available ticket inventory.
As we’ve pointed out many times, the sale of the club seats and luxury boxes has been sluggish. However, that isn’t a new problem. The Jets have had an issue with these two ticket sectors since the opening of the stadium.
The stadium opened in the middle of a recession. The timing couldn’t have been worse for the Jets. And also, there is so much focus on frivolous spending by corporation, so it’s not as easy to sell these high end seats and boxes, because corporations don’t want to be accused of largesse. There are more eyes on corporate America, and their write-offs, than ever before. Plus companies that might have been inclined to buy a luxury box in the past, aren’t as inclined to do it, in a stagnant economy.
But now the problems go beyond the club seats and corporate boxes.
Now the Jets are dealing with a new ticket issue – they are struggling to sell seats in the upper deck. There are 27,000 seats in upper bowl.
According to one industry source, the Jets have between 15-18,000 season tickets available up there. At around $100 per ticket, that is a lot of cash flow not coming in.
And the root of this problem is pretty simple.
With all the negative publicity the specter of PSL’s was causing the Jets (and Giants) before the stadium opened, the Jets’ business side decided to give the people in the upper deck a break – no PSL’s up there.
The Giants, on the other hand, made ever season ticket holder, regardless of the section, buy PSL’s.
While the Jets might have received a little good PR for this gesture (not much, to be quite honest, because the Giants have the local media in the palm of their hands), it turned out to be a bad business decision.
You see, it’s a lot easier to walk away from your season tickets when you didn’t dish out $10,000 for PSL’s, on top of the ticket prices.
While forcing fans to buy PSL’s is obnoxious, no matter how you slice it, it’s also serves as a disincentive for fans to drop their season tickets. The PSL forces the mindset, where a fan might think, “I don’t want to get rid of my tickets, because I don’t want to eat the $10,000 ( I just picked one price point – this isn’t the price of all PSL’s) I just paid two years ago, so I will keep the tickets.”
The Jets’ fans in the upper deck can just walk away scott free.
And a lot of fans just said, “The heck with this. With these high ticket prices, along with parking, concessions, tolls, gas prices, to sit up here, touching the heaven’s, isn’t worth it.”
So it turns out, while they were trying to throw some fans a bone, Matt Higgins and company, made a big mistake.
And while Higgins is gone now, the business side, now headed by President Neil Glat, have a major undertaking right now – selling a ton of upper deck seats.
I do think Tim Tebow will help sell these tickets on a game-to-game basis. He is good for the box office. Fans want to see how the Jets use him, and how this whole QB scenario works out. Also, he’s so popular with so many people for how he lives his life, there will be fringe football fans, or non-Jets’ fans, who might not normally go to a Jets’ game, who will show up to experience Tebowmania.
So the Jets might be able to dump a lot of these tickets on a single game basis.
But selling them as season tickets, is going to be a chore.
(Premium will return by 9:30 pm on Wednesday.)
