The Alex Mack Contract Gamble
March 4, 2014Dion Waiters set to return from knee injury
March 4, 2014
It says a lot when a franchise feels the need to send out a press release stating that they will not be raising ticket prices for those who prefer to witness the impending season of on-field play in person. Sure, it says a lot about the landscape—the costs of attending live contests in any stadium or arena for any league has increased drastically over the course of the last decade. But it also says a lot about a team that has, while everything else has advance, not done much in the way of winning since their return in 1999.
Alas, with the 2014 NFL season not all that far off, the Cleveland Browns will be communicating with their season ticket holders, breaking the news that watching their product live at FirstEnergy Stadium will not cost fans any more than it has in previous years.
As the Browns have begun removing portions of the stadium in advance of their highly-dicussed renovation project, fans—at least in the near term—will not be hit with anything in the way of cost passthroughs. If the team has been consistent in any way that can be categorized as remotely positive, it’s been at the turnstiles.
The Browns are believed to be one of very few NFL teams, and among a handful in professional sports, to have kept prices stable since 2009. They are currently ranked 31st in the league with an average ticket price of $54.20. Also worth mentioning: At least 10 NFL teams have already announced increased ticket prices for 2014.
The team ensures that they will continue their in-game experience initiative, the one that has been spearheaded by none other than Kevin Griffin and team president Alec Scheiner. There is little doubt that these ticket prices will not be increasing at some point in the near future, but kudos to an organization that has seemingly been blind in every other aspect of the game to get things right when it comes to cost endured by the faithful.
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Image: Scott Sargent/WFNY
4 Comments
Jeez, Scott, your concluding kudos notwithstanding, why all the gratuitous snark? No good deed goes unpunished? I’d hate to see what you’d write if they had raised prices.
Does this mean no wiener dog races this season? 🙁
No perennial four-win team goes unpunished.
Obviously it’s the right move, but I never like how much credit teams get for this. If they raised prices 10% that would amount to about $3.5M in their pockets, minus whatever that might take away from concession sales from people who become more cost conscious. That’s a lot of money to you or me, but for a team that’s way under the cap that just means not signing a low/mid-level veteran FA and using an undrafted guy instead, aka something the Browns have done repeatedly the last couple of years. Alternatively, it’s less than the bonus they just didn’t give DQ.