Cub fans begin to foot bill for debt

It’s gotta be nice to be the Chicago Cubs. With a season ticket waiting list that is over 120,000 they can do virtually whatever they want with ticket prices. So despite this country being in dismal economic times. Despite the fact that many teams are either freezing ticket prices or lowering them. The Cubs are able to announce they will increase prices. But don’t worry the main increase will only be on the premium games. The games that get resold most often. Wait, did I mention the fact that they are almost doubling the number of premium games? LOL.

Here’s the skinny from Paul Sullivan in the Tribune on Saturday:

Club box outfield seats will increase by nearly 19 percent for so-called “platinum” games, a new ticket price tier that was introduced in 2009, and will nearly double from 14 games to 26 next year.

The most expensive seat will be a platinum club infield box, which was raised by $12, or a 12 percent increase from $100 to $112. The cheapest tickets will be $9 for an upper deck outfield reserved seat for one of the six “bronze” games on weekdays in April, May and September.

The Cubs maintain that half of the ticket inventory will remain about the same, while the average price increase will be $2 for “gold” games and $5 for “platinum” games. A 1 percent rise in the city amusement tax, from 11 to 12 percent, also figured into the price hike.

In essence, the Cubs hiked the prices on their most expensive seats and said they believe many of them will be re-sold by season ticket holders. Meanwhile, they held the line on most “cheap” seats that generally go to individuals when tickets go on sale to the public in February.

So this is good news for those of you who get into the VWR every February. For you season ticket holders you are fucked. Crane Kenney somehow still has a fucking job, and he gives us some bullshit on raising tickets:

“We understand our season ticket holders in particular use the secondary market as a way of underwriting their ticket purchases,” Kenney said. “It’s a fact of life. We’re over that. That’s fine. So we did the $5 (average) increase on those premium games as a way of trying to push the burden of our ticket price increase on those games, leaving the ticket prices flat for most of our games, for most of our seats.”

So Kenney decides to run the ‘move the blame to the ticket brokers play’, it’s a play that’s almost as tiresome as a Bears screen pass. Kenney doesn’t have to run this play and truthfully the Cubs should thank the secondary market for being an easy scapegoat every year the Cubs raise ticket prices. I guess it’s easier to blame ticket brokers than it is to tell the fans: ‘the team has a shitload of debt and you will pay for it’. That may not go over so well.

And the Ricketts’ beloved bleacher seats:

All bleacher seats will remain about the same as in ’09. A bleacher seat for platinum games will go for around $60.50, a .50 increase from 2009. The Cubs did not reveal exact pricing, only announcing the ticket price before the amusement tax was added and saying the number would be “rounded off.” Almost all the six bronze game tickets remained flat. Most of the silver games will be about the same price as ’09, though the number has decreased from 28 to 19.

So Chad and Trixie can rest easy tonite. The cover charge for Chicago’s best summer beer garden will remain unchanged. Something tells me very few of them will even notice…

Anyone that wants to bitch about this, can just give their tickets back. As Ed Sherman notes this is business and the Cubs have buyers lined up to fill seats at Clark and Addison:

I know there are going to be plenty of Cubs fans who contend the team has no business raising tickets prices after last year’s debacle. Sorry, that’s not the way it works.

The Cubs probably will rank among the top 4 or 5 teams in baseball in payroll. If fans want these top-dollar players, they are going to have help pay the freight. Of course, it might be easier to digest if those top-dollar players could actually play.

Mr. Ricketts also said in his initial press conference that there would be an increase in prices. He isn’t trying to pull a fast one here.

If you think the prices are too high, or want to protest the increase and dump your tickets, fine. The current waiting list for season tickets is at 120,000 people.

The Cubs know there are no shortage of buyers at Wrigley.

Ricketts and company may not add substantially to the Cubs payroll this season. But they will begin paying down the massive debt they acquired with the purchase of the team.