Oh look, more evidence that sports owners aren’t interested in building sustained relationships with fans, that they’re only interested in emptying your wallet and then moving on to the next fan. If you’re going to be in Penticton two weeks from now to watch Vancouver Canucks training camp and you want to watch the camp’s main “blue vs. white” scrimmage, it will cost you $40.
Yes, you read that right. Forty bucks for what isn’t even a real game.
A decade ago to watch a Young Stars game, which featured the odd hotshot rookie but otherwise a basket of hard-skating never-weres, you could get in for $10. A quick check with the Bank of Canada’s inflation calculator tells us that ticket should cost you $12.70 today.
Of course, a stop at the grocery store tells you that while inflation may not have actually surged the dollars in our bank account all that much, the people who are now pulling the levers on society have hiked their prices much, much higher.
It’s all part of a pattern the last few seasons taken by the Canucks to charge their fans a premium for access, following a trend that has become common across much of North American sports — it’s about extracting the maximum from potential fans, and also focusing on the kind of fan that can afford to pay higher prices.
And further, the team has openly argued that the higher ticket prices are to fund renovations to Rogers Arena, like the new seats that are close to being fully installed, or other amenities in the arena such as new TV screens, a massive scoreboard, and also off-ice facilities for the players.
There’s a mentality that is, to a degree, viewing fans as partners in the building. But I find myself thinking about how soccer teams are run in Germany, for instance. Bayern Munich is a massive team, they made more than 1 billion euros last year. And 75 per cent of the club is owned by the fans.
The money is recouped by the club, of course, not the fans, but the fans have power in how the club is run and in setting expectations.
The Canucks’ relationship with their fans is nothing like that, of course. The owners in the end are the ones footing the bill and reaping the profits. So it is a little funny to have the weight of improvements handed to the fans, who are obviously happy to hand their money over in the end.
Canucks fans want to feel valued, that the product in front of them is worth their money. And clearly the Canucks keep finding people willing to pay what the team is charging.
But is there a limit to chasing these prices? Will fans, if the team continues to struggle to be a consistent winner — as they struggled over the past decade — keep handing over their money?
Winning will, of course, cure all. But given how the past decade has gone, fans would be right to be skeptical that will happen.
This opinion column appeared originally in The Province.
To contact the writer:pjohnston@postmedia.com