Maple Leafs Ticket Prices

Maple Leafs Ticket Prices

[paypal_donation_button]Maple Leafs ticket prices

As the 2014-15 NHL season wrapped up, the Toronto Maple Leafs again ended up with the most expensive tickets in the NHL, both in terms of their face value and their cost in the secondary market. The Maple Leafs had the only tickets in the league with a face value over $100 (between $113 and $122 for the average ticket) and fans spent an average of almost four times that much—about $373 averaged across the season—for a ticket on the re-sale market. The end of the 2014-15 season also saw Toronto occupying an unfortunately familiar place in the standings, second to last in both their division and the Eastern Conference. High ticket prices and poor performance seem like a recipe for low attendance, but as they have for many seasons, the Maple Leafs in fact sold over their arena’s capacity in the 2014-15 NHL season, an average 19,062 fans per game. So what exactly is making Maple Leafs tickets so expensive—and what keeps the fans coming back despite the high cost.

The Maple Leafs do have a long and illustrious history, though in recent years it’s certainly seemed like their best days are behind them. They have won 13 Stanley Cup championships throughout their history, though their last win was in the 1966-67 NHL season. Since then, they’ve gotten no further than the Conference Finals. Through 2003-04 NHL season they at least remained perennial post-season contenders, despite their lack of a new championship. The decade from 2005-06 through 2014-15 was decidedly the worst in their history, however, with just a single post-season appearance in that span and more losing seasons than winning. The performance of the team, however, has seemingly no impact on the cost of tickets to the game. Whereas other teams with less than stellar records in the new millennium are practically giving away tickets, Maple Leafs fans storm the Air Canada Center seemingly regardless of what happens on the ice.

Hockey is Canada’s game, and it’s tempting to cite that as the cause of Toronto’s exorbitant ticket costs, but a comparison against Canada’s other teams shows this to be a weak argument at best. It is true that six of Canada’s seven NHL franchises have ticket face values over the NHL average; only the Ottawa Senators charged less than league average for a ticket in 2014-15. Comparisons could be drawn between the Maple Leafs and Canadian teams like the Edmonton Oilers or Winnipeg Jets, who also struggled in the standings in the first half of the 2010s. Though tickets aren’t exactly cheap in either of those cities, though, the face value for their tickets averages $30-$40 lower than tickets in Toronto. It’s more interesting to compare the Maple Leafs to the Montreal Canadiens. Only a die-hard Toronto fan would try to argue that the Maple Leafs are a more storied franchise—or are more important to their city—than the Canadiens. Along with their history, the Canadiens bring regular success to the Bell Centre, reaching the Conference Finals as recently as the 2013-14 NHL season. Logically, you would expect Canadiens tickets to cost more, but the face value of a Canadiens ticket in 2014-15 was on average $40 less, and even secondary sales of tickets to the Bell Centre cost an average of just over $200. Granted, the Bell Centre is the largest arena in the NHL, with a capacity of 21,288 for hockey; more available tickets could drive down prices overall. The Air Canada Centre’s capacity isn’t much lower, though (around 20,270 including standing room). There’s more at play here than simple supply and demand.

The true cause of the Maple Leafs’ exorbitant ticket prices might be similar to the problems faced by the Pittsburgh Penguins. After winning the Stanley Cup in 2009 and opening the state-of-the-art Consol Energy Center in 2010, the Penguins became a hot ticket in the city. The rise in corporate ticket sales prompted by these factors left fewer tickets available for fans in the rest of the city leading to an increase especially in secondary ticket sales. The Maple Leafs reserve an extremely larger percentage of seats for season ticket holders—around 90% of the arena’s official capacity. Since the waiting list for seasons tickets is years long in Toronto (and many of the season tickets are held by corporations rather than individuals) this establishes an artificial scarcity, putting ticket prices well out of reach for the average fan. So long as people fill the seats win or lose, the upward trend of Maple Leafs ticket prices will only continue.