Since 2017, Ali Beach and her husband have shared two Crew subscriptions with her parents.
Last weekend, when the Crew faced FC Cincinnati, Beach and her husband thought about buying two tickets to a game with two friends who don’t go to many games but wanted to participate in the “Hell Is Real” rivalry. “.
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For tickets that weren’t at the very top of the stadium, Beach said the best price she could find was $100 per ticket, after fees. His friends weren’t interested.
For non-season ticket holders who wanted to make a purchase in June, the cheapest seat outside of the Nordecke fan section was $72. A week before the game, that same seat in the top corner of the stadium was $85, before fees.
While FC Cincinnati is the most expensive game of the year, other crew tickets can still hit the wallet. A Dispatch analysis of the 28 teams for seats outside the supporters’ sections showed that the Crew offers the third most expensive ticket in MLS.
“If I wasn’t such a die-hard fan as I am…I’d be like, oh yeah, I’m not going,” Beach said.
The Crew only had one sale at Lower.com Field in 2021. There are many reasons for that, but price was definitely one of them.
The Crew already have five sell-outs this season, and with the team playing well – not to mention the recent addition of an exciting new player in Cucho Hernandez – they are on course to break the record seven. sold-out games in a season. 2015.
Still, the crew adjusts the prices to increase the sell rate.
“The goal is to always fill our building,” said Crew president of business operations Kristin Bernert. “If we need to adjust pricing in certain areas to improve selling in that area, we will.”
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Crew tickets among the most expensive in MLS
The Dispatch compared single-game ticket prices for all remaining MLS contests this season and calculated the average for each team. Tickets were to be listed as verified by the club on Ticketmaster or the club’s website, and this analysis includes teams that only had resale tickets listed.
The most expensive MLS ticket listed as resale was Austin FC. LAFC was the only other team that cost more to watch in person than Columbus.
Compared to the new stadiums in Cincinnati and Nashville, the average ticket price for a Crew game was more than $10 more expensive. When the crew visits Cincinnati, fans can enter to see the “Hell is Real” rivalry for as low as $56.
Why the Crew is reducing the price of subscriptions
After reviewing the first two seasons in the new stadium and seeing which sections sold well and which didn’t, the crew is making significant changes to their subscription options for 2023, bringing prices down in most the regions.
“If they can’t find the value, we’ll work with them to find the seats that (will) give them the value and the experience they want,” Bernert said.
When analyzing the subscription base, the crew noticed that many people moved one or two sections from the lower seats to the corner seats to save money, especially to save around $30 per match. To counter this, the Crew increased the price of those corner seats from $9 per game to $55 and lowered the price of the closest secondary seats from $12 per game to $64.
Overall, the Crew is reducing ticket costs per game next season in all but two areas – the corner flags and the last 10 rows of the upper halfway line. The total price of season tickets could increase as fans get an 18th game with the addition of League Cup competition between MLS and Liga MX from 2023. However, on average per game season tickets for seats on the east sideline, the lower and upper bowls closest to the corner flag are reduced from 16% to 41%, with the cheapest subscription now costing $33 per game.
Fans can expect single match tickets to drop in these sections as well, as they correlate with season ticket prices.
“It’s okay to constantly evaluate your prices, just like we constantly evaluate our benefits that we offer,” Bernert said. “It’s about making sure we’re right about the value we deliver and the experience we deliver.”
One of the main current goals of the Crew to grow their fanbase is to bring in groups, especially youth football teams and organizations. So far, the crew has distributed over 5,000 tickets to various communities in underserved areas.
“We are confident in our ability to own Ohio,” Bernert said. “We see a lot of fans coming from northeast Ohio. We see a lot of fans coming from northwest Ohio. We feel like it’s really building from central Ohio out there. .”
Crew fan Robin Duffee and his wife have chosen not to renew their season tickets for 2022. Their 2019 tickets to Historic Crew Stadium tripled to $3,000 because they were turned into club seats, and so that they bought them for 2021 with some leftover credits from the 2020 season, they couldn’t justify further spending.
“‘Soccer For All’ is a great slogan,” Duffee said, “but if everyone in our city and region can’t afford to attend games, then that slogan rings a little hollow.”
jmyers@dispatch.com