Toronto’s Ticket Inflation Crisis: How Did We Get Here, and How Do We Get Out?
It’s a chilly Tuesday in November, Christmas is around the corner, and your twelve-year-old son is a die-hard Leafs fan like his father. As you sit on the couch as a family, watching Matthews score yet another hat trick, as everyone is cheering their hearts out, it hits you. The perfect Christmas gift: a trip to downtown to watch the Leafs in person. So you pull out your laptop to get the tickets, and your heart sinks, $1,200 for the three of you. For the very back row of a 300-level section. All you can do is think: how can anyone afford these? They can’t.
Toronto’s Skyrocketing Ticket Prices
The average ticket price to watch a Toronto Maple Leafs home game is about $335. Geographically, the closest team is the Buffalo Sabers, whose average ticket price is only $161. However the difference between Leaf’s tickets and other teams has not always been this large. The price of a Leaf’s ticket has been on the rise for several years now. Since 1985, the price of a seat to watch the Leafs on home ice has risen between 2,900 and 6,000 percent. In perspective, the consumer price index for spectator entertainment has increased by 270 percent.
There Is a Lack Of Supply
The main culprit for Toronto’s astronomically high prices is a low supply of tickets. While Scotiabank arena holds almost twenty thousand fans at maximum capacity, the number of tickets for any particular game does not match. According to a CBC report, season ticket holders, scalpers, and corporations buy out 90 percent of those seats. When the tickets go on sale for the general public, the remaining low supply inflates the price of each ticket, forcing fans out of their seats. The result of replacing fans with corporate representatives is more of a bureaucratic form of entertainment rather than the electrifying buzz of a sold-out arena that many fans expect from a sports event.
But why do so many tickets go to the season ticket holders, scalpers, and corporations? The root of this dilemma can be traced back to the opening of the Air Canada Center (now known as Scotiabank Arena). When the stadium became the new home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, personal seat licenses (PSL) were created for the first time in NHL history. These personal licenses allowed a one-time purchase for the rights to a seat for the whole season. The PSL deals were created to help pay for the new stadium’s cost. These licenses target large corporations, as a single seat costs $15,000. For large corporations such as TD or RBC, $15,000 is nothing more than a drop in the bucket, but for an average Torontonian, it’s inconceivable. High price points allow large businesses uncontested access to a large number of seats in the Scotiabank Arena. PSLs effectively filled the stadium with business people and kicked the real fans to the curb.
The Effects of Corporate Presence
The presence of the corporate world has not gone unnoticed in the stadium. With the lack of fans in the crowd, home games at the Scotiabank Arena have lost some of its character. Many in the hockey industry have voiced their discontent with Toronto’s fanbase. Paul Bissonnette, a former NHL player and host of the Spittin Chiclets podcast, did not hold back while on the air, exclaiming, “Just f**king cheer,” in reaction to a mediocre response to Auston Matthews’ back-to-back hat tricks to start the season off.
The lack of fan engagement and overall atmosphere in the Scotiabank Arena is a result of an escalated corporate presence. An informal survey of people attending a Leafs game found that 28 out of 60 people surveyed expressed that they attended the event courtesy of a corporation. That is almost fifty percent! Limiting the number of actual fans that get to attend a Leafs game is having a negative effect on the Leafs. Home ice advantage is a very real and important aspect of hockey. Statistics show that home ice gives teams about a four percent advantage above a 50 percent win rate during the regular season, and that advantage jumps to eleven percent in the playoffs. The corporate presence takes that advantage away from the Leafs and makes the overall experience of a Leafs game less enjoyable.
The Dance of Scalpers and Ticketmaster
When tickets are initially distributed, they are sold through Ticketmaster. However, when sold, the tickets rarely end up in the hands of those who intend to watch the games. For the most part, scalpers scoop up the already limited supply of tickets and resell them at high prices. Regulations must be implemented to keep resellers in check, but Ticketmaster won’t make meaningful changes because they are part of the problem. Ticketmaster has a resale division of the company run through a service called Trade Desk. On the surface, Ticketmaster vocalizes their strong regulations for reselling tickets. But in practice, those values don’t hold up.
An undercover investigation done by the Toronto Star found that when they were in contact with sales representatives for Trade Desk, the representatives told them that “ticket resellers who break those rules have no reason to be concerned, the sales executive reassured. A blind eye will be turned”. The sales representative then assured the undercover investigator that no account information, names, or activity reports were shared with Ticketmaster, making it virtually impossible to get caught using illegal scalping methods.
Naturally, a shortage creates a secondary market. While Ticketmaster claims to be cracking down on scalpers. The truth is that they are enabling the problem and exacerbating its effects. Ticketmaster’s failure to regulate illegal scalping practices severely impacts ticket prices for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
How Do We Get Out of this Mess?
To make Leafs tickets accessible to fans, meaningful change must be made to the supply of tickets and the distribution channels. The first order of business is to restructure the personal seat licenses deal. Scotiabank Arena can't completely remove PSL deals as they provide guaranteed revenue for the stadium. However the agreement can be restructured. Introducing the suit section.
Whether we like it or not, the presence of business has become part of the Leafs’ cultural identity. Instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, the suit section provides a unique opportunity to embrace our identity as a city and make going to a Leafs game even more of a spectacle. Not only will fans get to watch some great hockey, but they will also get to see a bunch of corporate junkies beating around the bush trying to close a deal. The new PSL deals will decrease the number of seats sold to corporations and limit them to the suit section. These changes will increase the total supply of tickets for the real fans while adding a new twist to watching a Leafs game.
Freeing up supply is only half the battle; Ticketmaster must make two critical changes on the distribution side. First of all, they need to shut down Trade Desk. It is unethical to be both in the business of ticket distribution and resale. Ticketmaster’s collusion in the two markets has amplified the negative effects caused by ticket scalping.
After Ticketmaster has removed their conflict of interest, they need to make a second significant change. Buyer authorization must go beyond just entering an email address and phone number. Further authorization, such as the account’s age and address, must be taken into account when trying to buy tickets. For example, if ten brand new accounts from the same address try to purchase tickets to a game, they are probably trying to scalp tickets. While adding further verification will not permanently remove the secondary market, it will mitigate its effects on ticket prices for the end user.
The ticket prices in Toronto have reached a point where average Torontonians cannot watch their home team play a game. The lack of fans is frustrating for those forced to watch the game from home, and it also has real effects on the quality of sporting events in the arena. Changes need to be made by the Scotiabank Arena and Ticketmaster to increase the supply of tickets available to fans. They can do this by limiting the number of seats bought out by businesses and minimizing the secondary market created by scalpers. With these changes, fans will reclaim the stands in Scotiabank Arena and cheer the Leafs on to victory… in the first round of the playoffs.