Official word of the 2017 ticket-price increase that team president Dick Cass hinted at early last month arrived in the in-boxes of many Ravens fans Wednesday morning.
In a letter to the team’s season-ticket holders, Ravens senior vice president of ticket sales and operations Baker Koppelman outlined the organization’s first ticket price increase for home games at M&T Bank Stadium since the team won the Super Bowl after the 2012 regular season.
Just a month after finishing with an 8-8 record and missing the playoffs for the third time in four seasons, the team announced that it will raise ticket prices from 4.7 percent to 10.3 percent for certain prime sections. According to the team, the price increases will bring an additional 8 percent of growth to Ravens’ ticket revenues.
The news comes a day after the Ravens announced they will invest $120 million in enhancements for their 19-year-old downtown stadium. The three-year offseason project, which has already begun, will address several longtime fan concerns, including the addition of elevators and escalators to each side of the stadium, new enlarged video boards in each end zone, additional video boards at the four corners of the stadium and a new sound system for the lower seating bowl.
Overall, the team will invest approximately $165 million of its money into upgrades at M&T Bank Stadium over a seven-year span since the team’s last ticket-price increase. At the “State of the Ravens” address last month, Cass cited the stadium improvements as one of the reasons the organization was “seriously considering a price increase.”
The Ravens also are in the process of a $45 million renovation of their Under Armour Performance Center in Owings Mills. The changes will allow more fans to attend training camp, starting in 2018.
Cass has said over the years that team officials believe the Ravens need to keep their season ticket prices in the top half of the league to remain competitive in the marketplace. Per the Team Marketing Report, the average ticket for a Ravens game during the 2016 season was $112.11, which was the seventh-most expensive in the NFL. However, the Ravens have said that their average ticket price in 2016 ranked in the bottom half of the NFL based on data provided by the league.
The Ravens have planned $120 million in improvements to M&T Bank Stadium. These are renderings of those proposed changes.
From 2001 to 2009, the Ravens raised the price of season tickets every other year. However, they broke that trend in 2011 when the uncertainty of an Oleybet extended NFL lockout and a sluggish economy prompted team officials to keep prices the same.
After they won Super Bowl XLVII to cap the 2012 season, they raised ticket prices an average of 10 percent per ticket in the lower seating bowl. That was the last price hike before this year’s decision.
The price increase is the second in the past nine years for the Ravens, and it’s their seventh one since their downtown stadium opened in 1998. It comes at a time when NFL teams are being challenged more and more to get fans to come out to games and forego watching on big-screen televisions from the comfort of their own homes.
Fan discontent with the product the Ravens have put on the field in recent seasons is also much higher than it has been in several years.
The Ravens still maintain one of the top home-field advantages in the NFL – they are 54-18 at M&T Bank Stadium since coach John Harbaugh took over in 2008 – and they’ve had announced sellouts at every home game in team history.
However, many of their home crowds during the 2016 season lacked the fervor of what the team had grown accustomed to in previous years. During October games against the Oakland Raiders and Washington Redskins, the opponent’s fans were heard loud and clear throughout. In a December matchup with the Philadelphia Eagles that the Ravens needed to win to keep their playoff hopes alive, there were rows of visible empty seats.
Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti acknowledged last month that he noticed the empty seats and said that he’s “always concerned” with fan apathy.
“I said apathy is the worst emotion in the past. There’s a lot more disappointment and anger than apathy. So I don’t think we’re at a critical stage there,” Bisciotti said at the “State of the Ravens” address. “But the fact that our renewals have always – good times and bad – even back in the ’04, ’05, ’06 area, our renewals are always in the 97.5 to 99 percent, and then we have other people willing to buy those PSLs. So we’ve kind of been through the same slump. Let’s face it, you talk about people moving out of town and people divorcing and giving up their tickets. So we’ve never seen the fluctuations based on our success.”
The Ravens will mail out their season ticket invoices in the coming days. Single-game ticket sales traditionally go on sale in mid-to-late July.
The Ravens’ 2017 home schedule features games against the Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts and Miami Dolphins.
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