The MLS Red Bulls have raised season-ticket prices in the "best seats in the house ... between 40 and 53 percent next year, to $1,100 per ticket", according to Frank Giase of the Newark STAR-LEDGER. The price increase affects Red Bull Arena sections 125, 126 and 127 “on the lower level that stretched from the top of one penalty box to the other, on the opposite side of the player benches.” With the Red Bulls needing to beat the Union tonight in their regular-season finale to make the playoffs, some fans "are left wondering if it will be the last game they will get to see in their current seats.” Red Bulls President of Business Operations Chris Heck said that those sections are "affected the most, but stressed that the team actually lowered the price of 15,000 seats, and said next year more than 13,700 seats in the 25,000-seat facility will cost less than $20 per game, an increase of 4,700 seats.” Heck: “I could have waited to gradually do the changes, but my thought was, ‘Okay, the people in the great seats for the really inexpensive prices got two years of a gift.’” He added the seats were "mispriced, both under and over.” Heck believes that “having such a low price for the best seats is one of the biggest reasons for the many no-shows the Red Bulls have had this year.” Heck: “My belief is that they’re not as high a value because they don’t cost that much. So the people that have the tickets, it’s almost like a land grab, and they’ll use them when they want to use them” (Newark STAR-LEDGER, 10/20).
