Want to see the Golden State Warriors on their lone visit to Charlotte next season?
Be prepared to buy tickets to at least 19 other Hornets games as well.
Charlotte plans to make its Warriors home game available only as part of a Hornets half-season or full-season ticket package, at least initially.
It’s Charlotte’s way of responding to demand for the NBA’s newest “superteam,” and the Hornets aren’t alone. Other teams, as well as the NBA’s TV partners, are looking to capitalize on the record-setting, 73-win team that’s now added free agent Kevin Durant to its roster of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
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Some teams are linking season-ticket plans to visits by the Warriors and new addition Kevin Durant.
Photo by: AP IMAGES
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“I would say it will be highly unlikely that we will drill down any lower than a half-season plan,” said Pete Guelli, executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer for the Hornets, about the team’s ticketing plan tied to the Warriors’ trip to Charlotte. “I turned our analytics team loose to navigate every potential scenario, and with a game like this in our market, you can drive behavior. We will be pretty aggressive.”
There’s a similar story in Philadelphia. Chris Heck, Sixers chief revenue officer, said the team is considering wrapping its game against the Warriors into an 11-game ticket plan. While Philadelphia does at this point plan to make the game available as a single-game purchase, Heck said Golden State’s trip to Philadelphia would be slotted on the highest tier of the Sixers’ variable-pricing scale. That could lead to tickets being priced at twice what they are for other games.
“The game will break our all-time single-game gate, I am convinced of that,” Heck said.
Selling against star-laden rosters isn’t new in the NBA. Miami got that treatment for their four-year run with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. When Michael Jordan came out of retirement in 2001, the Washington Wizards were a hot draw. Now, the team Jordan owns, the Hornets, sits on the other side of the opportunity.
“When Jordan made his comeback, everyone built in 10-game plans,” said Bill Sutton, who at the time worked for the NBA’s team marketing and business operations department and now runs his own sports marketing consultancy. “A half-season plan [in Charlotte] is pretty aggressive, but if it works, it is a great thing.”
Amy Brooks, executive vice president of the NBA’s team marketing and business operation division, said the league will know more about other specific team ticketing plans involving the Warriors after the 2016-17 regular-season schedule is announced next month.
In the case of the Hornets, Golden State has already been a strong draw for Charlotte in recent years because Warriors games mark the return of hometown hero Curry to town. Last season, the Golden State game was one of 13 sellouts for the Hornets. Durant’s addition will only increase demand for that game.
While the Hornets also already rank among the top NBA teams for new full-season tickets sold for 2016-17 and are on track to reach the league’s benchmark of 10,000 full-season tickets, there’s still plenty of runway left to fill their 19,077-seat arena. Charlotte last season averaged 17,455 fans per game, ranking 18th in the 30-team league.
“There is still a tremendous amount of inventory,” Guelli said. He added that the Hornets may alter their plans for the Warriors game after monitoring initial sales, but he said the team will take the package-sales approach to start for sales of the game.
What remains to be seen, of course, is whether all the Warriors stars will play in all their high-demand, high-priced games — or if Golden State coach Steve Kerr takes a cue from San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich, who hasn’t been shy in recent years from resting his stars when he sees fit, even if it’s a nationally televised game. To that end, expect ABC/ESPN and Turner to max out on the number of Warriors games they’re contractually allowed to carry in the coming season.
“Everyone wants to see the four-headed monster,” Sutton said.
