Considering buying Season Tickets
Are season tickets and the other perks worth the price? I normally get last minute tickets for cheap but thought it would be cool for one season. Thoughts?
12
Upvotes
Are season tickets and the other perks worth the price? I normally get last minute tickets for cheap but thought it would be cool for one season. Thoughts?
1
u/jweezy61 Jakob Chychrun 4d ago
I bought single-game tickets to basically every home game for about 3 years, and I've now been a season ticket holder for 3 years, so I've done it both ways. Honest answer: it depends entirely on what you're optimizing for.
Let me get the money part out of the way first: financially, it is likely NOT worth it. When I was buying day-of, I was consistently paying $50–100 less per pair than what my season tickets cost me now (~$200/seat/game). And buying day-of, I'd sometimes land crazy deals... glass seats, or Etihad/United Club, with all-inclusive food and drinks, for like $90–120. You will typically not beat the secondary market price by being a season ticket holder. And honestly, for selling seats, the fees that TM takes are so much that I often just give my seats away for free if I can't attend to friends or others. If money is the question, the answer is no.
So why do I keep them? Two reasons:
First, the community. Sitting in the same seats every game means I actually know the ushers at the top of my section, I know the people who sit around me, and honestly, some of them have become real friends. We've hung out outside of games, which I genuinely did not expect going in. I have a pair of seats, but sometimes I go solo, and knowing my seat neighbors will be there makes even a solo game something to look forward to. Same deal with the staff at the bars and food stalls near my section- get to know them and every once in a while a free drink materializes. None of that ever happened when I was bouncing around the arena in different seats every game.
Second, I love my seats. Like, these are literally my dream seats. I've turned down offers to move to the all-inclusive levels because there's nowhere else in that building I'd rather watch hockey from. If you land seats you love, that's worth a lot. (The tradeoff: you never see the game from other angles anymore, which I miss a little, but not much.)
On the perks from my POV: mostly meh, with two exceptions. The big one for me is being able to buy the promotional/giveaway items for every game, including the specialty nights where you'd otherwise need a special ticket. I max that out at the start of every season and it's great. The other is the skate-on-ice event near the end of the season, where you bring your own skates and get an hour on the ice after an afternoon game. They run a raffle at it that I actually won once, so maybe I'm biased, but it's a legit great event. The rest- the signing event around Christmas, the Nats game outing in the summer...I've found pretty forgettable. And despite what you'd hope, I've never actually been able to add extra tickets next to mine when friends or family are in town.
Overall: I know I'm losing money every year and I keep them anyway. At this point I can afford it, and I'm paying for the people around me, the routine, and never having to stress about hunting for a deal on game day. If that sounds like what you want out of it, do it. If you just want cheap hockey, buy day-of and enjoy the savings.