Why are Seattle sports games so expensive? We looked into that and ways to save

Sports ticket prices have risen 50% faster than inflation, and prices in Seattle are higher than average.

KUOW's Booming looked into why and what you can do about it.

For some Seattle sports fans, the high cost of tickets is worth it.

Joann Howard and Ashley Pickel of Vancouver Washington paid $125 each on a resale site to see a Kraken game this fall, "which is actually a good price for a resale, because further down it was upwards of $300, $400 a ticket," Howard said.

But for others, things have gotten out of control. Seattle listener Heidi Miller had a question:

"I want to know why it is that my family can't afford to go to sports games in our own city," she told KUOW. "My family has always had jobs, we have always worked, we have always paid our taxes, and we have always paid our tithes at church. And despite all this labor, we can never afford to go to sports games in the Seattle area. I would like some answers."

Take, for example, a Seahawks game. At time of publication, you could see the Seahawks play the Jets in New York for under $50. But to see them play the Packers in Seattle on Dec. 15 will cost you over $200.

There are many factors at play. For example, the Jets have little chance of making the playoffs this year, while the Packers appear headed for a wild card slot.

Colin López teaches students about the sports industry at Seattle University. He said there are two main reasons why sports tickets are expensive as they are: Ticket resellers and dynamic pricing.

RELATED: Listen to this episode of KUOW's economics podcast, Booming.

Resellers

Twenty-five years ago, ticket prices had a face value that was set at the beginning of the season by the teams. So it was a fixed price.

The resale market for sports tickets was relatively small. Friends and coworkers bought and sold tickets to each other. If you wanted to get last minute tickets, you could try to buy them from somebody on the sidewalk outside the stadium.

But then something changed.

Startup companies like StubHub got in on the action. They created an online platform — much like eBay — where people could buy and sell tickets, and charge as much or as little as they liked. StubHub’s mascot was an oak tree with tickets for leaves. All you had to do was ask, and the tree would provide.

The resale marketplace grew bigger than it had ever been before. Prices turned into a free-for-all. StubHub started raking in cash.

Then competitors sprang up. Today, you can buy resale tickets on sites like StubHub, SeatGeek, Vivid Seats. Ticketmaster also lists resale tickets.

Dynamic pricing

Over the years, sports team owners started getting jealous of the money being made on the resale market.

Take the situation in San Francisco. In the mid 2000s, before he got busted for doping, Barry Bonds was having a super-hot streak. He was hitting record numbers of home runs.

As he broke records, the demand for San Francisco Giants games would skyrocket, and ticket resellers made a ton of money. But because ticket prices were set at the beginning of the season, the Giants lost out on those profits.

That brings us to the second reason ticket prices are so high.

In 2009, the Giants introduced something called "dynamic pricing," which allows ticket prices to go up when there’s high demand.

Nobody can predict at the beginning of the season exactly when a player is going to have a hot streak. And now, if they ever have another hitter chasing a seasonal home run record, and everybody wants tickets to a game, the team’s ticket prices will go up, and the team will make more money.

The Giants borrowed this strategy from the airline industry, where ticket prices go up and down constantly. That strategy spread to other teams, including Seattle’s.

Teams sometimes put guardrails on dynamic pricing, such as limiting price changes to once a day. Or, they'll put in price floors and ceilings to minimize situations where one person might sit down next to another who paid far less. After all, teams have an interest in keeping fans happy enough that they'll spend more money on merchandise and food.

But dynamic pricing has become standard across all platforms now, including ticket resellers. And those resellers have fewer incentives to put guardrails on prices.

Other factors: Premium pricing, bots, and market demand

There are many other factors that also help nudge Seattle sports higher than the average:

Seattle teams want to be seen as high quality, and their ticket prices help carry that message. "So if the Kraken want to see themselves as one of the premier NHL teams and experiences, they're going to price their tickets like that," López said.

Bots run by local ticket brokers snap up tickets so quickly that real humans can have a hard time buying tickets directly from teams, where they're often cheaper. This is more of a problem with concerts, but it plays a role in sports, too.

Player salaries are not major contributors to ticket pricing, López said. Instead, salaries are paid for by television and streaming deals. For example, a recent WNBA television deal has led its player union to negotiate for higher salaries.

However, television deals also increase demand for in-person attendance. In the case of the Seattle Storm, López said, "You might see those ticket prices start to go up as more casual eyes are turned to the product."

The bright side of higher ticket prices

The promise of profits are drawing new teams to cities like Seattle and Las Vegas, including cheaper-to-attend pro- and semi-pro teams.

You can already see rugby and cricket in Seattle. And this spring, Seattle gets a brand new women's semi-pro soccer team: Salmon Bay FC.

Some of these less expensive teams will move their home games to Seattle Center's Memorial Stadium once its remodel is complete.

López said with Major League Soccer expanding rapidly, we could evolve toward a European model where there are several different tiers of teams, and depending on how they play, teams can be promoted to the upper league or demoted to a lower league.

The drama around that process for an English soccer team led by an American football coach informs the plot of the television series Ted Lasso.

A greater range of soccer teams and tiers means a greater range of prices.

How to see sports on a budget in Seattle

If you want to see a major team like the Kraken, Seahawks, Sounders or Storm, López advises fans to show up at the stadium around game time, and open up several ticket apps on your phone, such as SeatGeek, StubHub, Vivid Seats and Ticketmaster.

As soon as the game starts, it's time to start shopping.

Tickets become much less valuable five minutes after that game starts, and you can pick up some good deals — though there is of course a risk that you won't get in.

Another technique is to choose sports that have more games, relative to the size of their fan base. The Seahawks only have nine home games this season. The Mariners have around 80. That difference in supply is part of the reason that you can still get cheap seats to Mariners games for $10. Most tickets are significantly higher, but they're still far cheaper on average than football.

And then, there's the fact that women's sports are good bargains, even though Seattle's teams boast some of the best athletes in the world.

According to the the Reign, ticket prices start at $15, with the average price being $38.39. Watching the resale sites as a recent game was about to begin, some tickets dropped as low as $9.

For Colin López, that's the best deal in Seattle sports. He loves how young girls look up to the athletes as role models, and brim with excitement to see them play.

"For me, as a parent, that's all you can ask for from sporting events, really... That whole good-natured idea of sports that a lot of us fell in love with was this idea of having it be this family communal activity,” he said. “You can be right there, see the action, and it's not something that's gonna cause your family to miss any payments."