I attended my second game of the season on saturday. there sure were alot of green seats not being used (besides my kids crawling over the rows) where are the fans this year?

1 and 4 could be part of the reason. Casual fans don't look at the score, they look at the record.
Could be the economy. Lots more people are struggling this year over previous years.
Could be the fact that it was a Holiday weekend, even if not a major holiday, one that younger folks generally recognize.

Of course then there's those of us who watch every game even if we're not there (which we were). 3 hours each way or a hotel room doesn't help me get there for more than 2 or 3 games a year.

When I talked to some of the sales peeps, it seemed the bigger thing that's been hurting them this year is group sales. It sounds like for the April games we should see a pretty big bump in attendance with a lot more of the youth groups and such coming in. Right now I think hockey is still going on and folks have less expendable income so the groups just aren't filling up. The walk-up sales have been hurt a little by the Friday games and the weather as well, but the groups have been the bigger downside this year.

I know the attendance for Sunday's Wild game was "the third largest crowd ever at Xcel"...something like 19,430 or something like that. It was pretty much full though...

I still say it has to do with ticket prices going up this year more then others. I'm sure that the college section has much lower attendence since they stopped the 25 dollar seasons for college students. Plus the 45 pack went from 4 tickets for 45 to 2 tickets for 45.
I'm sure that friday games and their record may have some factor. I say the main problem is the rising prices.

I have to agree with Jammer to some extent.
I was very disappointed to see the size of some of the price jumps this year.
As an example, the birthday package went up to 320 from (I think) 250 or so.
Assuming my memory is accurate, a 25% price hike.
Then the Channel 45 package essentially doubled in price.

The prices hurt when your budget doesn't have as large of a unallocated portion available.

It should be noted that the biggest crowd of the season so far was on a Friday night (the home opener), and that the only Saturday night game so far only drew in the 8K-9K range, so the Friday thing doesn't seem like much of a factor.

Specifically regarding last week's game and tonight's one, I wonder how much the Winter Olympics - and specifically Lindsey Vonn's events - are keeping fans at home in front of their TV sets. IIRC Vonn's first event was originally scheduled for last Saturday (to be televised that evening), and let's face it, right now Vonn is a bigger sports star in these parts than Zack Greer, so I'll bet a lot of local fans made their weekend plans based on that. Also she has another event scheduled for today, to be televised tonight. (Yes, I know there's always TiVo and such, but with the Games going on pretty much nonstop for two weeks, and as hard as it is to avoid Olympics spoilers in the media, on Facebook etc., Olympic coverage isn't quite as easy to time-shift as other sporting events.)

Andy Arlotta did a Q&A session after the tour of the Xcel Energy Center yesterday, and one thing he said was that although attendance is down this year, PAID attendance is actually up... I thought that was interesting.

Actually I was going to ask him about that last night, but forgot. Good to know. I kind of suspected it, but didn't know for sure.

I would guess that this accounts for a decent amount of the drop in attendance. Last year, a number of the games were free for college students. I know this year, many of the people I brought with me to those games aren't coming now because they don't want to pay the tickets or just don't have a big enough interest when it isn't free (not that $10 is all that pricey).

Well yeah, $10 tickets would rock, could take the whole family for hte price it takes 2 of us to get in.

I see we were up about 400 from the previous game. By they time they come home next might even see a melt, tax returns will be in for most of us... maybe we can see a few less green seats.

Supposedly they already have some pretty big group sales lined up for the April games. I talked to a few of the sales guys and so far they've said the big difference is the lack of the youth sports groups. I think raising the price and not giving the free college tickets has hurt some as well. Come April though things should look better. I was told part of the company I work for purchased 150 tickets to the last game and there are a lot more of the sports groups signing on as well. Hopefully we'll get back up in the 12k area for the last few. It is good to hear that PAID attendance is up. Even with smaller overall numbers that bode well. I wonder how merchandise sales compare to last year and if there's any offset there.

I would guess that people who pay to get in are more likely to buy merchandise, but concession sales are probably lower. That trade off would benefit the Swarm because of the small share of food sales is just not that large.

Paid attendence up that is good part of this.

Merchandise doesn't sound like it's ever been a big revenue generator for the team. Yesterday, Andy said that the largest revenue streams in order were:

1) Tickets
2) Sponsorship/Advertising
3) Concessions
4) Merchandise

And he made it sound like merchandise was a distant 4th...

I have a hard time believing that paid attendence is up. Of course the business owner will say that. I don't buy any tickets anymore, because of the simple fact that it is not affordable for my family to go anymore. I can get them for free from work or friends that are season ticket holders with their extra free seats.
prices are ridicoulous now. $24 for lowest ticket!! what ever happend to the "affordable family tickets" they say on all advertisements. I guess im not to concerned about that, because I usually put in a phone call here or there and i can get tickets from friends or my work.

I totally understand attackman_wizard. On the other side of that though is compared to the other sports (including Uni of Mn) these are still reasonably priced tickets.

The 45 package works out good b/c you get a dog and soda as well as your seat for 22.50 per person (before fees).

Now, if they would give a Hive discount....

Just buy season tickets early and get the 1+1 deal, which cuts the price in half, presuming that you need more than one ticket.

That works great, with a couple of rather large assumptions :

a) you don't have 3 kids in sports Jan, Feb, Mar and April which happen to have events on weekends.
you don't have to drive 3 hours home to make sure you're back for some activity at church Sunday morning
c) in addition to your tickets you have the money to get a hotel to accomodate 5 on the days you don't have to drive home

Such a solution sounds great when you're in Mpls/StP and only have you (or you+1) but doesn't account for families or "outstate" fans.

As I said, or implied, I still find the Swarm to not only be the best but the least expensive national level sport to take the family to watch in Minnesota.

It's not a 1 for 1 deal, it's 2 for 2. I buy 2 season tickets a year, and i feel somewhat cheated that i pay the same and get 2 tickets while others get 4.

Then get the other two free ones and invite friends or family to join you. (We only need two, but we get all four to take newbies to the game. It's resulted in at least 6 season ticket purchases throughout the time they've given us that deal.)

You're making some hefty assumptions yourself.

a) I only have one kid, but he's in spring sports, scouts, as well as a healthy social life and I coach during that time, at times up to 4 teams (MS,F-S, and V/JV) during the lacrosse season. We also play pickup games during that time and sometimes do lax clinics too.
Being from Rochester, I do have an hour or 1.5 hours worth of drive home, which when you consider in dropping off the various kids at their homes, trends well over 2 hrs.
c) I've only once considered staying over, due to icy conditions, but it ended up being just fine, except for in Rochester itself.

I have 3+3 Season tickets for my family of 3 and bring tons of newbies throughout the year. Seems like a lot of pissing and moaning for 8 pre-announced dates per year. Either you can make it or not and cutting the price of tickets in half with the matching program makes that prospect palatable.

As much as I know the owners definitely appreciate every paid attendee, I don't think you're really ever going to see them cater to people 3+ hours away. MAYBE if they get some sort of a sponsorship deal from a hotel and can do some sort of big cross promo discount thing. Maybe, hotel room comes with 2 free tickets, or 2 tickets, 1 room, $80 or something. Jenn O'Neill, I hope you're reading.

As for the gate prices, I do find it surprising they got rid of a cheapy tier. I'd take a guess that part of the rationale is to not sell the upper deck, in hope of keeping the lower bowl more full. Overall prices are way cheap. Comparable "good" seats for Wild games are at least 3-4X more. That said, I think they should bring back the "College Level" upper deck and sell something like $10-15 tickets for student IDs. Colorado sells upper deck ends for as low as $5. Over half of the teams in the league sell their cheapest ticket for under $20, I really think the Swarm should look at working a lower tier in.

The 45 deal should go back to 4 tickets. Sure, if you look at what you would pay for the food, the 2 tickets end up being like $15, but people might not care to get the food. Maybe have two different packs. One for 2 good seats with food and one with 4 mediocre seats and no food.

One other thing a few teams have are "Youth" prices. the $25 low end ticket would run say $15 for kids. Makes it a lot more family friendly, though I'd guess trying to track and enforce kids actually using kids tickets might be annoying.

I'd also guess when Andy was talking about "paid attendance" that he was talking about total sales, not necessarily the total number of paid tickets. I could definitely see the former being the case since they did get a lot more season ticket holders this year, and a lot of the prices went up. You'll get more money from less people.

I don't doubt at all that The Swarm have done a lot of research and number crunching to find price points that will hopefully maximize their attendance and income. Hopefully the numbers will go up like they are expected to in April. We shall see.

I'm happy that they are thoughtfully thinking about profitability and trying to get into the black. That bodes well for the long term stability of the franchise. There of plenty of people around that will pee and moan about high ticket prices, whatever they may be. "Hey, I can get high school basketball game tickets for like half as much!" apparently holds water with that crowd. Unappreciative, long term, free-loading sucks. The Swarm is still amongst the best entertainment values around and the people taking the actual risk should be compensated for that risk.

That is not an option. Anybody who bought season tickets after December 2008 does not qualify for the Buy2/Get2 deal. The team wanted to discontinue the program altogether this year but found that there may have been a revolt among the long-time STHs.

I am surprised that merchandise is below concessions. I had heard (second or third-hand) that the team got very little of the concession money, and that most of it goes to the X.

They do have college tickets for $10 I think. My friends little brother has got that once. He has paid full price for a couple other games but I also have him and his friend on board for season tickets next year. So the buy one get one is now going on to season ticket holder number 4 maybe even 5 at the end of the season.

As I said at the end of my previous comments, I still find the Swarm not only to be the Best professional team to take my kids to watch but the most reasonably priced.

My only real "rant" in all this is that the tickets we normally get doubled in price from one season to the next. In my opinion, that is worthy of a gripe.

All the rest is my own situation which we deal with, but it simply makes the cost of season tickets and only being able to MAYBE use a third of them prohibitive FOR ME/US... yeah I know I could try to sell them but if they can't sell out what would make ME think my tickets would magically sell? Sure I could give them away but I guess I'm just not THAT generous... :-/

Still planning 2 more trips, one hopefully a birthday event with 5 newbies.

Another benefit of Season Tickets is that you can trade them forward. When I can't put a butt in a seat, I trade the ticket forward to usually the next game. Often there is room on the end of our seats, so it works out okay. We used to have 4+4, but backed off to 3+3 a coupla years ago to reduce the cost and hassle of finding takers.

There are college tickets available for $10 as long as you order them ahead of time. They're $14 at the gate.

Heck, I didn't think the Swarm made anything on concessions. Maybe they cut a new deal with the Xcel.

That fine, but, to get the 2 for 2 i have to purchase 4 tickets, at full price, for the previous season. I'm having a hard time finding 2 others to commit. So, i just get the 2. Also, the way things are going with ticket prices i'm not going to count on the 2 for 2 deal to be around from season to season.

The BOGO promo is almost certainly going bye bye next year. Even the grandfathered ones. I beleive they'll be shifting it to the "buy two get two half price" deal.

I didn't notice the college section since they had it as it's own separate link instead of mentioned anywhere on the single game tickets page. That's good to see.

Still, I think having someone more family accessible would be helpful.

I really hope that the powers that be in the Swarm organization montitor these boards. There are lots of valid points here about ticket prices.
I think we all understand that this is a business and they have to make profit. And we also understand that their expences rise, just as they have for all of us. However, if there is another 25% jump in season ticket prices, I'm out next year. If you look at other teams, we have the second highest (lower priced) seats in the league. I think they should open up the upper level, as was said before, for like 10 bucks a game. Maybe sell season for like 65 bucks for upper deck. Most people would stay where they are at. But, i firmly beleive that would attract many more people.
With the economy today, with no real sign of getting better anytime soon, its time to stop stupid give aways and "season ticket perks" that most wont use. And just give us cheaper entertainment.

First, they do monitor the boards.

Second, I highly doubt they'd open the upper-level at this point. Selling those seats for $10 or so would probably not make up for the cost of opening that area. (They have to pay ushers to work up there, they'd have to run concessions stands up there, janitorial expenses, etc.) It just doesn't make sense financially.

I think it would make more sense to have a cheaper rate for kids' tickets, or offer more family packs like the 45-pack they've been using.

Actually, it would be much better to go back to the old channel 45 pack not the current.
And true, expences would rise by opening the upper deck. However, i think this would turn the casual fan into a season ticket holder. I also think it would make enough to make up for the extra expence. They dont have to open all the food stands. That could be part of the cheap seats, they would lose out on such luxuries.
Make it like a no frills section. All they get is a ticket, no goal card, no buy backs, nothing extra, just a ticket.
I have done no research and am by no means an expert. but, i do know people looking for the cheapest entertainment that there is. So, i do believe that this would not be a looser.

The problem with opening up the upper level when the lower levels aren't filling up is that people will buy the cheaper tickets and just move into the lower bowl. My guess is that the team would lose money.

I also think that if they get rid of the BOGO for long-time season ticket holders, they'll still have a revolt (like mentioned earlier). At the very least, they'll be hard pressed to get people to pay up in April for tickets.

I use my tickets to bring my team to a game once or twice a year. I doubt they'd buy tickets on their own, but they spend money on concessions, and have purchased a shirt or two as well.

I'd like to note that when I called to get our 2/13 tickets, the sales rep I worked with was great.
As I've said there are 5 of us and there isn't a convenient package for us (last year or this year).
As it turned out this rep was able to give me 5 tickets under the channel 45 package. So the 5th ticket cost 1/2 of the package price.
For me this was a win/win situation, and made me feel extremely warm and fuzzy toward the Swarm in general (I had long given up being irritated by the 100% price hike on the channel 45 package by then).

It's almost like a bipolar organization, willing to go the extra mile for you in some instances but not willing on another front to go that extra mile (like 1/2 priced kids tickets). Frankly I think 1/2 priced for 12 and under would be great! And the Swarm should (and forgive the analogy but hey there it is) look at it like a dealer does, give kids a taste, give it to them cheap, then when they're hooked make a profit.

As MMSF said, I know they do browse the boards. I've actually gotten a call from Andy before to help explain things from a different thread on ticket prices and giving away "freebies."

I guess going through and comparing it, if you include the "College Section" tickets, the Swarm do offer the cheapest lower level ticket in the league.

Looking around the league, the thing that I see offered various places that the Swarm could definitely use is a Flex Pack. I think that would help a lot of people like Rattlebones. They could buy, say 5, 4-packs at a decent discount and then have 4 sets of 5 tickets for the games to use when they pick.

It's good to hear they can be flexible on the 45 deal, though they could really use a larger "Family pack" and possibly some other bare bones, cheaper deal. Maybe this, have the CW deal, $23 gets a ticket, Dog and Soda then make the 45 pack 4 tix for $45? Then why not add a ZackGreer88 deal, 8 tix for $88. Cheaper prices in bulk, encourages everyone to bring more people!

Just for the sake of comparison since we're talking about all this ticket deal stuff here are prices around the league:
(All prices are advance prices if differentiated)

Boston Blazers:
Deal: 4 LL Tix, 4 Burritos $44
Tix Prices: $15 (Upper edge LL-ends), 20, 27, 38, 50, 60-Glass

Buffalo Bandits:
Deal: McDonalds - 4 UL tix, 40 McNuggets, 2 Lg Fry, 4 med drinks, $79
Pearl St. Grill - 1 UL tix, 2 drinks, pregame buffet $29
Tix Prices: $23 (UL-all and LL-ends), 25, 33

Colorado Mommoth:
Deal: 4 Tickets, 4 Sodas or Beers and 4 Hot Dogs for $39! (Possibly only for select games)
Tix: UL- $5, $10, $14, $18 Club- $24,28,34 LL-$22,26,29,30,38

Orlando Titans:
Tix: All LL - $20,22,25,30,35
Also offer (unclear if any discount):
4-Pack: Same seats any 4 games
8-Pack: 8 vouchers to use any game

Philadelphia Wings:
Tix: $18,24,33,36,52-club,62-glass
No deals other than groups easily found on website

Rochester Knighthawks:
Deal: Eats and Seats - 2 UL end seats, 2 $10 restaurant gift cards $40 or 4x for $80
Tix: $17,19,22,25,28
Also offer an 8 pack

Washington Stealth:
Tix: UL-$13,18 Club-$33,37 LL-23,30,42-glass
No obvious deals, offer a half season sample for 4 Fr or 4 Sat games.

Canadian teams (Prices likely in Canadian, though exchange is currently 1us=1.05can):

Calgary Roughnecks:
Have by far the worst website for trying to find ticket prices.
20% student discount for section 220
Tix:$25-67

Edmonton Rush:
College section $15
Safeway section (Discount UL Corners purchased at Safeway, price unclear)
United Cycle Family section LL-end Tic, Soda, dog $30
Flex pack (4 tic vouchers, use anytime) UL Side or LL ends $110, UL corners $67.20
Back-Back: 2 tix back to back games 5%off advance price
Tix: UL-$17.50, 29.50 LL-$44.50,47,49.50,59.50

Toronto Rock:
Deals: Jack Astors: 2 UL tix + $25 card $49.99, 4 UL tix $50 card $99.99
Paint the town blue: $15 UL tix, 6 tix min. (Possible one game only)
Tix Prices:
Adult: UL-$27, LL-$46,$48,$58,$74
Youth: Ul-$14, All LL-$25
Seniors: $5-7 off all but glass.

Stupid relog quotes.

I was referring to season ticket prices, not single game specials. Also, i meant it if the tickets do another 20 or 25% jump next year, i'm out.
I ending my comments on this right now. All i will get is a bad time, because to many the Swarm is perfect and if they dont think of it, it just cant be right......have a great day.

Who said the Swarm was perfect? I guess I missed those posts.

So people can't reasonably disagree and engage in a discussion on the subject?

you shouldn't be argueing about ticket prices. if your so worried about prices, then do some research in finding good discounts. there are so many websites where you can find any discount in the cities...craigslist is a always a good one as people try to dump their tickets. Google does great wonders in case you didnt know! i found group discounts on the swarm website and you don't even need the full group number. Just go to the front office page and click on a ticket reps name and their group offers show up. easy.

Hmmm, they used to offer a half-season ticket package, where the buyer could pick which four games they wanted. I don't see that offered on the Swarm site any more. (Although with only 4 games left in the season, there is not a lot of flexibility to pick which 4).


Those sound like good ideas.

I have to disagree with the sentiment. This is a perfect place to discuss ticket prices; a fan site monitored by the organization. If there are some fans who are dis-satisfied with ticket prices who are willing to post, there are likely many others who are disappointed and who don't post. The organization should know there are issues/concerns with the ticket prices and packages they offer.

And personally, if I was part of the swarm administration I'd love to have my fans offering up ideas for ticket packages. Ultimately my goal is to make money and if the people paying me have ideas on how I can better make money then I'd be happy to listen.

I think this thread has come up with a few useful comments that the administration/ownership could take advantage of in the future.

They used to have a flex-pack too. It was vouchers for 6 tickets for $75ish, to be used in any combination. (I bought one for a chirstmas gift for the 2009 season.) I don't remember if they had that as an option this year.

If they don't still have them, it would be a good idea to bring them back in the future!

I was giving you a bad time? I thought I was actually agreeing with you? If I thought they were perfect would I have listed a dozen things that could be changed in this thread?

I agree the prices better not make a jump next year. It seems like a very poor business strategy to raise prices when attendance has been down. Raise the prices if the house is selling out maybe, but not when it's half full.