Forbes: How Faceprices For Bruins Playoff Tickets Are Killing The Secondary Ticket Market

Over on Forbes, we took a look at Boston Bruins tickets for the NHL playoffs and how the extremely high primary market prices have really hurt the resale market. Here's a piece of the article:

The Bruins have a long history of success with six Stanley Cups championships, most recently in 2010-11. Heading into the 2014 NHL Playoffs, the Boston Bruins are favored by Las Vegas to win their seventh. While that’s good news for Bruins fans looking to root from home, it’s bad news for fans who want to see the game in person. As a result of their enviable position atop the NHL and holder of the President’s trophy, Bruins playoff tickets on the primary market are priced 140% higher than any other NHL team based on analysis of face prices by TicketIQ. The minimum price of entry to TD Garden for the first round of the playoff is $155, which will get you a spot at the back of the promenade section or somewhere in the Balcony. That’s $93 more expensive the average of the cheapest faceprice across the other 15 teams in the playoffs. The most expensive ticket at TD Garden is going for $486. If you (conservatively) assume the Bruins are applying a $92 premium to all of their price categories, they’re generating $1.3 million in additional revenue…per game. With home ice advantage, if the Bruins were to play all 16 of their possible games at home, that would amount of $20 million of incremental revenue. In years past, that $20 million in value would have gone to brokers or other fans looking to resell their tickets. However, with the aid of historical data, and riding the recent trend in professional sports toward ‘price optimization’, the 2014 Bruins will be keeping it all for themselves. While it’s the kind of money that can pay for two-three key players in the off-season, it also likely signals the beginning of the end of the secondary ticket market as we know it.

To read the rest of the article and learn more about how prices at TD Garden are killing the secondary market, click here.