Tickets are still available to Oklahoma City Thunder home games
2009-2010 season: Marquee games close to sellouts, but some seats remain
BY MIKE BALDWIN, Staff Writer, mbaldwin@opubco.com
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54
Published: October 27, 2009
The Thunder averaged 18,704 fans last season. The renovated Ford Center’s new capacity is 18,200.
Tickets are still available to every Oklahoma City Thunder home game this season. PHOTO BY CHRIS LANDSBERGER, THE OKLAHOMAN
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Thunder ticket information
→Fans can purchase tickets on the team website ( http://thunder.nba.com
), at the Ford Center box office during business hours or by calling (405) 208-HOOP.
→Thunder officials hold back 200 tickets for each home game to be sold on the day of the game.
→Team officials give away 75 pairs of tickets (150 total) at a random drawing two hours before every home game.
Simple math suggests the entire
NBA season will be a sellout, right?
Wrong.
Tickets are still available for every game, including the season opener Wednesday night vs.
Sacramento.
The Cavaliers (Dec. 13), Celtics (Dec. 7), Lakers (Nov. 3) and
Clippers (Nov. 15) are close to sellouts. But even those marquee games still have more than 500 tickets available.
More than 2,000 tickets are available for several games the first half of the season through Jan. 16. Individual tickets for the second half of the season will be put on sale at a later date.
"There was a perception last year that it was a hard ticket to get 41 games a year,” said
Dan Mahoney, the Thunder’s vice president of corporate communications. "Reality is big games like
Cleveland, the Lakers, this year the Clippers with
Blake Griffin making only one appearance, obviously sell better.
"But fans need to know they have opportunity to see games.”
Eighty percent of Thunder season ticket holders renewed.
Team officials estimate season ticket sales at 11,500, which includes the equivalent of one season ticket for every two half-season tickets sold and one season ticket for every four 10-game packages sold.
Unlike some NBA teams, the Thunder’s plan, this season and the future, is to hold back close to 3,000 tickets for every game for individual and group sales.
"Even though capacity changed, we have the same number of seats available,” said
Brian Byrnes, vice president of sales and services. "Most of where we changed capacity is with the new club level terrace boxes on each end.
"The seats we make available in the lower bowl end zone and Loud City, we have the same amount of seats available for single games as we had last season.”
Some NBA teams project significant revenue losses this season, but the Thunder could turn a profit.
Corporate sales were renewed at 95 percent. An additional 40 percent of new corporate partners have been added.
Last year, the Thunder had around 50 corporate sponsors; this year, 75.
"It shows confidence in the Thunder and the future,” Mahoney said. "We’re very proud of our corporate sponsorships.”
With a full calendar year to market, group sales have increased.
"Being able to have a marketing plan in place since the schedule came out (two months ago) has enabled us to be a lot more proactive putting packages together,” Byrnes said. "Last year, we didn’t start selling group packages until November.”
It’s still a hot ticket. But hours before the Thunder’s second season tips off, fans can still purchase tickets for every game.
"There’s obviously an economic downturn that we have to navigate through,” Byrnes said. "All things being considered, we’re very pleased with the strong renewal rates. We’re very optimistic as we head into the season.”
Last year, the Thunder had 18 sellouts. The second half of the season generally produces better crowds in this market after football season ends.
"We can’t speculate how many (sellouts) we’ll have,” Mahoney said. "We’re just trying to provide the best product we can. We’re striving to improve in every facet of the business.”
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By season's end, I half-way suspected the 20,000 figure was somewhat of a stretch, just based on the fact that every game wasn't a sell-out (slightly less than half were, see post below). They came darn close (within 500 or so on the average). Little hard to believe that the supposed 7,000+ people on the waiting list ONLY wanted to see ALL the home games and not whichever ones they could see. So maybe the real number on the waiting list was the balance between the 13,000 season ticket cap and the average 18,700 number. That leaves us with a waiting list of MAYBE 5,700 and presumes that all of the people on the waiting list bought partials and single tickets. But that doesn't take into account those that weren't ever on the waiting list that bought tickets. Since all of that would definitely be supposition, without reported numbers or numbers from the team, I didn't even go there.
Back to the team's numbers: based on their 20,000+ figure, that waiting list had a 7,000+ names on it. That waiting list apparently no longer exists, since they STILL haven't sold all of the season tickets yet.
Percentage of capacity is different from season tickets because it includes all tickets. Because they had the smallest NBA arena, the percentage of capacity argument was used in Seattle and many here saw it for what it was and dismissed it. Now that we are in the same situation, we want to use it? If the argument wasn't valid then, what makes it valid now? After we removed 960 seats the Ford dropped from #14 all the way down to #28, making it one of the smallest NBA arenas (dangerously close to the Key capacity). Haven't verified it, but someone posted that a couple of the arenas that are smaller are getting ready to open bigger arenas, so the Ford drops even farther. If attendance numbers are falling, you can boost the perception that nothing has changed by switching to percentages and lowering seating capacity. Can have a 10,000 seat arena and have 100%. So while percentage may be "used by all NBA teams", that can be misleading unless all NBA arenas are the same size (or in single pro-sports states, or cities of the same size etc, etc). I don't dispute the "96% to 98%" rate but that obviously doesn't include the average 4,000+ no shows reported earlier, which brings it down to about 75%. 97% of 19,163 = 18,588. 18,588 minus 4,000 no shows = 14,588 or 75% (mol) of the 19,163 seating capacity. There are no shows at any event and don't know if the 4,000 figure is high, low or somewhere in between.
But for the sake of argument, lets concentrate on the real, actual numbers. According to the team's website, they sold 13,000 full-season tickets in 5 DAYS (partials weren't even available at that point). Now after being available for MONTHS, they have only sold an "estimated" 11,500 (INCLUDING the partials). This number changed from the 12,000 number reported a couple of months ago. Presumed the earlier number was full season tickets and didn't include the partials. In any case, there is a difference there of 500.
Since we don't know how many partials are included this time around, that is a drop off of at least 1,500 net actual, hard numbers from last season to this (gross numbers are higher since renewal rate wasn't 100%).
When talking about season tickets, the reduced seating capacity is irrelevant, because the number of those available remained unchanged (perhaps where the seat was located changed or even the "level" of seat, but the total season ticket cap of 13,000 remained constant).
Regardless of season ticket sale drop-off, they can still have high interest and attendance. No argument there as even with the actual, real, season ticket decline, the opening game against a less than marquee team, ended up being a sell-out (18,203).
As far as the Sooners are concerned, if those are the numbers from the team and they can no longer sell that many and aren't selling out the stadium, then yes, I agree 100%
The first part is true. But the second part? They were 2.50 games from reaching the the half way mark and 4.47 games past a third Obviously you can't have a partial game so rounding the numbers puts them 3 games closer to the half but 4 games past a third.
The true test for the Thunder will be long term attendance. The inaugural year was expected to be much higher than it was (still very good). They were expecting complete sell-out (and came close). But actual number of sell-outs and average attendance was just about the same for the Thunder (permanent team) and the Hornets (temporary team). There was a drop-off in year 2 for the Hornets (but not near as dramatic) after they announced they would be returning to N.O. How long will fans go to see the Thunder if they continue to be a 23 win team?
Even if every game was a sell-out, due to our lower seating capacity (and even lower after the improvements) an earlier article pointed out, the Thunder can never have higher attendance than they did lst season. They can only go for the percentage of seats filled (much like the smallest NBA arena, the Key). After the improvements we are dropping from #14 in capacity all the way down to #28. We will be dropping even farther when some of the cities that are lower open their new, larger arenas.
I agreed with Rob's post near the beginning of the thread that the Thunder's renewal rate is higher than the league average (separate issue than above)
Could the huge drop-off have something to do with the...ahemmm...less than impressive win record of the team?
The okies don't come to see the "home team" (as displayed by barely selling out one third of the home games last (inaugural ) season, so they sure won't come to see 2 loser teams on the same court.
They booed the team 3 weeks into the season(the inaugural year, no less).
Tonight is the season opener and the Ford center (with greatly reduced seating) is NOT sold out.
The team sucks as badly as they did last year, seems to be in a downward spiral ever since Clay boy bought the team....
Thursday, October 29, 2009 No KeyArena events
Friday, October 30, 2009 No KeyArena events
Saturday, October 31, 2009 No KeyArena events
Sunday, November 01, 2009 No KeyArena events
Monday, November 02, 2009 No KeyArena events
Larry, you think the drop in season tickets could have anything to do with the economy? I bet renewals for thunder season tickets was above average for the league.
I love the sound of seattle cry in the morning.
Okiehoma *hitty?--PERFECT ! (Wish I'd have thought of that).....
The Sonics had some seasons where every game was a sellout but they averaged 13,586 fans during their 40 seasons and had only 8 sellouts in 2005-06, the year BEFORE Clay Bennett purchased the franchise.
Once again, the claim of over 18,000 fans attending per game rears it's ugly head, and yet it was reported the actual attendance figure was just a touch over 14,000 per game, right here in this newspaper.
Alf, as far as "chest puffing", it's all okies know, it makes up for their (obvious) shortcomings, proven daily in okieland....
Season 2, they've eliminated seats and still aren't assured of sellouts even when the REAL teams come to town.....pathetic....
It sounds like the team is doing just fine financially. It would be nice if they would spend a little money to put a product on the court that had a better chance of winning. I'm not talking about endangering cap space that will be used to resign Durant, but get some legitimate role players or bench guys on shorter contracts. Everyone is excited about 3-4 of our young guys, but we need at least a solid 8-man rotation to compete.
"Team officials estimate season ticket sales at 11,500, which includes the equivalent of one season ticket for every two half-season tickets sold and one season ticket for every four 10-game packages sold."
Sounds like they are including the 1/2 season tickets and mini-packs. Think those numbers were separate last season. The 13,000 were full blown season tickets. Halves and certainly mini-packs weren't even available in those 5 days.
Rob is correct, the renewal rate is impressive, didn't mean to imply otherwise.
But, it is a it laughable that the team is saying that the four Saturday's when Oklahoma and OK St. are playing causes such a large effect on ticket sales. Especially when they don't even play a game during any of those four weekends. When teams start making up excuses like that you have to wonder if there are things they are trying to hide.
Perception? Thought that was the reality, reportedly the team said they could have sold 20,000+ in season ticket sales alone?
"Team officials estimate season ticket sales at 11,500"
Last season they sold 13,000 in 5 days according to their website. Figured they would have sold the remaining ones after the schedule was announced (earlier reports put it at about 1,000). They still haven't sold all of the season tickets yet? Disappointing.