As I detailed last week, Sixers tickets are in high demand and season tickets are indeed all but sold out with the exception of seats available in Club Box and VIP sections. What does sold out mean in Sixers parlance? Who knows– the organization has a habit of creating sections, like they did when they created a VIP section and then invoiced their current ticket holders for the radically more expensive seats without so much as a warning, and we have no way of knowing how many they are holding back for partial plans or single-game tickets, which they can literally charge anything they want for without us knowing they are behind the prices.

I sporadically get emails from season ticket holders – and I undoubtedly will get more after this post – detailing somewhat shady or aggressive sales techniques. In April, one STH emailed me to detail what he termed a “bait and switch” when the organization failed to honor his “lock-in” price on full season tickets for next season, on which he placed a deposit in January, after he was promised to be able to select comparable seats to his previous partial plan at a select-a-seat event in April. When he showed up for it, there were no seats available in his price level. A day later, he got a call offering him tickets one tier up, but not at the “lock-in” price levels from January, nor the select-a-seat price levels from the day before, but a brand spankin’ new level created just for rubes like him!

Today, I got an email from another season ticket holder who is concerned about the rapidly increasing prices this offseason.

Indeed Sixers season ticket prices have gone up multiple times this offseason, and since the trade.

I decided to pull together screenshots sent by both of these emailers, one from reader (@terry_2426), and what is publicly listed on the Sixers website now to get a snapshot of the recent price increases. It is difficult to get earlier pricing, so we have to rely on what’s available in the screenshots that we dug up. I prefer to listen to Miley Cyrus’ The Climb while detailing Sixers season ticket price increases:

 

Center Court rows 11-17

August 23, 2016: $139

February 16, 2017: $152

June 17, 2017:  $179

Today: ???

 

Baseline rows 1-5

August 23, 2016: $97

April 26, 2017: $104

Offseason unknown: $116

June 17, 2017: $122

Today: ???

 

Centennial South VIP

June 17, 2017: $175-$275

Today: $225-325

 

Lower Level Ends rows 11-17

August 23: 2016: $39

April 26, 2017: $42

Offseason unknown: $47

June 17, 2017: $49

Today: ???

 

Mezzanine Ends rows 1-3

April 26, 2017: $18

Offseason unknown: $24

June 17, 2017: $26

Today: ???

 

A few notes: The prices from August were obviously for last season and shown for comparison purposes. Also, I have ??? on today because those sections are sold out but we know that at least in the case of Centennial South VIP, which are still publicly available, that prices increased since last week, and I would imagine that was the case at other price levels as well.

Besides the crumminess of this all, what makes the rapid increases noteworthy is that the Sixers will sell single-game tickets through their partnership with StubHub. If they are changing season ticket prices this frequently, imagine how often they’ll optimize their single-game tickets when we have no visibility into whether or not they are the seller. I would suspect they have algorithms in place to automatically adjust pricing on the fly as demand increases for certain games, data which I’m sure StubHub has granted them visibility into.

As I’ve said before, I sort of admire how the Sixers are running themselves from a business standpoint, and while their tactics obviously haven’t hurt them from a ticket sales perspective, the notion of continuously jacking up prices just because they can, combined with aggressive and at times deceiving sales practices, leaves a really bad taste in your mouth. Imagine what will happen once they actually win a few games.