Hey, Wade Redden’s salary ain’t gunna pay for itself!

Seriously, as an NYR season subscriber, this is not surprising. Its what the market will bear right now, and a few cranky individual ticket holders are not going to change anything. The NYR is making its money off those people.

It will be interesting to see if Cablevision actually does spin off MSG/Rangers/Knicks into a separate company – and how that might affect the team and its profitability. If that early report is accurate, the MSG renovations are going to be more expensive than the initial $500 million estimate. If the costs go up substantially, and Cablevision isn’t there to help support those costs, who knows what ticket prices would be?

Those prices are better than what I paid for my partial plan last season…

If I remember correctly, the last time ticket prices stayed level, or were lowered, was after seven years of missing the playoffs.

I have been wondering about this for the last few seasons, though. Through the 07-08 season, tickets would go for a fair amount over face value on outlets like StubHub and the Rangers’ own TicketExchange, so you had to think that Dolan was looking at that and wondering why he was surrendering that revenue. Of course, there’s a big difference between what someone is willing to pay for a game or two, and per game for an entire season package, but still. The demand was there.

It was noticeably tougher to sell tickets this past season, at least where my seats were. I ate a few games entirely, and sold a bunch more at less than face. If the team continues to cellar dwell in offensive output, if they can’t find a way to shake the significant cap problems they have and bring some punch to the lineup, and if economic conditions continue to worsen, then that streak of packed houses that James refers to above could be in jeopardy.

Sure a few long-time ticket holders will eventually drop out as the ticket prices continue their climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, but the World’s Most Famous Arena will still sell out. The Rangers are still a big attraction in the biggest city in the world, even if they suck at scoring and employ Wade Redden.

As True Blue diehards, our voices can’t and won’t ever be heard by this administration because they simply don’t care about us. We’ll keep paying until we can’t, and then someone else will take our seats and the revenue keeps flowing.

The home-y atmosphere in much of the Garden has slowly deteriorated as the years have gone by and a cleaner, corporate one has filled it – exactly what Dolan wants. With corporations comes more money. Should the renovation come through, it will be even worse. The Garden held a focus group that I was luckily a part of with seven other season ticket holders – all long-time guys. The fellow who was brought in to host the thing simply did not understand that we don’t care about new wide concourses, VIP clubs or sushi bars – we are there to watch the Rangers. The building could be broken down and decrepit (like the Coliseum) and we would still go sit in our seats, at every game. Our passion was completely foreign to him and he was completely confused. That is what we are dealing with and it isn’t likely to change anytime soon. The only way it may is far down the line when prices are so extravagant and corporations have moved up from the lower bowl to take over the place and the team goes through another Dark Age. Once the casual corporate yuppies stop coming, that is when there will be change. Until then, sucks to be us.

Of course, the biggest problem is having four players take up half your cap space, and three of them aren’t even performing to the level that their salary suggests.

(Lundqvist being the only one that is)

Of course the lockout/salary cap was to make the game more affordable to the average fan, right Gary?