It Will Cost More To Watch Good Teams Play

At least in New Orleans. This from Nola.com: “Variable ticket-pricing has been growing in popularity throughout professional sports, and New Orleans Hornets vice president of marketing Matt Biggers considered the timing right for New Orleans’ NBA franchise to embrace the trend. Biggers had observed more than half of the NBA teams offer variable prices, and said ‘it’s hard to even find a baseball team that’s not doing it.’ To him, the opportunity was now. On Tuesday, the Hornets announced the introduction of variable pricing for the 2010-11 season to better reflect each game’s worth. Yet-to-be-determined prices will be assigned to games based on value and demand, influenced by factors such as an opponent’s quality and the day of the week the game is played. Each game will fall into one of five pricing categories: marquee, premium, classic, value and preseason. ‘The concept is recognizing the fact that not all games are created equal,’ Biggers said. ‘We play games on all different days of the week, against all different kinds of opponents during different times of the year. There are games where the demand isn’t as high as other games. For us, it’s about pricing more in line with what the demand is. For games that have high demand, we can price those appropriately.'”