Athletic Business: "Northwestern Experiments with Dutch Auction Ticket Pricing"
From AthleticBusiness.com
By: Paul Steinbach
…
FAIR TRADE Purple Pricing ensures that single-game ticket purchasers ultimately pay the same amount, regardless of when they buy or where they sit. (Photos by Stephen J. Carrera/Northwestern University Athletics)
In Holland, the price of flowers starts high and drops the longer it takes to sell them. It's been that way for more than a century. But not until this year did that sales approach inspire Northwestern University economists and, in turn, athletics administrators, who believe their suburban Chicago institution is the first in this country to use a Dutch auction to price and sell game tickets.
"This is brand new," says Shawn Sullivan, director of marketing for NU athletics. "I don't think anybody has ever tried this before."
At least not until the weeks leading up to a Feb. 28 men's basketball game against No. 16 Ohio State, when Northwestern officially launched Purple Pricing. Despite the fact the Wildcats hadn't won a game in nearly a month, a limited number of single-game tickets were made available at $70, or double their normal price. "We had fans buy tickets from us at $70, and we've never sold a ticket above $40. So it shows that there are fans out there who value it that high," Sullivan says. "Are our prices too low? Maybe they are. They are the lowest in the Big Ten, in the biggest market. You can keep going down the line as to what the reasons are - whether it's our arena, our history, our competitiveness - but this has shown us already that even if we don't continue with Purple Pricing, we at least need to look at pricing certain games at certain levels."
…