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Capitals increase ticket prices for season-ticket holders by $5 per game for the 2017-18 season

By Ian Oland

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February 20, 2017 11:41 pm

Monday night, the Washington Capitals announced ticket-price increases for the 2017-18 season. If season-ticket holders choose to renew for next season, they will pay an increase of $5 per game.

The deadline to renew is March 17.

Here’s how the prices stacked up per a fancy chart I made after poorly combining the Capitals graphics.

According to a team spokesman, the Capitals’ analytics group derived these new prices based on marketplace conditions. The team also plans to spend up to the salary cap and ice a very competitive team next season.

Not only that, the Capitals won the President’s Trophy during the 2015-16 season and may do so again in 2016-17. The team has never been more popular. They also sport one of the greatest players of all-time in Alex Ovechkin.

Reactions from fans have spanned from meh to annoyance.

While a uniform $5 price increase seems fair to everyone, the impact felt by fans in the upper bowl is much greater. While fans sitting glass side will see a .01 percent increase in pay, those fans sitting up in the upper deck are seeing fees jump as high as 18%.

“My seats in what we affectionately call The Top Shelf (408 P), went from $2732 for the full season to $3157 ($33.31 to $38.50/game/seat). That’s a 15 percent increase,” reader Joe F. said in an email. “I feel that there’s no rhyme or reason to what happens. The only other time these seats were even close to this expensive, Adam Oates was coaching. Last year, when the Caps were invincible (at least when the prices were announced, in February), the prices for our seats went down. So no matter what happens, it’s always a surprise.”

Joe and other fans also voiced their displeasure about how much more difficult it is to sell tickets via other avenues.

“The Caps have made it steadily less convenient to be a season-ticket holder, most notably by not allowing fans to print out their tickets at all this year for ‘security’ reasons (primarily the security of their market share from SeatGeek and StubHub), and forcing Monumental Rewards points to expire for the first time this year,” Joe F. continued. “While I recognize that they don’t control the product on the ice (which all sides acknowledge may regress in 2017-2018 due to the salary cap), we certainly aren’t getting a better product for our money than we were a year or two ago.”

Here’s a sample of the reactions I received online from other season-ticket holders.

How are you feeling about the price increases? Will this keep you from renewing next season? What could the Capitals do better? What are they doing right? Let us know in the comments.