One day after the Seattle Sounders FC suffered its worst home loss and fell to last place in its division, team ownership announced it would refund its 32,000 season-ticket holders for the embarrassment. The Sounders were humiliated 4-0 on Saturday by the Los Angeles Galaxy.
The refund comes in the form of a one-game credit toward next year's season ticket package. And yes, you read that right. The Sounders have 32,000 season ticket holders.
Do the math. Single game tickets range from $50 in the nosebleed seats to $95 closer to the action. At $50 a ducat, the team will be crediting a minimum of $1.6 million dollars next year.
Think about this. The Seattle Sounders are refunding $1.6 million dollars because the team had a bad game.
You don't suppose some airline executives might hear about this and say, "Hey, that's a great idea! The next time we go park on a tarmac for three hours, we should give everybody their money back!"
NAH.
BTW, what kind of a guarantee do YOU have for customers when something goes wrong?
Steve,
This really isn’t about a guarantee or even a refund. It’s more about creating/crafting a brilliant story.
The Seattle Sounders are stinking up this season, which is why this move was so shrewd for so many reasons:
It creates the perception (real or not) that they care about the fans and winning.
* The Sounders have more season ticket holders than the Mariners do. If, say, 5000 fans decided not to renew their season tickets (at an average of $75/ticket), over the 18 homes games this year…then they stand to “lose” 6,750,000 (and not 1.6 million).
* Fans spend far more than the ticket price during game day. I’m sure they know what each fan is worth.
* They have a vibrant fan base. 32K out of the 35K seats at Quest field are season ticket holders. Less season ticket holders they have, more marketing they have to do. Who wants to spend more on marketing?
* Your retelling of this story is one of over 50K hits on Google, and Twitter is ablaze with it too. $1.6 million couldn’t buy the coverage/exposure that they have received. Philly (my hometown) is in its inaugural MLS season (they just built a new stadium too) and I doubt if they received as much press as this one story has gotten for Seattle.
Got a little carried away with this one. Keep up the good work Steve.
Tom
That is crazy, but I guess that is what they want to do. It doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense to me, because this is not the last game that they will lose.