Several weeks after they went on sale the Chargers have finally sold out their season tickets for the 2017 season at StubHub Center in Carson.
Of course like most everything with the Chargers these days that comes with a caveat.
“Consistent with the practice of other NFL teams that have achieved sellouts, the Chargers have placed a hold on several thousand additional tickets for players and their families, visiting team use, community relations, and promotional purposes,” said the team in a statement.
The facility where they will spend the next couple of seasons only holds from 27,000 to 30,000 so they have not in fact sold out every seat in the house. That did not stop them from doubling down on the rhetoric:
“Because of the high demand for Chargers tickets at StubHub Center, the franchise will look to free up additional seats from the team’s hold and from additional improvements at StubHub Center. This may satisfy a portion of the remaining high demand.”
It would appear that the team’s definition of “high demand” differs greatly from most other teams in the NFL. Season tickets were offered to current season ticket holders on February 22 and went out to the general public on March 9 … yet it took until March 26 for them all to be sold.
By contrast the Rams returned to Los Angeles and sold all 70,000 of the allotted season tickets at the Coliseum for the 2016 season in less than a day. The truly high demand will probably be single-game tickets, which are likely going to be purchased almost exclusively by fans of that week’s Chargers opponent.
Chargers season tickets ranged in price from $700 to $3,750 for the 10 home games. At an average of $192 per game the Chargers will likely have one of the top-3 most expensive tickets in the NFL in 2017. In 2016 their average ticket price was about $92 per game.
And in one more example of the franchise’s … let’s go with interesting sense of timing, the announcement came on the same day that the NFL owners approved the Raiders move from Oakland to Las Vegas. That would suggest that either the Chargers failed once again to read their terrain or they actively wanted this bit of news to be overlooked on purpose. Maybe both.
