Women’s hockey at the Bell Center | A full room that delights resellers

Every day, the Professional Women’s Hockey League further confirms its status as a full-fledged professional circuit. She also learns that success sometimes comes with some inconveniences.

It took less than 30 minutes on Wednesday morning for all the available tickets to sell out for the April 20 match between the Montreal and Toronto teams at the Bell Centre. After a long wait, fans who were in the virtual queue first had the unpleasant surprise of finding that the offer was reduced to a few tickets scattered around the amphitheater. Moments later, there was nothing left.

However, at the same time, tickets began to appear on resale sites. On tickets.ca, for example, several dozen seats were available at prices ranging from $109 to $275. On StubHub, some were selling for almost $500 each. The Ticketmaster site, which the LPHF uses for its tickets, operates its own resale service. At the end of the day, Wednesday, there were around a hundred seats there at prices ranging from $115 to $330.

This while the team itself initially sold tickets for $32 to $125, before service fees: higher amounts than for other local matches played at the Verdun Auditorium and Place Bell in Laval, but very far from the prices demanded for a Montreal Canadiens match.

“The resale situation exists. […] It’s part of the sports industry, it seems,” noted the team’s general manager, Danièle Sauvageau, during a press scrum held Wednesday morning on the sidelines of club training.

“I would have preferred that the tickets remained where they should be to tell our supporters: we want you to be there and that you pay the prices that we consider to be good,” she added.

Unanswered questions

Marie-Christine Boucher, director of commercial operations for the team, claims to have asked “a lot of questions” to counter the resale of tickets, without ever obtaining a satisfactory answer.

This is all the more unfortunate as the organization has been striving, since the start of its inaugural season, to “make the experience accessible to everyone”, particularly families. “It’s so important to us,” continues the manager.

Without minimizing the frustration felt by certain supporters, Mr.^me Boucher argues that the number of tickets on resale is relatively limited compared to the total seats available: a few hundred, while the Bell Center has a capacity of more than 21,000 people. The full house on April 20 would also set a new attendance record for women’s hockey.

It was impossible for us to know how many individual tickets had been put on sale Wednesday morning, information that the LPHF refuses to reveal. The league did not respond to our requests for comment on the situation.

However, we can assume that several thousand tickets had already found buyers before Wednesday. Season ticket holders were given the first purchase option. After them, people who made group purchases earlier this season, and then everyone who has already purchased an individual ticket for another game. Knowing that the team has already attracted 10,000 people to Place Bell on two occasions, it is reasonable to believe that the remaining entries were no longer numerous on Wednesday at 10 a.m., at which point sales to the general public were opened.

Marie-Christine Boucher ensures that the process took place according to “the best practices in the industry. In his eyes, the speed of ticket sales demonstrates the “great success” that women’s hockey has experienced in Montreal since Marie-Philip Poulin and her teammates began their campaign last January.

“The enthusiasm is exceptional,” she insists.

Not new

That being said, the issue of high-priced resale tickets is anything but new. Regulars of sporting and cultural events are familiar with the phenomenon, although it is new for women’s hockey.

Yany Grégoire, full professor in the marketing department at HEC Montréal, even points out that “$450 is still reasonable compared to the price you can pay for Taylor Swift or for a Canadiens playoff match.”

The problem lies rather within the ticket sales platforms. Ticketmaster is in fact in a quasi-monopoly situation. The company is also the target of a series of legal actions denouncing its practices, particularly with regard to dynamic pricing – the fluctuation of prices based on demand.

The fact that it uses its own resale service is also controversial, especially given the mystery surrounding “professional buyers”. Those who “know the dynamic pricing criteria well and who will purchase tickets at the right price” using automated technological tools (bots), underlines Professor Grégoire.

“This means that these tickets are not accessible to normal people who do not have this expertise,” he continues. The platforms know this, and it’s troubling, because these people can resell their tickets using the same platform. The seller will therefore take his rating twice: a first time from the professional buyer and a second time at resale. »

To remedy the situation, “the government would have to get involved,” he believes, and impose a law on ticket prices. In fact, last December, the Quebec government announced that it wanted to regulate massive resale in the entertainment industry. The posting of high-priced tickets to attend the posthumous (and free) tribute to singer Karl Tremblay, at the Bell Center, motivated this initiative.

The LPHF match at the Bell Center is a victim of its success, believes Yany Grégoire. Like the opening match of another team, like the Canadian or CF Montreal, for example, “it’s an event to which people will attribute more value” than for a normal match.

He therefore doubts that a “fundamental movement” will take place and make tickets for women’s hockey inaccessible. At least for now.

The satisfied players

Without commenting on the resale of tickets, we are delighted, on the part of the Montreal LPHF team, to know that the Bell Center will be full on April 20. “We know that the fans in Montreal and throughout Quebec are exceptional,” said goalkeeper Ann-Renée Desbiens. I’m sure there will be people from elsewhere too. […] When we talked about the league, the institution, how it was going to work, we didn’t expect to fill the Bell Center the first year. This really demonstrates the work that has been done. » “It’s sick!” added defender Catherine Daoust. It’s a dream we have all the time. We go to see the Canadian, we hear the crowd and we hope that we are the ones who are going to be on the ice. I’m very, very excited. » “I still say we have the best fans in the world,” concluded head coach Kori Cheverie.

With Katherine Harvey-Pinard, The Press