I think you should strive to make the promotions a bit more clear

From: Robin

Comments: Your run specials like get in for a dollar if we bring can food. In advertising you never state where the seats are. When we get to the game it is terrace only sitting. Is the same true for the game on the 16th for the Christian school to help support them? I feel this is unfair advertising. It leads us to believe we can sit any where if the seat is not sold. I think you should allow that for families who can not sit close to ice due to cost. Sell the tickets only on the day of the game after 6 to give your other fans a chance at a good seat. Also the can food drive day you advertised beer half price. Yes it was have priced however also half the amount you normally get. I love The Condors and come to almost every game, a season ticket holder myself, however I think you should strive to make the promotions a bit more clear.

Reply: Robin, these are very good questions. One thing to keep in mind is that on radio and TV advertising we are very limited by time constraints when discussing our promotions. So sometimes we over-simplify.

First, the 1/2 price beer night… The beer cups for that night are deceiving in that they are actually almost the same size as the regular cups. The ARAMARK staff at Rabobank Arena did an ounce-by-ounce comparison of those special Condors cups, and found they held 3 ounces less beer than a regular cup. Typically priced at $7.50, “Half-Price Beer Night” prices were actually $3.25 that night, not $3.75 – so they were actually LESS than half price, adjusted marginally because of the slightly smaller capacity of the cups. But rather than say “Tuesday night is Just-Less-Than-Half-Price-Because-The-Cups-Are-Slightly-Smaller Beer Night, we just called it “Half Price Beer Night”.

On the ticket deals it’s the same thing. Typically our $1 ticket promotions refer to terrace level seating. If it’s open to other seating levels we will specifically say it, like last night’s Student ID Night that refers to “lower level tickets” in the advertising.

However, to say the ads are unfair is a bit… well… unfair to us. The ads usually say you can get into the game for $1. And that’s the truth. You can also take that $1 terrace ticket and pay for the upgrade to any available seat in the house. But rather than spend our entire 15-seconds of TV voiceover ad time saying “donate two cans of food and get a terrace level seat for $1, a mezzanine seat for $4, an executive seat for $7…” and so on, we just say, you can get in for $1. An executive level seat costs $16 if you just walk up on a Wednesday night. Getting that seat for $7 plus two 50-cent cans of refried beans is a heck of a deal.

While we can sympathize with folks that can’t afford to come to games on a regular basis, it would be hard to argue that getting a family of four into a Condors game for just $4 isn’t a bargain, no matter where the seats are.