Chicago Blackhawks will risk losing ‘millions’ with a new ticket strategy — ending relationships with most brokers — but it could pay off in the long run

The Chicago Blackhawks will roll out the red carpet Friday on Madison Street for various star players of the past — including Éric Dazé and Adam Burish — and also welcome back fans for the home opener at the United Center.

The crowd most certainly will inundate the Detroit Red Wings, their favorite villains, with chants of “Detroit sucks.”

In other words, business as usual.

But what figures to change this season is how many of those fans will have acquired their seats.

As recently as last season, it was common for fans to show up on game day and get bargain-basement admission — $6, for example — while season ticket holders grumbled that they paid high renewal fees but couldn’t give away some of their tickets to try to recoup costs.

The Hawks told the Tribune they have been ending relationships with brokers and reclaiming much of their ticket inventory this season, a move that could mean trading short-term pain for long-term profitability.

“Our season ticket base is actually not changing dramatically, but we removed a ton of brokers,” Jaime Faulkner, Hawks president of business operations, told the Tribune on Wednesday. “So we had a huge chunk of seats that weren’t considered season tickets that were going to consolidators and brokers that then were putting (the tickets) on the secondary market for next to nothing, which was screwing over every season ticket holder.”

That’s what was going on behind the scenes while many season ticket holders publicly complained that their tickets didn’t hold face value.

“One of the reasons they could not maintain their value on the secondary market is because we uncovered that we were selling a large, large number of tickets to consolidators and brokers who are flipping them onto the secondary market for very low prices,” Faulkner said. “And we decided that we wanted to help control and hold the value for the season ticket holder, so we eliminated those relationships, brought that inventory back in-house to allow for things like game swaps for season ticket members, allow them to immediately purchase smaller and different packages to give them more flexibility because we have more inventory available for them.

“I think in turn it will reward us both. We can now be really thoughtful about how we price tickets on the secondary market and hold value for season ticket members as well.”

In addition to the brokers, many individual ticket holders were selling some of their stock into the secondary market.

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Faulkner didn’t want to quantify how many tickets that adds up to, but anyone could do the math: Even before the Hawks announced a rebuild that already was the worst-kept secret, their declining play and dwindling demand gave brokers every incentive to dump tickets for whatever they could get.

“It was so bad last year, you couldn’t get anything for the tickets,” said Max Waisvisz, a partner with Chicago-based Gold Coast Tickets. “So why would we invest into an organization that basically tells you straight out, ‘We don’t want to win a game’? … So we’re hardly carrying any of the seats this year.”

Waisvisz said local brokers he knows aren’t clamoring to get Hawks tickets because it’s a hard sell and the risk is high.

Asked for a response Thursday, Faulkner said: “We haven’t gone out and said that we’re losing, so I’m not sure why he thinks that. But look, local brokers made a lot of money off our fans for a lot of years. … And it’s our job now to take care of our fans that have been loyal.

“When you have so much inventory in the brokers’ hands, it becomes a race to the bottom. And that is not how we want to treat our customers.”

One head of a national broker, who spoke with the Tribune on the condition of anonymity because he doesn’t want to damage future relationships, said the Hawks are a victim of their success.

Demand skyrocketed during the Stanley Cup years and raised the price to season ticket holders along with it. Many of those fans sold a lot of their tickets to keep up with the annual costs of keeping their seats.

“So you had hundreds of fans kind of willy-nilly pricing (their tickets), and then you had hundreds of brokers kind of willy-nilly pricing, and the market got driven down (by losing seasons) and that’s where they lost value,” the national broker said.

“The Blackhawks are really sort of late to this party. NHL teams were doing this as long as eight years ago.”

So the shift in strategy doesn’t come as a surprise to him.

“This was kind of a long time coming, and quite frankly, they could have fixed this six years ago, but they chose not to, for various reasons,” he said.

“But they’ve got a new president on board who’s really smart and sophisticated,” he said, referring to Faulkner, who was hired in December 2020 to run business operations. “And, quite frankly, (the policy change is) probably one of the first real big things she’s done that’s publicly facing.”

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The broker estimated the Hawks will lose between $1 million and $2 million “that they won’t be able to recover.”

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The Hawks declined to comment on that estimate.

In April, the Hawks restructured their season ticket program. Fans can still buy the full schedule, but the “pick-your-seat” plan lets people buy half, one-quarter or a smaller portion of the season for a discount.

The “pick-your-game” program lets fans buy five-, 10- and 20-game packages for a discount, but seat location isn’t guaranteed.

But that flexibility could matter, not just to fans but to the Hawks.

“I think it’s very smart to be taking some of this inventory and trying to sell it in five- to 10-game plans, because then all of a sudden, you’ve got a lot more customers in your database,” the national broker said. “So when the team does turn around, you either have one of two things: Those people either want more games or (the Hawks will) have pricing power, then you can increase price.

“The long-term benefit outweighs the short-term hit, but they (likely) are losing millions of dollars this year doing this.”

Faulkner said in response Thursday, “This is an investment in our season ticket members — they’re that important to us in the long term, and we’re playing the long game — that we’re willing to take short-term losses to show our loyalty to our fans that have shown a lot of loyalty to us.”