Chicago Blackhawks Release Interesting New Season Ticket Plan

The first thing they did was reduce prices on 84 percent of seats and offer greater access for their customers.

Let's face it, the sellout streak has ended and with a rebuild coming, creative thinking had to kick in to keep those turnstiles moving.

On Wednesday, Hawks management released a new season-ticket membership program. It's designed to give fans much more than a simple ticket entry to every game.

"The fans have built this program," Hawks business president Jaime Faulkner said to the Sun-Times.

"They are not shy about telling us what they care about. We listened, and we've incorporated all of their feedback, or as much as we could, into this membership program. We hope they'll be happy. We hope that they see this program and say, "Yes, you heard what we said, and you've delivered on that."

In today's economy, what matters the most to fans in the new ticketing program is the price. Jamie Spencer, the Hawks' new vice president of of revenue said, "They've told us this, and we've heard them, and we;ve done the research, and we agree with them," he said. Our tickets are too expensive."

The plan also contains new uniformity by doubling the number of different "price zones" from 16 to 32. The newly formulated zones are more specific to each seat's true value.

The team has seen larger crowds since the All-Star break and the average attendance has been 19,351 in their last 12 home games.

Spencer sees no reason that attendance will drop off next season. Even with team's standing not expected to be all that good, he sees fans loving this new ticket plan enough to show up for games on a regular basis.