... and the way it plays out is they lose sales. Sure, there is more nuance, but the irony of the customer complaining about the product and keeps on buying that product never gets old.
Why is it an irony? If Apple rolls out an update that people don’t like, do people all throw away their phones and buy Androids? Obviously if people spend a LOT of money on something they’re going to make a calculated decision about when the company crosses a line, and it’s probably not going to be about something trivial and temporary.
That said, a building up a bunch of needless animosity with your core customers is not smart business. The sports industry is really a brand industry, so eroding your brand satisfaction among core customers is just foolish and not worth selling one more ticket a year and then deliberately making it valueless. Even if all it costs you is season ticket holders giving their reps a hard time during renewal, that’s eating into business efficiency in a way that doesn’t justify holding some hard line against your own customers.
Oh, and by the way, that nugget where you say it's a "multi-decade investment", that's the stuff the business people absolutely love to hear. This is how they know they got you firmly by the balls and can get even more money out of you.
Well yes, of course. That’s how season tickets work. If you want to spend a small amount of money and get a limited product, then get cranky and walk away tomorrow, this is not the product for you. It’s more like being a low-level stakeholder in the organization, in the sense that you’re buying the rights to future purchase of a commodity. It’s a multi-year, often multi-generational commitment and a different mentality toward the organization than your fan on the street.
It also means the company can’t afford to openly behave like they’ve got you “by the balls”, because the value of their commodity is strictly tied to their ability to maintain a list of buyers at the current
and future price point. They might have a waiting list out the door, but they don’t want to cut into that list — they are relying on the current group of investors to stay put, which keeps the waiting list long, which keeps the prices high and allows them to keep raising prices year-over-year. If their base withers away, the whole scheme starts to weaken as tickets become more readily available. Their best interests are in having a permanent line of interested buyers who can’t get their hands on a ticket.
Note - in that Leafs anecdote the reason home team iced non-NHL team is because it was a hockey decision, not a business decision.
Right, and that was the point of the anecdote. Mike Babcock is just the sort of guy to be ignorant about the business implications of his behavior. Not just that he was careless with the customer base, but that when asked about it on camera he gave a dumb answer confirming that it hadn’t even crossed his mind. That’s where management has to step in and do cleanup.
