Respectfully, The Lions Raising Season Ticket Prices to Reflect NFL Standards Is

The Detroit Lions have sucked forever but this year they are legitimately good. They can win their first NFC North divisional crown in history by beating the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday and, barring something totally catastrophic, will host at least one playoff game. Which is truly incredible. Too many people are losing sight of that and losing perspective because Dan Campbell’s crew has proven itself to be more vincible than not with some regularity. All of us downtrodden bastards who have suffered under the weight of this franchise should be walking around with big, dopey smiles on our faces at all times. That is, if the Lions can resist the urge to do stuff that pisses people off — like raising the price of season tickets now that season tickets are way more attractive.

The Detroit Free Press has a report on the developing situation and how it’s impacting the community of supporters who have willfully spent up to nine Sundays a year watching their helpless team be a complete non-entity in professional football.

Since 2018, the Lions have maintained relatively flat ticket pricing. In 2019, the team said 92% of all ticket prices stayed the same or saw a slight decrease. There was no public sale of tickets during the pandemic in 2020, and in 2021-22, during a stretch of six straight years without a playoff appearance, the Lions again maintained mostly flat ticket pricing.

This season, coming off a 9-8 record, the Lions increased ticket prices an average of 4% during their early renewal period, but demand has soared for tickets in recent months with the team closing in on its first division title in 30 years, and the franchise is ready to capitalize financially.

Asked about the price hikes, which many fans have pegged between 30%-85%, the Lions said 20% of their season tickets remain under $90.

“We’ve seen a steep rise in the market value of the tickets which helped inform all of our pricing increases,” a Lions spokesperson told the Free Press. “The tickets in question, front row seats, were significantly under market value in the past, which is why they’re seeing the higher increase.”

Okay, so that context makes it seems like that this is just good, old-fashioned capitalism making things worse for everyone and not the bilking of a century. And to be clear, it’s terrible that blue-collar fans are going to eventually be priced out of their seats so the wine and cheese crew can come in and sit on their hands for three hours. I personally operate on a blogger’s salary so it’s all power to the people all the time and siding with a professional sports franchise feels objectively gross. Yet … it kinda seems like the Lions are simply beginning to operate like a real team now that they are a real team.

This is the price of success and fans have been getting tremendous deals for years. The topic of PSLs has also yet to be broached with any seriousness and for that all fans should be thankful. Because it could always — and probably will — get worse.

But good luck to anyone trying to sell this line of thinking to those impacted. Some of them are treating this as the ultimate betrayal.

“It’s been a family thing,” Hall said of going to Lions games. “Like for us, there is no Thanksgiving dinner. We go to the game. I used to come back, when my mother-in-law was still well enough to cook, we would just swing by her house on the way back. Now she doesn’t cook as often, so we’re fine with that. This year, I came back and made roast beef and turkey sliders and fries and we sat downstairs and watched the last football game. I mean, that’s just what we do. And we wouldn’t have it any other way except for now this has happened and … I literally feel like a cast-off. It’s almost like finding out your spouse cheated on you because you’ve supported this person all these years but now they have no use for you. That’s really what it feels like.”

I guess the counter-argument here would be a simple one. It’s not like that at all! Detroit raising prices is not like watching your partner and their paramore from the closet — wishing to be the friction in his or her jeans — at all. It’s just not. Because no matter how much a person loves the Lions, they are not married to the Lions.