Evaluating Inelastic Ticket Pricing Models

Stacey L. Brook

 Economists have been perplexed by the overwhelming evidence that sports teams set ticket prices in the inelastic range of spectator demand. In response, a number of profit-maximizing explanations have been proposed in the literature explaining why sports teams set ticket prices in the inelastic range of spectator demand, yet an evaluation of the proposed theories is missing. Therefore, using National Football League team data covering the 1995 through the 1999 seasons is employed to: a) determine if NFL teams do set ticket prices in the inelastic range of spectator demand, and b) evaluate various inelastic sports ticket pricing models.