Winning doesn't always bring more fans to the game when you squeeze the fans out of the arena with inflated prices on everything.
I am legitimately worried that Dundon has the Canes heading in this direction with their ever inflating prices. I know so many people in the area right now who are themselves very well off financially who love the team but just stopped going because it's getting too expensive. And prices keep going up
Your point is valid although this is a market that has affluence.
Putting myself in Dunedin’s shoes:
I haven’t seen financials published re: the team in a while but reports indicate that the Canes are near the NHL bottom in average ticket prices. Thus, similar to Karmanos’ tenure, even though ticket prices and parking have gone up, the team needs a long playoff run to break even.
Add to it, the shaky Regional network (Canes probably make a lot less than most NHl teams) and it’s a pickle for him if he wants to keep debt in check. FWIW: I also think that boxes are priced much lower than other nhl arenas too.
Of course, a positive is the introduction of gambling revenues but I haven’t seen any hard figures on what that will yield per team since 2018 SWAGs.
With the cap projected to go up significantly next year and beyond, if we want Duncan to spend to the cap, ticket prices probably need to go up and/or new ancillary revenues need to kick in strongly.
Edit: based on htdoc post: it s a lot easier for teams to run pricing models these days with Ticketmaster resales a good indicator of what the market will bear (ie 3x face for good games). As a highly analytical team, I’m sure they are running those models quite frequently with new data coming in as the season unwinds.