Sports

NHL SHOULD FREEZE PRICE ALONG WITH THE ICE

“It’s like being on the Titanic and looking at the radar screen and seeing the iceberg a year out there, so do something about it.”

– Patrick LaForge, Oilers president, following a sobering presentation by two economists at this past week’s Board of Governors meeting.

AND WHAT Gary Bettman and the NHL should do is announce an immediate, across-the-board, 30-team price freeze on tickets for this year’s playoffs and for 2009-10 season-subscription packages and single-game purchases.

By doing so, the NHL not only would reap incalculable positive publicity as the first pro sports league to ever initiate such a program, it would create enormous and real good will among its consumers who are the lifeblood of the sport.

Beyond that, announcing a price freeze will be good for a business that relies disproportionately on ticket revenue. A price freeze will stimulate ticket sales. Ticket sales stimulate additional ancillary game-day revenue. It always is better to maximize actual attendance than average ticket price.

The salary cap was supposed to make the game more affordable for NHL fans. It hasn’t. Prices have increased. Playoff prices have escalated with one team after another gouging customers because, well, that’s what teams do when they make the postseason.

That has to stop. Price gouging is a thing of the past. People won’t stand for it. People can’t afford it. Teams that attempt to dramatically increase their prices for this year’s tournament – and round by round, no less – will be viewed as pigs at the trough.

And teams that increase ticket prices next season will be worthy of equal derision. What’s more, they will be greeted by deserved, crippling, broad-based season-subscription cancellations.

We all are worried to one degree or another. One of those worries is not whether there will be a prime-location seat available for, say, that November game between the Rangers and Flames . . . or between the Rangers (or Devils or Islanders or Bruins or Predators) and any opponent, for that matter.

A freeze on playoff-ticket prices likely will have an adverse impact on revenue and bottom lines, with clubs traditionally budgeting and projecting round-by-round mark-ups. Thus it will have an impact on revenue sharing and rate of escrow return (if any) to the players. And that means an adverse impact on next year’s salary cap.

But it’s better for the league and for its percentage-of-the-gross partners to accept a slight decrease next year in order to avert a calamitous decline for 2010-11 that would be created by massive season ticket cancellations and scads of unsold game-day tickets. Better to take a baby-sized stride back next year and maybe the following year than two giant-sized strides back for 2010-11.

A price freeze wouldn’t be a gimmick. Discounting tickets to an extreme, as already is taking place in many cites, is a gimmick, and one that often backfires. Discounts not only anger ticket-buyers that have previously paid full price, they devalue the product. Five bucks for a ducat? Well, then that’s what it’s worth.

Once season subscriptions decline, an inevitable and insidious cycle follows. When there are more empty seats in a building, there is less urgency to purchase tickets in advance. When buying a ticket becomes an impulse, game-day decision, there’s always the next game or the game after that, when the weather is nicer, when the kids don’t have conflicting plans, when the team is playing better hockey.

Freezing prices across the board for next season – with, of course, the option to cut prices – should create a better market for season subscription renewals. That should be the primary objective of both the NHL and NHLPA.

Bettman has an opportunity here. The commissioner has seen the radar that was not available to captain Edward John Smith on April 14, 1912. He has the chance to do something. He has the chance to set the NHL apart as progressive, creative and consumer friendly by establishing an immediate league-wide ticket price freeze.

Far better that than going down with the ship.

larry.brooks@nypost.com