The slides of presentation can be accessed here
The report can be accessed here
This research was supported by Winston Lin, Director of Business Strategy & Analytics of the Houston Rockets.
There are a number of factors that the system takes into account, including seat location, opponent, match time (day vs night, holidays etc.), peer events and so on. Here, we focus on the time when people buy tickets, as the relation between time to event and price is unclear: it is not definitive whether prices will rise or drop when the event nears.
- With total supply relatively stable (a limited number of seats available depending on the capacity of the arena), the price will increase as time goes on if customers have a high demand for the tickets.
- On the contrary, if the event is not popular, teams might drop the price significantly before the event in order to sell more tickets.
Nevertheless, it is valuable to take a look at the general trend of the price change in correspondence to time to the event, as it reflects the change in supply and demand over time. In particular, this study focuses on the Houston Rockets, a team in the National Basketball Association (NBA), to evaluate the relationship between time to event and ticket price on both primary market (sold by the Rockets directly) and secondary market (where ticketholders sell tickets).