The yet-to-be-named Elmira team has hit the ground running, with the ownership group yesterday announcing that season tickets were already on-sale, and our friend Andy Malnoske getting a hold of the sheet, which revealed the prices for early birds, regular season prices, and walk-up prices.

The @TheFHL deal at First Arena is reality. Get your tickets now for Elmira hockey 2018-19. Gonna be big time! pic.twitter.com/rKaBJ0Gz2U

— Andy Malnoske (@18SportsAndy) July 13, 2018

If you’re having trouble reading that, here’s how the prices stack up, price per game is at 30 games as their form indicates.

Early-Bird (By Sept. 1)

Restaurant: $510 ($17 per game at 30 games)
Center Ice: $390 ($13 per game)
Blue End Zone: $330 ($11 per game)
Red End Zone: $270 ($9 per game)

Regular Price

Restaurant: $540 ($18 per game)
Center Ice: $420 ($14 per game)
Blue End Zone: $360 ($12 per game)
Red End Zone: $300 ($10 per game)

Walk-Up Prices

Restaurant: $20
Center Ice: $16
Blue End Zone: $14
Red End Zone: $12

My first reaction upon seeing those, both season-ticket and walk-up prices, was that it was a little high for the FHL, but how does it stack up to some of the other teams in the league?

If you’ll remember, we ran a piece on which team had the best season-ticket package, which laid out all those prices. For simplicity’s sake, here’s just the nuts and bolts for each team:

Watertown: $350 and $300 season prices; $15 walk-up.

Carolina: $475, $325, $255, $210 season prices; $25, $14, $12, $10 walk-up (READER NOTE: the arena in Carolina tacks on $2 to each of those prices)

Danville: $240 season price; $11 walk-up

Port Huron: $280, $240 season prices; $12, $10 (plus arena fees) walk-up.

So right away, the team that jumps out at me for comparisons is Carolina. They both offer four price points, and a premium option (Glass in Carolina, Restaurant in Elmira) where Carolina’s is cheaper for season seats, but Elmira is much cheaper to walk-up.

The both have a center ice option where Elmira is a touch higher on both season, $65 higher, and walk-up, $2 higher before the fees. They also have a third price point, way cheaper for season in Carolina despite that being center ice and Elmira being the end they shoot at twice, walk-up is $2 higher in Elmira, but again, before fees. And a fourth price point which again, is about $60 cheaper in Carolina for the year, and $2 cheaper in Carolina for walk-up before fees.

So what this all means is that based on the seat locations and prices, Elmira has the highest season ticket prices in the league for season seats, and aside from the premium Restaurant seat, which is beat by Carolina’s glass seats, all of their other walk-up prices are tied for the highest in the league as well with Carolina (based on price by section, not price alone), but they’re not outrageous prices, and your get-in price if you’re walking up of $12 is not bad at all, lower than Watertown’s $15 get-in. And at $16 for center ice, you’re just $1 higher than Watertown, so again, they’re a touch higher but pretty much in line with the FHL.

And, they are cheaper than the ECHL prices, which ranged from $14 for Red End Zone to $24 for Restaurant in the Jackals’ final season.

But it’s also important to remember they’re playing in a nicer, newer arena than almost every other team in the league (Watertown re-did their in 2015), yes it needs repairs to certain things and that may have been a factor, but those higher prices were likely to come as a result of having to pay a slightly higher lease than the rest of the league.

So Elmira has season tickets on sale, and we know how much it’ll cost you if you want to walk-up to a couple of games. What do you think hockey fans? Are the prices fair, or too high for the FHL?