Prices triple for some prime seats in SunTrust Park

Chairman seats (behind SunTrust Club): $215 per game ($17,845 per season), with commitments of five, seven or 11 years required.

Executive seats (behind chairman seats): $160 per game ($13,280 per season), with commitments of four, six or nine years required.

Terrace Club seats (in middle bowl): $85 per game ($7,055 per season), with commitments of three, five or seven years required.

Notes: Season prices are based on 83 games, including two exhibitions planned each season at SunTrust Park. Seats are being sold only as full season tickets. Terms vary regarding price increases beyond 2017, depending on contract length. Largest increase is three percent per year. Some longer contracts call for prices to remain flat for a number of years.

AMENITIES PACKAGES

Among the amenities included in ticket prices of premium seats at SunTrust Park:

SunTrust Club seats: Access to SunTrust Club lounge, with food, spirits, beer and wine included; in-seat food and beverage service; valet parking; table on one side of each seat; access to Delta Sky360 Club lounge.

Chairman seats: Access to Delta Sky360 Club lounge with food, beer and wine included; in-seat food and beverage service; valet parking.

Executive seats: Access to Delta Sky360 Club with food, beer and wine included; in-seat food and beverage service; parking in "premium" lot.

Terrace Club seats: Access to Terrace Club lounge; $15 per game food and beverage credit per ticket.

Many Braves season-ticket holders with lower-level seats between the dugouts at Turner Field will have to pay three times as much to sit in the same location in the team’s new stadium.

While the Braves haven’t publicly released ticket prices for specific seating sections in SunTrust Park, the sharp increases for the premium seats have become known to season-ticket holders who have visited the stadium preview center since it opened two months ago.

Some shared the prices and other terms of SunTrust Park ticket sales in interviews with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The biggest price increases are in the approximately 1,800 lower-level seats branded in the new ballpark as “Chairman” and “Executive” seats, which come with amenities not attached to comparable locations in Turner Field.

Chairman seats, located between the dugouts directly behind the field-hugging SunTrust Club section, are $215 per game ($17,845 per season), while executive seats, which are behind the chairman seats, are $160 per game ($13,280 per season).

Multiple season-ticket holders said those prices are at least triple what they currently pay for comparable locations in Turner Field, minus the amenities.

Chairman and executive seats will carry the most amenities and highest prices in the Cobb County stadium except for the 160 seats in the exclusive SunTrust Club section, where prices top $300 at Turner Field and will be $475 in the new ballpark.

While the Braves are not requiring personal seat licenses — one-time fees for the right to buy season tickets — they are requiring long-term commitments for premium seats, with minimum contract lengths ranging from three to seven years. The Falcons require PSLs for their new stadium.

The Braves, like the Falcons, have followed a recent trend by attaching premium amenities, which traditionally have been found in the middle bowl of stadiums, to prime lower-bowl locations. At SunTrust Park, slated to open in 2017, ticket prices for lower-bowl seats between the dugouts include access to posh club lounges, food, beverage and parking. By including such items, teams have found they can charge sharply higher prices for the seats closest to the action.

In the process, however, teams price some long-time customers out of seats they’ve held for years or even decades. That leaves those fans with a choice between moving to lesser locations than they’re accustomed to or walking away from their season tickets altogether.

Gwinnett County businessman Joe Burns is in a group that this year paid $19,562 (including parking) for four season tickets at Turner Field in a low row near the Braves’ on-deck circle. Four season tickets in a comparable location in SunTrust Park would put the group in the chairman section at a cost of $71,380 in 2017, with a minimum commitment of five years required.

A five-year contract for the four seats would add up to $378,966 after factoring in an annual three-percent price increase, according to an email from a SunTrust Park sales rep to another member of Burns’ group.

“That was a little steep, you know,” Burns said. “We all were a little surprised.”

He decided against buying season tickets in the new ballpark.

“Too rich for my blood,” he said.

But Burns said he also can see the situation from the Braves’ perspective.

“As a fan and as a long-time season-ticket holder, it’s disappointing. As a businessman, I can see what their plan is,” he said. “That doesn’t make it any less disappointing.”

Derek Schiller, the Braves’ executive vice president of sales and marketing, said differences in the designs of Turner Field and SunTrust Park, as well as the differences in premium amenities, skew comparisons of seats on the basis of location.

“We are going from a stadium that has about 400 premium seats out of 50,000 seats to a stadium that will have 4,000 premium seats out of 41,000,” Schiller said. “That is responding to a demand of the marketplace and to the amount of amenities that people are wanting to have in sports-entertainment experiences.”

For fans who reject the pricey premium seats, other good seating options are available, Schiller said.

“Because people don’t select a premium seat doesn’t mean that they are priced out,” he said. “There are non-premium seats that we are selling currently and a number of people are opting into that don’t include club access, don’t include food, beverage and parking, and are very similarly priced to Turner Field and are located just to the left or to the right of the premium club.”

The Braves have said non-premium seats will range from $6 to $90 per game in season-ticket packages and that 19,000 seats will be priced below $20, but haven’t provided a breakdown by specific location.

Some season-ticket holders who have low-row seats behind the plate at Turner Field said they are considering moving to low-row seats behind the dugouts at SunTrust Park. They said those seats are priced at $90 per game in 2017 without multi-year commitments required, but said even that is about $20 more per game than they currently pay for a better location.

Ron Currens said he and the other members of his season-ticket group couldn’t retain their current seat location because the price would triple. They plan to buy season tickets in another location, but Currens isn’t happy about the process.

“I would have thought that 34 consecutive years of buying Braves season tickets would give me some kind of consideration,” he said. “A season-ticket holder for only a single year … had the same opportunity as I.”

Currrens expressed displeasure that prices of all seating sections haven’t been made public. He and other season-ticket holders said they haven’t been able to obtain a seating chart with specific prices by section throughout the ballpark.

“The whole thing is very un-transparent,” Currens said.

Schiller said that although a full price list isn’t being provided, season-ticket holders who visit the preview center by appointment can get a price from sales representatives for any seat they are interested in purchasing.

John Shafer, who long has had multiple season tickets in prime seats at Turner Field, said he has signed on for comparable locations at SunTrust Park.

“In analyzing what you’re getting, I think the prices for the premium seats are very fair,” Shafer said. “But the sad part is so many people have been displaced because they’re not able to step up financially to these premium locations.”