Flames owners boost ticket fee to help make back extra costs to build arena

There will be an increasedfee on your concert ticketor other non-sporting eventonce the new arena is built.

After the City of Calgary and Flames ownership announcedeach will pay anadditional $12.5 million for thenew arena, the team ownersdecided to recovertheir portion by changing a higher ticket fee.

The arenais now pegged at $608 million an increase from the originally budgeted $550 million and the Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation (CSEC), which owns the Flames, will contribute $321 million of that.

And while CSECagreedto also cover cost overruns on the project, it will alsoboostthe facility fee on each ticket from 8.0 to 9.5 per cent.

The fee will be added only tonon-sporting events, such as concerts.

The city manager has already approvedthe increased feeand it doesn'trequire council's endorsement.

• City, Flames ownership each to pay millions more for new arena

Mayor NaheedNenshi says he's personally fine with the increaseand that he doesn't think it will change anybody's desire to go to an event.

"I've always been a proponent of user pay on this project," he told reporters on Tuesday."And to me, increasing the facility fee to cover some of these costs, it'll still be lower than the facility fee in Edmonton, for example, and in mostU.S. cities."

Moshe Lander, an economics professor at Concordia University in Montreal, said that the ticket surcharges are an appropriate step and one that should have been taken earlier, instead of the city putting more money into the project.

"The people who use it are the people who should pay for it, and so the easiest way to identify users are the ones who are buying tickets," he said.

With the new arena likely lasting for decades, millions of dollars can easily be recovered through higher ticket fees, Lander said.

However, Coun. Jeromy Farkasthinks if CSEC can increase the ticket price, then something should be done for the taxpayers.

"If taxpayers are being expected to put in more, I believe that the city should have some latitude to increase our [ticket] fee so that we have the opportunity to make back more of our money," said Farkas, who is running for mayor.

"This is a business deal that we're talking about. And I believe that, frankly, this council got out negotiated. It makes zero sense that we would allow the Flamesthe ability to make back their money faster, whereas city taxpayers would not have that same rate."

The new arena, to be built in Victoria Park, will replace the Saddledome, which is 38 years old.