Boston Celtics tickets, now the price of your internet connection

One of the biggest complaints from sports fans in the past 5-10 years is that they’ve been priced out. The price tag on professional games has skyrocketed in the 90s and 00’s (still need a better nickname for that one…)

But, the Boston Celtics think they might have found the answer.

The defending NBA Champs have launched a massive effort to engage with fans online. You can catch locker room exclusives on the team’s youtube channel, and using Twitter to offer seat upgrades during games.

This is a huge shift in the last few months. As early as the start of college football season, the SEC was trying to ban tweeting from the stands during college football games. Now? Teams, leagues and sports that embrace social networking will be helping their popularity, those that don’t will be damaging it.

So what does a Twitter and Facebook presence do for the Celtics?

Well, when they’re winning, like they are right now, it’s not going to drive a ton of revenue. But, teams go through losing streaks. And imagine being able to reach 40,000 of your die-hard fans with an offer like: “5,000 tickets still available for tonight against the Cavs. See Lebron and the C’s for just $10. Call now.”

It’s instant billboarding, instant advertising, etc. It makes life easier for your ticket sales department, since they don’t need to have projected tickets sold out weeks in advance. Unsold tickets can be promoted much faster, as can team events, etc.

And the other department it helps out is the sponsorship department. If you’re using Twitter to drive people to your home-page for exclusive footage, your traffic’s going to rocket up. And that makes it much easier to sell sponsorships. So instead of your home page featuring banner ads for Bob’s windows or a local restaurant chain, you might get Vitamin Water or Geico to buy in.

I’m interested to know if there are other sports franchises out there doing the same thing. If your team is doing this, leave us the link in the comments…