It's Personal: For the Sixers, marketing hits a three-pointer

It was a foray, you might say, into value investing, when my friend Matt Jordan and I decided to sample season tickets this year for the 76ers.

At $197 a person, we snagged an eight-game package starring a team so deep, so young, so fearless, we hoped there'd be enough on-court fireworks to make up for the fact that our almost-corner seats were at a despairingly high altitude.

"Hey," Matt preemptively consoled in pitching the far-from-center-court idea back in December, "at least we'll have something to do during the dark, cold weeknights of winter."

Matt hadn't owned season tickets since the Allen Iverson-Pat Croce sprint to the finals in 2001 and the next year. I had been an a la carte buyer in the Spectrum years. We had been crazy for hoops as kids and figured, for the right price, why not?

At just under $25 a ticket for a season shortened by a labor lockout, the Sixers and their new owners had found our sweet spot. It was part of a decision they made to structurally cut prices on thousands of historically unsold seats in October, after buying the team from Ed Snider.

Matt and I have been pleased with the return on our investment.

You can thank an NBA team that plays with NCAA heart, and owners who grasp this basic tenet of retailing: If the product is good and the price is right, people will buy.

Sure, it's been fun watching the sometimes-ugly, always-surprising unfurling of a 16-6 record from a team that roused us from our seats Wednesday with a 98-82 trampling of the mighty Chicago Bulls (18-6).

But more intriguing is how we also - and by we, I should say mostly I, a retail-industry reporter with an eye for these things - have witnessed a marketing marvel in action.

Starting with our first game on Monday, Jan. 9, in a nearly empty arena against the Indiana Pacers, Matt and I have watched the Sixers roll out promotions centering largely on affordability for an anemic fan base that had become a punchline for Eagles fans.

On Wednesday, 18,325 bought tickets, shy of a 20,318 sellout. There were people in the seats to my right for the first time. Last season's per-game average: 14,400.

"We're on trend to sell more than 24 percent more [tickets] than last year," new Sixers chief executive Adam Aron told me in an interview Thursday morning, his voice hoarse after a game that wowed with an Andre Iguodala windmill slam dunk over a Bulls team favored to go far.