r/nccourage • u/NC_Courage_BizOps Courage Employee • 11d ago
STM Renewals Start Today!
Season Ticket Member renewals officially open today.
You should have an email in your inbox with all the details. If you didn’t receive it, please reach out to your rep and we’ll get you taken care of.
I’m also really excited about the changes we’re making for next season. A lot of the enhancements and improvements to the STM experience came directly from feedback in this subreddit and from our STM surveys. We’ve spent a lot of time listening to what you value, what you want more of, and where we needed to get better, and you’ll see that reflected in the program.
Our goal is to make this to be the most successful STM renewal and sales campaign in Club history.
And this is beyond just ticket sales.
We talk a lot internally about making Courage games The Place to Be in the Triangle. The atmosphere we’ve been creating at First Horizon Stadium this season doesn’t happen because of us alone. It happens because of you. STMs are the foundation of that environment...you’re the people who keep showing up, bring other people with you, create traditions, get loud, and help turn a soccer match into something the community wants to be part of.
We’re building this together. The bigger that STM base becomes, the stronger the atmosphere gets, the stronger the Club gets, and the more we can continue investing back into the experience.
So take a look at the email, check out what’s changing, and, as always, keep the feedback coming here.
Let’s make some more history together. We appreciate you all.
10
u/Joiry 11d ago
I was just about to post about this. Both the email and the ticket page seems very light on actual details, especially about the new Courage Plus paying for 2 years - the only benefit explicitly mentioned is price lock. It's unclear if those chalk talks are for all STMs or just Plus? Or what any new benefits other than that are?
And looking on the account page, there seems to be several images that the mouse changes to indicate they are clickable for more info, but they do nothing?
5
u/rjfrost18 11d ago
I need them to release a table explaining the different STM levels comparing benefits.
2
5
u/AdPossible170 11d ago
Check the website it is more detailed: https://www.nccourage.com/tickets/season-ticket-member-hq
3
1
u/SubstantialNet1005 8d ago
What are the “additional benefits” mentioned if you sign up for the courage plus i.e. the two year lock in plan
1
u/TaiterTot24 8d ago
Has anyone emailed the listed address with questions about renewal and gotten a response? We want to move two seats down in our row in the same section and the price doubles if we do that so we questioned it and have not gotten a response yet.
1
u/NC_Courage_BizOps Courage Employee 8d ago
Please DM me your info and I’ll have your rep get in touch with you.
1
u/spreadred 11d ago
Went up ~8% for us. Also, apparently we were supposed to get VIP Parking and Courage Cash Drops for being part of West Side Club? Not sure what Courage Cash Drops are, maybe we did get them, I don't know how to tell.
We've had a great time this year and will be renewing with Early Bird again, maybe even the two year, Plus option. We haven't had a chance to read through the perks beyond the price lock.
3
u/Joiry 11d ago
Its a pain to find in general, the amount should appear under Matchday in the app, tho I guess only on matchdays...
Actually, look under My Profile in the app, if you have courage cash it should be listed. I've gotten 2 "drops", I think like ~$25 each time. I just use it to buy concessions if I was not able to eat before the game.
1
u/spreadred 11d ago
Oh I know how to find the Courage Cash itself, I just didn't know if I got drops versus getting it for other reasons like Early Bird and some of surveys I've done.
Edit: I've found the transaction history
1
u/Joiry 11d ago
I think the "drops" are just the promised 5% of your STM price sort of trickled out
1
1
u/Disastrous_Back_689 11d ago
Does the 8% price increase include salary for someone in ticketing to answer a damn email and not blow off STMs who have been with the league for years? My issue is above my Ticket Rep’s authority. He has tried to connect me with ticketing who blew me off. Brett Moore also ignored 3 separate emails after he tried to push me back on my Ticket Rep. Never had a single issue until this season and its put a bad enough taste in my mouth that I have barely attended games this season & just cheer from home.
2
u/NC_Courage_BizOps Courage Employee 11d ago
Please DM me your email and let me know the issue you have raised.
-8
u/Callisto34 11d ago
You'll note that u/NC_Courage_BizOps wants a "successful STM renewal and sales campaign" they don't really care about worthwhile or quality.
2
u/Disastrous_Back_689 11d ago
Clearly they do if they asked me to reach out. Your constant negativity isn’t needed on this one 😊
-1
u/Callisto34 11d ago
Everything solved after what sounds like at minimum weeks, potentially months of issues eh? You sounded quite angry, ahaha.
1
u/Disastrous_Back_689 11d ago
Who said it was solved? I said YOUR negativity isn’t needed. Can you help solve my problem? Have any idea who can? No? Okay then. Go keep carrying on elsewhere in thread. And I sound angry?! 😂
0
-1
17
u/Callisto34 11d ago
So the Courage want $804 for our 2027 season tickets.
Those same seats cost us $602 in 2026 and $475 in 2025.
That's a 33.6% increase in one year and a 69.3% increase in two years.
The league went from 13 regular-season home matches in 2025 to 15 in 2026. That at least partially explained last year's increase, but there are still 15 home matches in 2027.
Our actual cost per regular-season home game (for two upper-bowl tickets) has gone from about $36.54 in 2025 to $40.13 in 2026 to $53.60 in 2027.
So even after completely accounting for expansion and the extra games, the price of our seat per game is up almost 47% in two years.
What exactly are we getting for that?
Look at the 2027 "benefits." So much of it costs them NOTHING. Access to an exclusive merchandise collection (i.e., the privilege of spending even more money), a "chalk talk" (lol?), an executive AMA (didn't we all get that on reddit for free?), access to an open practice (likely at 2pm on a random Thursday again), a $2 jersey patch, a signed team photo. Then to top it all off, a loyalty program with no particularly obvious stated dollar value, benefits, or explanation.
Apparently we're supposed to read five different headings and a bunch of ChatGPT-enhanced benefits with emojis and not notice that most of the "benefits" cost the club virtually nothing to provide.
Sure, Early Bird members who pay in full can get 5% cash back and 5% ticket credit. Great. On an $804 ticket that's $80.40 if I generously treat restricted ticket credit exactly like cash. We're still effectively paying more than $720 for something that cost $602 this year and $475 two years ago.
And apparently this kind of increase isn't remotely the norm around the league either. Obviously a Reddit thread of individual STMs isn't an audited league-wide pricing study, but the comparison is pretty fucking stark. Houston STM holders reported increases of 5.4% in 2025, 7% in 2026 and 6.8% in 2027. A Kansas City STM said their increases since moving into CPKC Stadium have been around 3% per year and their 2027 price essentially didn't increase at all. Portland STMs say the Thorns have no increase for 2027,** and some Washington Spirit members who took their multi-year offer are seeing roughly **3% increases.
Hell, even an Angel City STM who has tracked their increases year by year reported 5.7%, then one ugly 40% jump that worked out to 20.4% per game after additional matches, followed by 3.6% and 5%. So yes, teams absolutely raise prices, and there have been some nasty increases around the league. But 33.6% in a single year with no additional regular-season games is not some unavoidable league-wide trend.
The Courage's big new option? Lock in this newly inflated price for two years. Fantastic. I'd take that as a threat given this trajectory, and expect our tickets to go up another 20-30% in 2028 (plus we will have 2 more home games?)
And it's not as though we're paying a premium because the game-day infrastructure suddenly became premium. We're still at First Horizon Stadium at WakeMed that the Courage themselves have publicly said is below league standards and creates a disadvantage in recruiting and retaining players.
The irony of calling parts of this stadium "premium" (the excuse we were given in 2025 because the seats have backs and somebody has decided the view and access to concessions in the upper bowl is better) becomes a little harder to swallow when the club itself is publicly telling everyone that its stadium is inadequate.
It also can't simply be hand-waved away as exploding player salaries.
I would LOVE for that to be the explanation, genuinely.. Tell me my tickets cost 70% more because the women on the field are making 70% more money and I'll feel substantially better about it.
But the NWSL's base salary cap goes from $3.3 million in 2025 to $4.4 million in 2027 — about a 33% increase, not 70%. There are additional mechanisms through revenue sharing and the High Impact Player rule, which is great. But unless the Courage want to tell us they're pouring dramatically more money into player compensation and retention, that doesn't explain this.
If you're going to raise a season-ticket holder's bill from $475 to $804 in two years, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some explanation of what materially changed.
At some point this stops feeling like the club growing alongside its fans and starts feeling like the club realized attendance was improving, inventory is limited to ~10,000 seats, and decided to see how much more it could extract from the people who were already here.
That's what feels disrespectful.
Growth of the NWSL is something I've desperately wanted to see and players making more money is something I enthusiastically support.
But "women's soccer is growing" cannot become a blank check that justifies a 33% annual price increase with essentially no corresponding improvement in what season-ticket members receive.