Maple Leafs season-ticket renewals start Monday, and they’ll cost more than they did last season.

But Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment insists it’s raising prices to protect consumers and make more tickets available.

When the company’s analytics team tackled the secondary ticket market, it found that many single-game Leafs tickets sold via brokers and scalpers for nearly twice their face value. The markup represents a fat profit for resellers, and a hefty incentive to stay in business.

Next season, season-ticket prices will rise by between $7 and $16 per ticket per game, but MLSE chief commercial officer David Hopkinson says the increase won’t affect the final price on the secondary market, where brokers resell the season seats they purchase.

Instead, he says, raising the retail price with shrink resellers’ profit margins. Hopkinson says fewer brokers in business means more tickets for fans.

“If we don’t price the tickets appropriately versus what the market is going to pay for them, guess what happens,” Hopkinson says. “The tickets don’t get cheaper. Just other guys make the money . . . and that doesn’t help your hockey team. That doesn’t help us get better.”

The new prices are among several changes to the Leafs’ season-ticket routine.

Hopkinson says the club is also transitioning from simply selling season tickets to making those seats part of a membership package for big-spending, diehard fans. The Ultimate Fighting Championship uses a similar model, enrolling fans in its Fight Club program, then allowing them to buy pre-sale tickets to its live events.

Hopkinson adds that membership programs are gaining popularity in team sports, and that the Leafs plan to use theirs to offer full-season tickets and multi-game packages, as well as membership rewards.

The team also says season-ticket memberships will function the way gym memberships do, with a 12-month billing cycle and automatic renewals. Previously, season-ticket purchases were billed over eight months. Hopkinson says the membership model also helps discourage scalpers, who are interested only in tickets.

While the Leafs acknowledge that most single-game seats are bought and sold on the secondary market, they note that the biggest markups occur on the least expensive seats. Where upper-bowl seats average $80 per game as part of season packages, they average $108 as single-game seats and $141 on the secondary market. Lower-bowl seats, meanwhile, average $195 under a season-ticket package, $234 at the box office and $250 resale.

“There is a significant arbitrage here that we’ve got to try and close,” Hopkinson said. “Someone’s going to end up with the money, and we’d rather it’s not a guy in a parka.”

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The team doesn’t expect the price increases to dampen renewal rates, and projects that 99.6 per cent of season-ticket subscribers will re-up.

Hopkinson says most of the people terminating their subscriptions are brokers who find flipping tickets isn’t as profitable as it once was.