Jeff Paxton thought the email was a mistake.

When the longtime Detroit Lions season ticket holder got his renewal invoice for the 2024 season on Monday, Paxton was paralyzed by sticker shock.

Paxton has four seats in Section 103, the first row behind the Lions bench near the tunnel, that have been in his family since the 1950s. He, his wife, Vera, and their 15-year-old son, Joshua, go to a handful of the Lions home games every year. He sells the tickets to several games a season for a profit, and gives some to family or friends at face value.

This season, he paid $5,536 for the seats. Next year, the same seats will cost $13,616, according to invoices Paxton shared with the Free Press — a 146% increase in price.

Paxton checked his invoice over and over to make sure he was reading it right. Then he hopped online and saw other Lions fans complaining about the invoices they received.

He reached out to his season ticket rep, and 24 hours later still hadn't heard back.

"I got a feeling his battery’s burned up on his phone," Paxton said.

The Lions hiked ticket prices this week, the team said an average of 30%, in what was their most substantial increase in years.

The Lions rank 31st in average ticket price this season ($95.87), about half of the league average ($186) and substantially below their NFC North counterparts.

Since 2018, they have maintained relatively flat ticket pricing. In 2019, the team said 92% of all ticket prices stayed the same or saw a slight decrease. There was no public sale of tickets during the pandemic in 2020, and in 2021-22, during a stretch of six straight years without a playoff appearance, the Lions again maintained mostly flat ticket pricing.

This season, coming off a 9-8 record, the Lions increased ticket prices an average of 4% during their early renewal period, but demand has soared for tickets in recent months with the team closing in on its first division title in 30 years, and the franchise is ready to capitalize financially.

Asked about the price hikes, which many fans have pegged between 30%-85%, the Lions said 20% of their season tickets remain under $90. In 2024, they project to rank 18th in average ticket price across the league.

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"We’ve seen a steep rise in the market value of the tickets which helped inform all of our pricing increases," a Lions spokesperson told the Free Press. "The tickets in question, front row seats, were significantly under market value in the past, which is why they’re seeing the higher increase."

Paxton and others say they understand the business side of the price hike, but still feel disrespected by an organization they've long supported through mostly bad times.

The Lions need one win in their final three games to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2016. They have one postseason victory since they won their last championship in 1957.

"It’s like, they’re literally not only trying to weed out the longtime people who have supported them through everything, but it’s like they’re weeding out the middle class, too," said Vania Hall, who has had season tickets in her family since the late 1970s and is experiencing a price increase similar to Paxton's. "Because people aren’t going to be able to afford this, so all of a sudden only celebrities are going to be able to afford tickets. Is that what they really want?"

Hall said she has attended all but five or so Lions home games since the Pontiac Silverdome opened in 1975, with the exception of one season when her husband was dealing with a serious illness and the family leased its seats to friends for the year.

She travels from Lansing to Ford Field for games, and has two pairs of season tickets, one in the front row, Section 138, behind the goal post, and the other a few rows back in Row 3 of Section 137.

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Last year, the four seats cost $4,056, and she paid another $450 for parking, according to invoices she shared with the Free Press. This year, her invoice was for $8,476 (plus $500 for parking and a $20 membership processing fee), a 109% increase for both pairs of seats. Hall said the cost of her front-row seats increased more than 150%.

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"It’s been a family thing," Hall said of going to Lions games. "Like for us, there is no Thanksgiving dinner. We go to the game. I used to come back, when my mother-in-law was still well enough to cook, we would just swing by her house on the way back. Now she doesn’t cook as often, so we’re fine with that. This year, I came back and made roast beef and turkey sliders and fries and we sat downstairs and watched the last football game. I mean, that’s just what we do. And we wouldn’t have it any other way except for now this has happened and ... I literally feel like a cast-off. It’s almost like finding out your spouse cheated on you because you’ve supported this person all these years but now they have no use for you. That’s really what it feels like."

Hall said she started attending games with her mother and father in the mid-1970s, and the family was gifted a set of three season tickets a few years later, when her father, a contractor, handled a side job for a friend and wouldn't take payment for the work. The friend gave the family season ticket vouchers as a Christmas present, and they've had seats ever since.

Hall was working her job an assistant custodial director for Lansing Community College on Monday when she received her season ticket invoice for 2024.

She did not immediately open the email, and was Christmas shopping with her husband later that evening when he mentioned how irate some Lions fans were about the price hike on Facebook.

"He said, 'Well, did our invoice come?'" Hall said. "I said, 'Yeah, but I didn’t open it.' So I paused in one of the aisles and opened my email and I just stopped walking. He said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I said, 'This is crazy.' He said, ’What is wrong?’ And I just showed it to him. Like, I couldn’t even talk. I said, 'I don’t see how we can do this.'"

Hall, 58, said she has not yet decided whether to keep her tickets, and if she does likely will have to give up one pair of seats because of the cost. One of her friends, another season ticket holder with seats down the aisle in Row 1, already messaged her on Facebook and said he's so angry he's not renewing his seats and is done supporting the team.

Hall is trying to be less emotional about her decision, but said "to have them go up that much is just really, really a slap to all the people that have supported them for all these years."

"There wasn’t even a letter (explaining the price increase) this year, there was just, here’s your renewal form kind of email," she said. "In the past there’s always been a letter signed by (team owner) Sheila (Hamp) or (team president) Rod Wood … and it bragged about how we had some of the lowest prices in the league. This isn’t how you treat family. This is not how you would."

Paxton, 60, inherited his tickets from his uncle and has been a regular at games since the early 1970s, when the Lions played at Tiger Stadium and he recalls wrapping newspapers and plastic bags around his feet to keep warm.

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When the Lions moved into Ford Field in 2002, they invited some of their longest-tenured season ticket holders to view a rendition of the stadium and pick their seats. Paxton, a director of engineering at Grede who said he makes "a decent living, but I’m not rich by any means," was there along with representatives from local car dealerships and large legal firms.

While the steep increase in ticket prices will be a write off for some, Paxton said his increase of more than $8,000 is a big dent in his pocketbook.

"At that price, you look at a game and if I go and take my son and my wife and so forth, with getting just a hot dog and snacks and parking, you’re talking almost $2,000 for a day," he said. "You start looking at that and you starting saying, 'Geez.' I’m going to look at that and say if I go to two games I could go on vacation. If I go to three games, I can go to Hawaii on vacation."

The Lions are working with season ticket holders to accommodate seat change requests to ensure fans can retain tickets by relocating their seats to a cheaper price tier.

They hope to crack down on bulk resellers by increasing ticket prices - on ticket reseller Stubhub, the asking price for two front row seats in Section 102 (one section over from Paxton's) for the Lions' Week 18 game against the Minnesota Vikings is currently $1,318 apiece - and they have a waitlist of more than 9,000 seat requests for those who decide against renewing.

Paxton said the price increase has been "tough to swallow."

"On the monthly payment plan, it’s $1,300 a month," he said. "That’s a house payment for some people."

And he's torn on what to do. He'd like to keep his tickets, but may have to move elsewhere in the stadium, and he has only a few weeks to decide.

The Lions have given season ticket holders until Jan. 16 to opt in for 2024, and Paxton said the next payment is set to hit his credit card on Jan. 1.

"I understand the business side of it, but I look at it and the hardship for me is looking at it and say, 'Well, they finally had a good year and you’re going to try and capitalize,'" he said. "We didn’t give up on you when you had an 0-16 year. I still had my tickets. We went through COVID. I still had my tickets. Now, they gave us — they did something for us. That’s great. But again, we were loyal. We were there with you. We understand the economics, but to me it’s gouging."

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions season ticket holders irate over price hike