Fenway suites to be more luxe, more costly

Fenway Park's luxury suites will be more luxurious in the 2007 season, and their owners will be paying a heftier tab to sit in them.

The Boston Red Sox are upgrading all 40 of the luxury boxes at Fenway this off-season with amenities to rival a luxury condo: flat-panel televisions, heated outdoor seats, surround sound, and granite countertops.

But the team also is jacking up the price: Starting with the 2007 season, suites will cost between $250,000 and $350,000 per year depending on where in Fenway Park they're located, compared with an average of $215,000 last season. The team also is requiring suite owners to commit to them for at least a decade , seven years longer than the current three-year minimum. The capacity in the renovated boxes will increase from 16 to 22.

The net effect is that the cost of owning a Fenway luxury box will jump to as much as $3.5 million over 10 years, compared with $645,000 for three years under the old rules. The team acknowledges the increase is steep, but says renovations to the nearly 25-year-old boxes and high demand for posh seats at sporting events justify the cost.

"It's a dramatic increase, but there's such a high demand from corporations for luxury seats, so our customers wanted the ability to own them for a longer term," said Sam Kennedy, the Sox senior vice president of sales and marketing.

Whether suite owners will readily swallow the increases is another matter.

Richard Krezwick , managing director of the nonprofit Massachusetts Sports & Entertainment Commission and former chief executive of TD Banknorth Garden, said the 10-year requirement is in line with what other Boston sports venues require and shouldn't bother many corporate owners .

"I am very sure that the Red Sox have done their homework and the price and the number of years make a lot of sense," he said. Requiring a long-term commitment to high-priced seats is generally a way for teams to finance projects like stadium improvements or other high-dollar items.

This week, the Red Sox said they had agreed to pay $51 million for the rights to negotiate with Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka , money that comes back to the team if it fails to land a deal.

"Premium seating and suites have become a terrific financing method for reconstruction, for development, for team operations, whatever it might be," Krezwick said.

The Sox notified suite owners of the change at the same time that the organization announced 2007 pricing for the rest of Fenway's seats last month, Kennedy said. Since then he's met with at least 20 suite owners and probably will meet with the rest by early December on the changes. "I'm not going to tell you that no one has pushed back on the 10 years, but no one has said you can take your suite and shove it," he said.

The aggressive suite pricing follows a Red Sox trend of getting more ticket revenue out of rich fans and corporations while holding down the cost of seats for regular fans.

The Sox, which have the highest ticket prices of any Major League Baseball team, said in October that 81.5 percent of Fenway's seats would cost the same as last season. Those seats cost between $12 and $130 each.

But premium tickets, including those behind the dugouts, in the field boxes, and seats in the new EMC and State Street Pavilion clubs, are going up by between 3 percent and 5 percent .

Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com.