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No, it is because of shopper behavior. Very Broad Example:
Scenario 1:
There is a game on July 16. The stadium seats 100,000. History suggests that 60,000 people will attend.
Before the season starts you are thinking about going to the game on July 16. You don't really care where you sit so long as you're at the game.
Do you buy the ticket now or wait and buy it at the gate? You probably wait.
Then on July 16th it is unusually cold or you have a sniffle or something else comes up and you decide not to go to the game. Team loses a sale.
Scenario 2:
There is a game on July 16. The stadium seats 65,000. History suggests that 60,000 people will attend.
Before the season starts you are thinking about going to the game on July 16. You don't really care where you sit so long as you're at the game.
Do you buy the ticket now or wait and buy it at the gate? Maybe you decide to gamble, but while there's a good chance of tickets being available you can easily imagine something making it a sellout (they announce that Bono will sing the national anthem at that game, the team is on a 19 game winning streak, absolutely perfect baseball weather). So you decide to buy the ticket before the season even starts.
Then on game day if you don't show up for whatever reason the team still has your money.
The Athletics actually did this and it impacted my behavior. They never sell out games and so long as I can sit in a certain range of seats I was happy. Since that range was, for almost any game guaranteed to be available on game day I never pre-purchased tickets.
Then a few years ago they completely closed the third level for all games. Reduced capacity by something like 15,000 seats (from average to the smallest in the majors). So now if I am interested in any specific game that I think will be at all popular I make sure I pre-purchase tickets since I don't want to risk getting there on game day and ending up out by the BBQ pit or behind the foul pole or something.
This is taken to extremes in the NFL where they can frequently say, "hey, you want guaranteed access to one game? Well you've got to buy all 8."
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