License Calendar Year VS One Year Period

When Arizona went from a calendar license to a year period license one of the AzGFD guys complained about the lost revenue because people wouldn’t all be buying their license at the end/first of the year every year.  I figured more people would buy a license if they got the same amount of use out of it as anybody else.  On more than one occasion I had run across people who wouldn’t buy a license because it would only be good for a few months.  They just wouldn’t go fishing, and in January when it was cold they weren’t that interested in buying a license to go fishing.  I always figured it cost them a lot of license sales.

A few years ago (pre-covid) I asked if anybody had numbers on license sales revenue not counting youth licenses, and it turned out that revenues were up.

There are two benefits to a value based sale in my opinion.  More people bought licenses.  More people who have fished will fish again and buy another license.

The one argument is that they might get fewer sales over time to some individuals as they wouldn’t buy their next license until they needed it.  I decided to test that.  Now I fish a lot, but I have deliberately pushed it down to the night before or the day of my next outing every single year since the license change.  That was spring 2013.  I just past the halfway point after 12 years in 2025.  I renewed my license today.  July 2nd 2025.  At this rate it will be another 12 years before I will have purchased 1 less license over the number of years.  As I approach 70 I might miss a year for a variety of other reasons anyway.  So far they have sold me the same number of licenses, 12, as they would have sold me under the old scheme, and I am deliberately milking it to the last day until I need it ever single year.

Elongation has not gained me anything or cost them anything in my case, and I personally know people who have purchased licenses who wouldn’t have under the old scheme.

Giving people the value they are paying for always generates more sales and more revenue than trying to play games with them to get the same out of them for less.

Ask me again in another 12 years if elongation has gained me a year, and if it was truly from elongation or because as I get older I’ll have fewer good days that I’m not forced to do something else.