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27 March 2009

MLB projects 5-10% attendance drop in '09

A Reuters piece projects that this season, MLB attendance will drop 5-10% from 2008. In the article is some information from Lew Wolff, which indicates how well/poorly the A's may do at the gate:

The A's, who cut ticket prices by an average of 5 percent, are at 87 percent of their targeted budget for season-ticket revenue, where normally they would have finished by now, Wolf (sic) said. The club budgeted for a 9 percent decline in attendance.

Of the paid attendance, there will be additionally high numbers of no-shows due to already prevailing factors or the economy. If the A's are way out of contention at the ASB, the expected fire sale, Holliday and all, will drive attendance down even further.

20 comments:

Jonclaude4baseball said...

Just for the heck of it, I multiplied the lowest daily attendance in your poll of 17,500 by 81 games and got about $1.4 million.

While it wasn't that long ago that attendance was that low (1999), when the poll was done I was thinking more like 20k per game. Between the economy and the press clips, lets hope our guys keep us in the race this year, otherwise we could be seeing closer to the 1M-1.2M that we drew '95-96 and late 70's.

GO A'S!

Anonymous said...

I don't know what the demographics are regarding most of the readers readers of sfgate.com, but it appears that looking at the comments regarding the article, "A's owner prefers to relocate team to San Jose," almost every single comment was AGAINST Lew Wolff. Even though there's only 36 comments, if you look at the thumbs up thumbs down numbers LW is clearly disliked.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/comments/view?f=/c/a/2009/03/26/BA6N16NJ1S.DTL&o=1

Marine Layer said...

Thankfully, the world isn't run by comments sections.

Anonymous said...

I really do enjoy reading your blog ML, especially the comments left by the true A's fans in the community. So seriously no disrespect...but aren't the reader comments what keeps your blog going and interesting for so long?? I mean without readers commenting, how would you get a good feel if anyone even kept up with it??

Oakland Si said...

in previous years many of the thousands of A's fans who attended Fan Fest (which is usually held in late January or early February) would also buy tickets that day, as it would be the first day that single game tickets were available.

The decision to cancel Fan Fest this year can't have helped advance ticket sales.

Marine Layer said...

No disrepect taken, anon. If it seems like I have a jaundiced eye towards comments, then guilty as charged. Don't get me wrong, most of the comments here have great ideas and there are routinely good contributions. The blog would definitely be worse off without it. However, I look at it from the standpoint of the moderator who checks in on a regular basis to give my own thumbs up/down to each and every comment. Moderating is easily the least enjoyable part of running this blog, but it's a necessary part of the process. SFGate's comments sections are notoriously vitriolic, enough for columnist Mark Morford to write about how bad the phenomenon is. So you'll have to forgive me if, in a search for levity and sanity, I try not to take comments in general too seriously.

Jeffrey said...

I believe ML's point is that comment sections are rather useless in trying to gauge public opinion. They are not random samples. They are not scientific. It's not like a public poll of a presidential election.

There are comments sections a athleticsnation.com where most people are excited about San Jose... I don't think that proves anything either.

Has anyone seen that the giants season ticket numbers have dropped from near 30,000 to under 20,000 in the past 4 seasons? While cutting ticket prices? That kind of shocked me.

Dan said...

Jeffery, It shouldn't. New stadium or no their on field product has been abysmal. People are no longer interested as a result. Add in a declining economy and MLB's steroid scandal and it shouldn't shock anyone that fans are moving on to other things.

Anonymous said...

Point take ML. Keep up the good work!

FC said...

Giants had better hope Lincecum, Cain and Johnson perform as expected, otherwise actual attendance may drop below 20K.

Anonymous said...

I was shocked at the tickets I could find for the A's series at AT&T. Pretty much every price zone was available with seats right behind the plate in the 3rd deck that were never available before.

So I tried the first Dodger series and the selection wasn't quite as good, but was close enough. In past years all three games would have been sold out by now.

Brian said...

I wouldn't be so sure about the contention that there will be more no-shows. I'm sure corporate season tickets are down, and I'm guessing that those were responsible for a lot of the no-shows. While I can see the point that the economy will force people and/or companies to view season or advance tickets as a "sunk cost" and that they avoid going to keep from spending additional money on parking and concessions, I think it could make people appreciate entertainment that they can afford and go more with the tickets that they do have (you can always take BART or park in the BART lot and bring in your own food).

Finally, that tickets will be generally more available will lead more people to go the walk-up route rather than buying in advance, and walk-up sales result in close to 100% butts in seats.

Jeffrey said...

My question is threefold:

Does the dropping attendance for the Giants a) make their argument against territorial rights changes stronger b) make them more willing to playball with a change to gaurantee revenue in some way c) have no bearing whatsoever?

Tony D. said...

Yo Jeffrey,

I'm going to go with C), with a little of B) thrown in. There new deal with CSNBA guarantees a fresh stream of revenue for the long haul. But, with a deal for SCC providing possible compensation, they could be helped out through the lean years; and even through 2017.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see a MLB owner saying "NO!" to an extra $5-15 million per year through at least 2017 AND a guaranteed value of your franchise...just for allowing a fellow team to move 40 miles FURTHER away from you.

Jesse said...

If Wolff doesnt mind a vote in San Jose, he better hope it doesnt become a referendum on Lew Wolff because he might loose. He managed to piss off a large portion of fremont and he managed to talk his team into even worse attendance than a bad economy could cause. The A's will probably see a 15 percent drop in attendace. 10 for the economy and five for the negative vibe surrounding the franchise.

Marine Layer said...

I doubt there will be any residual effect. Any vote would be well over a year removed from the Fremont debacle. Besides, SJ residents in general aren't likely to care what happens in Fremont and vice-versa.

Anonymous said...

Memo to Wolff: Please take a hike

http://www.berryessasun.com/ci_12014728

I can't believe our stupid wanna be baseball owner couldn't even tell the difference between Rickey Henderson and Dave Henderson when they were both standing right next to him!!

Jesse said...

The point I was making is that he seems to be leaving a trail of burned flesh wherever he goes, he better start treading lightly or his name will be piss in San Jose too by the time a vote takes place. There are only 3 people that like him right now and thats Mark Purdy, Bud Selig and Chuck Reed, he might blow that too. Hey Lew, if you're reading, WORDS MATTER.

FC said...

I wonder whether Larry Baer is available?

Anonymous said...

Jesse--I like LW alot--he's the only one with balls to tell it like it is--which is finally moving the ball forward---after 15 years in playing in the worst ballpark in MLB---lets put it this way---the territorial rights issue will be resolved one way or the other---by the end of this season or hopefully before---the A's will either be in San Jose where they will be able to compete or be out of the Bay Area--for those looking for new ownership to come in and save it for Oakland---good luck---Clay Bennett types are all over waiting to move the A's in a heartbeat--without LW the A's would already be gone---show me who else would have spent $24M of their own money trying to make Fremont work---