Wrigley not Selling Out

[mjohnson71]

You flip aroound the channels and there seem to be a more empty seats at a lot of ballparks. IMHO I think baseball is pulling a fast one when they claim attendance is even or up and mpst places. Even with teams that are playing above .500 in good markets you're seeing fewer people attending. Even down in St. Louis with the Best Fans In Baseball you're seeing more ticket availability.

 

With Wrigley I honestly think the Cubs have priced ticket prices too high with a "meh" team and the continuing economic recession.

 

Plus some of this could be an effect of the Blackhawks being in the Stanley Cup and drawing sports entertainment dollar away.

[baseballfan50]

I think baseball stadiums tend to sell fewer tickets if the team is not doing as well. That, and schools are just now getting out.

 

As far as forums, it's been my experience that baseball forums tend to be less busy around April and May. As kids get out of school and spring semester ends, and the weather is warmer but not blistering hot, people like to take trips and be outside. If the team is in a slump, or if they are the Pirates or the Royals, people are less likely to be on the forums as well. That is just forums in general. If a forum does have tension between members (I'm not here enough to know), then the forum is generally not as busy, because people don't like to talk to people that they don't like.

[Fred Hornkohl]

Here's what I've got..........

 

CUBS home attendance

 

                  2010          2009          2008          2007          2006
# Dates             25            25            25            25            25
Attendance      954011        987663       1000892        974333        987643
Capacity         41210         41210         41210         41118         41118
% Capacity      0.9260        0.9587        0.9715        0.9478        0.9608
Average          38160         39507         40036         38973         39506
High             41336         41153         41597         41637         41698
Low              33868         37956         37812         32126         36608
Std Dev         1909.3         898.9         911.1        2545.1        1381.0
Sellouts             1             1             8             3             3

 

33001 - 34000        1
34001 - 35000        1
35001 - 36000        2
36001 - 37000        2
37001 - 38000        5
38001 - 39000        5
39001 - 40000        4
40001 - 41000        3
more than 41000      2

 

 

It's important to keep in mind that these attendance figures are a measurement of the number of tickets sold, not a measurement of how many people came through the turnstyles.

 

While I truly love the job that Virgil P. Hughes does on CUBS broadcasts, he makes me bristle when he refers to any crowd of 39,000 or more as a sellout. Assuming the definition of a sellout to mean that tickets to all of the seats have been sold, then the CUBS totals for sellouts in recent years are as follows.......

 

2009  10
2008  30
2007  22
2006   5

 

In any case, attendance is down this season, by all measures. I think all of the reasons mentioned above are significant contributing factors. I've noticed the extremely soft secondary market myself when trying to sell my extras. I no longer see the brokers out soliciting for tickets on Addison st. and the bars that I like to frequent because I could sell off tickets there now tell me that nobody even asks about tickets this season.

 

I hear tell getting more W's will put more butts in the seats. Quick, somebody tell Tom Rickets !!

[J.R.]

Maloney considers it a sellout whenever you can no longer buy at least two contiguous seats.

[questionmarkgrace]

personally, the ticket prices have turned me off from attending. Not the cost per se; but the arrogance of increases every single year. ten years ago you could get a bleacher seat for 20-25$, a 200% increase between now and then puts it at $50. Plus this year they got rid of the value date, regular, premium tier so they could institute fourth tier bronze silver gold and platinum. It means even more expensive seats and less reasonable tickets for a mediocre at best product. It is pure arrogance to assume that we will continue to pay more every year for a crappy product. Compound this by talks of not enough funds to get players and Dempster restructuring his contract and I have become a thoroughly alienated cubs fan. The price hike will most certainly show to be a poorly calculated business move by Rickets.

[Fred Hornkohl]

Hell, 50 years ago I could get into the bleachers for 75 cents !!

[davearm2]

personally, the ticket prices have turned me off from attending. Not the cost per se; but the arrogance of increases every single year. ten years ago you could get a bleacher seat for 20-25$, a 200% increase between now and then puts it at $50. Plus this year they got rid of the value date, regular, premium tier so they could institute fourth tier bronze silver gold and platinum. It means even more expensive seats and less reasonable tickets for a mediocre at best product. It is pure arrogance to assume that we will continue to pay more every year for a crappy product. Compound this by talks of not enough funds to get players and Dempster restructuring his contract and I have become a thoroughly alienated cubs fan. The price hike will most certainly show to be a poorly calculated business move by Rickets.

It's not pure arrogance, it's pure economics.

 

Naturally the Cubs aren't aiming to alienate fans, but by the same token they make more money if they have one fan paying $50 for that bleacher seat, versus two fans duking it out in the Virtual Waiting Room to buy the same ticket for $40.

 

As I mentioned earlier, their profit-maximizing pricing strategy is almost certainly going to result in the sort of attendance %'s we're talking about here (i.e., less than 100%). You sometimes hear about how such-and-such team has had 100 straight sellouts or whatever. That's all well and good, but at the end of the day that team is leaving money on the table (or more accurately, allowing scalpers to suck it up).

[Moises a loo]

It's apparent that the Cubs missed their window.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

It's apparent that the Cubs missed their window.

Windows can open up a lot faster and stay open a lot longer with a top-5 payroll.