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The White Sox have some big names and are currently in the thick of the chase in the A.L. Central. The weather has been great for night games and the team has been playing well. The northsiders suck and are not a factor. A beautiful Friday night in late July against the Red Sox the house should have been packed. I know we have been down this road before, but why not better attendance? The park is beautiful and the experience is a positive one. I have been to more than a few stadiums around the country and the cell is above average. I don't get it.

Edited by since56
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QUOTE (since56 @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 07:44 AM)
The White Sox have some big names and are currently in the thick of the chase in the A.L. Central. The weather has been great for night games and the team has been playing well. The northsiders suck and are not a factor. A beautiful Friday night in late July against the Red Sox the house should have been packed. I know we have been down this road before, but why not better attendance? The park is beautiful and the experience is a positive one. I have been to more than a few stadiums around the country and the cell is above average. I don't get it.

 

The way this team played made people disinterested, now that they might be interested, the dynamic pricing model is probably scaring them away. Not a lot of new tickets will be purchased because with dynamic pricing if you look for tickets for the game tonight, it will cost you $77 to sit in the OF. Who is going to pay that? People will just go to Stubhub and buy tickets already sold or just blow the whole thing off. I don't think the box office uses dynamic pricing, but I think most at least look at what is available on line first before heading to the park.

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QUOTE (since56 @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 07:44 AM)
The White Sox have some big names and are currently in the thick of the chase in the A.L. Central. The weather has been great for night games and the team has been playing well. The northsiders suck and are not a factor. A beautiful Friday night in late July against the Red Sox the house should have been packed. I know we have been down this road before, but why not better attendance? The park is beautiful and the experience is a positive one. I have been to more than a few stadiums around the country and the cell is above average. I don't get it.

Ok. I'll bite.

 

1. The team got off to another horrible start and has significantly underachieved relative to most expectations.

 

2. The ecomony remains poor.

 

3. You are talking about the Chicago White Sox.

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2007 killed our momentum, and then 2009-10

 

1) Too many overpaid, underproducing veterans

2) No exciting rookies like Viciedo or Beckham (2009)

3) Pretty boring team with no identity and no superstars like the Tigers

4) Top 3-5 pricing/parking in the majors

5) Economy

6) Greg Walker (joking)

7) Natural South Side skepticism

8) It's the 2nd half and we're not a 2nd half team....see 2003, 2006, 2009-10, etc.

9) Tease from last year frustrated everyone when the Twins wiped us out again

10) Upper deck (blah, blah, blah)

11) 4-18 stretch in April/May still in the minds of too many

Edited by caulfield12
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QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 08:24 AM)
2007 killed our momentum, and then 2009-10

 

1) Too many overpaid, underproducing veterans

2) No exciting rookies like Viciedo or Beckham (2009)

3) Pretty boring team with no identity and no superstars like the Tigers

4) Top 3-5 pricing/parking in the majors

5) Economy

6) Greg Walker (joking)

7) Natural South Side skepticism

8) It's the 2nd half and we're not a 2nd half team....see 2003, 2006, 2009-10, etc.

9) Tease from last year frustrated everyone when the Twins wiped us out again

10) Upper deck (blah, blah, blah)

11) 4-18 stretch in April/May still in the minds of too many

Those all may be valid, but when it comes down to it, the reason is price. Half price Monday had the biggest crowd of the week. People will sit high in the upper deck if its cheap. Although they have a lot of discounts, the Sox have some of the most expensive tickets in baseball, and I don't understand dynamic pricing. It seems ticketmaster and the Sox are on 2 very different pages. Its $77 a sit for a lot of unsolds on dynamic pricing which claims to use supply and demand as its guide, yet a couple of days ago the Sox had a groupon for the same ticket plus patio party for $65.

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Friday nights typically don't draw huge crowds. Tonight should be more impressive, hopefully around 34-36K.

 

The Cell rarely sells out because most people would understandably opt out of purchasing seats in those corners way out in the Upper Deck when they can just watch the game in the comfort of their home and get a better view on tv.. and they can always choose another game later in the schedule.

 

If the Sox go on a losing streak here (wouldn't surprise me), crowds will be sparse in late August/September. Last year when the Sox fell out of the race, only 16,000 showed up one night to see the Sox vs Sawx.. and much less than that were actually in attendance.

Edited by SouthSidePride05
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I wonder how many Sox fans have personally written to Brooks Boyer on this issue?

 

I've just never understood why they weren't AT LEAST a BIT more flexible with those upper deck seats...seems they're just so set in their ways with their price points/cost-benefit analysis.

 

They used to have good Sunday "family/kids" day crowds.

 

Do they still do those Pepsi half-price promos?

 

Why don't they try doing 2 for 1 beer specials for those sitting in the upper deck? Free promo item if you are in the first 3-5000 upper deck fans? Or hot dog and a Large Coke for $5.00? There has to be some good ideas out there that could be implemented.

 

OH, WEATHER.

 

Forgot that convenient excuse.

 

 

http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance

 

Currently 19th.

I don't get how we're behind Cincinnati, Houston and San Diego, especially those last 2. I guess the Reds had an increase based on their 2010 season and increased 2011 season ticket sales, because they've played a LOT like the White Sox this year.

 

http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance/_/sort/allAvg

We're also 19th in overall attendance, home and away combined.

 

I'd love to see our overall ticket/parking/souvenir/food sales revenues at 25,000 per game versus 40,000 in Minnesota. To see how far we actually trail them in this one area. We're 5,000 per game behind the Tigers.

 

 

 

 

Edited by caulfield12
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I've just never understood why they weren't AT LEAST a BIT more flexible with those upper deck seats...seems they're just so set in their ways with their price points/cost-benefit analysis.

 

This. The Sox should sell those upper deck corners for a flat $10 a seat, $5 on half price night. There's lots of Sox fans with families and I'd think they'd pack 'em in with that sort of pricing and they'd have more $$$ to spend on food and merchandise. The Sox would recoup the $$$ with the parking as well.

Edited by Allsox
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If I was in charge of pricing, I would say $12 for upper box and $7 for upper reserve. No fanfare or media attention on the change, just let it spread by word of mouth. And if the media approached me and asked why the huge decrease in pricing, I'd nonchalantly say we looked around at other ballpark's pricing and saw what they were charging for their least expensive seats. If tix were $7, I'd go all the time.

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If they really wanted to make the upper deck a destination and didn't want to lower the ticket prices, lower the prices on the concession stands up there. Make beer and hot dogs half the price. You still would be turning a profit, and you could use you must be an upper deck ticketholder for entry in the upper deck. Then watch some of the lower deck ticketholders complain about not having access to all the parks amenities. The Sox have no problem selling their most expensive seats. The premium club and premium boxes are all gone with season packages. The problem is their weak locations have pretty high price tags if you aren't using some sort of discount.

Edited by Dick Allen
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QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 09:32 AM)
Those all may be valid, but when it comes down to it, the reason is price. Half price Monday had the biggest crowd of the week. People will sit high in the upper deck if its cheap. Although they have a lot of discounts, the Sox have some of the most expensive tickets in baseball, and I don't understand dynamic pricing. It seems ticketmaster and the Sox are on 2 very different pages. Its $77 a sit for a lot of unsolds on dynamic pricing which claims to use supply and demand as its guide, yet a couple of days ago the Sox had a groupon for the same ticket plus patio party for $65.

I was there on half priced Monday, on July 4th (holiday), with fireworks. The upper deck was still only 1/2 full.

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The White Sox seem to be stuck at the 27,000 mark....

 

Selling the lower deck is not a problem as a rule.

 

No other ballpark that I know of treats the upper deck as 'steerage" ( not having access to downstairs.

 

This tier pricing has backfired as well.

 

 

 

 

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QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 10:50 AM)
If they really wanted to make the upper deck a destination and didn't want to lower the ticket prices, lower the prices on the concession stands up there. Make beer and hot dogs half the price. You still would be turning a profit, and you could use you must be an upper deck ticketholder for entry in the upper deck. Then watch some of the lower deck ticketholders complain about not having access to all the parks amenities. The Sox have no problem selling their most expensive seats. The premium club and premium boxes are all gone with season packages. The problem is their weak locations have pretty high price tags if you aren't using some sort of discount.

The Dodgers had an "all you can eat" section in RF. That's immediately where I went when I hit Chavez Ravine.

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Revenue =/= attendance. While the Sox may sell fewer seats, the new pricing system likely means higher revenue overall. While I can't be sure (clearly, I don't have access to the numbers), the Sox are almost certainly making more revenue this year even with lower attendance. This pricing system has been tried out by several other teams before the Sox.

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 10:23 AM)
I was there on half priced Monday, on July 4th (holiday), with fireworks. The upper deck was still only 1/2 full.

Holidays historically aren't good draws. Labor Day is worse. A couple of years ago my cousin had patio party tickets for a Labor Day game or the Sunday before, I can't remember, against Boston. There were no more than 20 people total in the patio area. I would guess a lot of the business for that particular area is companies having work outings, and they generally don't have those on holidays or holiday weekends.

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The fact of the matter is that Sox ticket prices (and really, all ticket prices in baseball) have gone up so severely with respect to inflation over the past 20 years. I have an Lower Box opening day ticket from 1991; face value was just $13.00. Even if we take into account inflation, that ticket would be worth $22.37 in today's prices. Nowadays, you can't get a lower box seat for less than $40-$50, and in many cases it's more like $60-$80. It is absolutely absurd for baseball to continue to charge these rates and not expect families to not be able to attend in an economy like this.

 

I get that salaries spiraled out of control similarly, but the fans are the ones paying for all this. It is absolutely unreasonable to believe $200-$500 is a reasonable amount of money for any middle class family to spend on an afternoon's worth of entertainment.

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Here I thought Greg Hibbard would give a Rongey-esque spin on the matter, and he ends up sounding like Dick Allen.

 

Yay! Guess you might not get the job as Brooks Boyer's assistant after all...

 

 

 

We can't add road construction/ease of access to the reasons for 2011?

Edited by caulfield12
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QUOTE (SouthSidePride05 @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 09:34 AM)
If I was in charge of pricing, I would say $12 for upper box and $7 for upper reserve. No fanfare or media attention on the change, just let it spread by word of mouth. And if the media approached me and asked why the huge decrease in pricing, I'd nonchalantly say we looked around at other ballpark's pricing and saw what they were charging for their least expensive seats. If tix were $7, I'd go all the time.

 

The cheapest ticket here in Houston is $7 and its awesome because you can buy that and go sit in the expensive seats because no one is there!

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QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 04:51 PM)
If you're anywhere on the south side of Chicago or the southern suburbs you know the economy is the reason.

 

1.) What do ya mean? Are stores all closed? Just wondering.

 

I would think it's the economy. I hear people b****ing about movie prices. Why would anybody go to a major league baseball game at full price? Most people want good seats not upper tank. If good seats cost that kind of money, people probably take their family or nephew once or twice a year and go to minor league games the other times.

 

2.) Even Hawk said last night this has been the most frustrating season he's ever been part of.

You watch this team and you figure they'll be no hit before they score 2 runs sometimes. Or they seem to have one 3-run inning and that's it. Very frustrating team unless u LOVE pitching.

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QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 08:49 AM)
The fact of the matter is that Sox ticket prices (and really, all ticket prices in baseball) have gone up so severely with respect to inflation over the past 20 years. I have an Lower Box opening day ticket from 1991; face value was just $13.00. Even if we take into account inflation, that ticket would be worth $22.37 in today's prices. Nowadays, you can't get a lower box seat for less than $40-$50, and in many cases it's more like $60-$80. It is absolutely absurd for baseball to continue to charge these rates and not expect families to not be able to attend in an economy like this.

 

I get that salaries spiraled out of control similarly, but the fans are the ones paying for all this. It is absolutely unreasonable to believe $200-$500 is a reasonable amount of money for any middle class family to spend on an afternoon's worth of entertainment.

 

When the Sox cut payroll this winter, they'd better lower the prices.

 

I remember when club section seats were $22 back in the late '90s. It was still worth a trip to the ballpark to watch bad baseball.

 

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I can just see it now.

 

Subsidize Alex Rios Sitting on the Pine Kosher Dogs....2 for the price of his OPS on the road, or about $4.75

 

 

 

Rasmus not exactly lighting TOR on fire in the early going. Yunel Hothead Escobar dogs it down the line in classic Alex Rios fashion....gets thrown out by a shoe length and promptly proceeds to get tossed after about 2.6 seconds of arguing with the 1B ump. Anthonopolous might not look so smart in the end on Rasmus/Escobar/Lawrie.

Edited by caulfield12
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