Dick Allen

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 18, 2012 -> 07:30 AM) If Stone is in the half a million range, Hawk has to be around a million. Its a nice gig. I don't blame him for never wanting to quit.

Isn't the qualifying offer over $12 million or close? Just read it should be between 12-13 million this year, and will probably be close to that next I would imagine.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Oct 17, 2012 -> 10:46 AM) With all this discussion about ticket prices, I really think that's only a small part of the problem. The biggest problem IMO, is the performance of the team on the field. The excitement and expectations for the team are low right now. The season ticket base is probably only around 13,000 or so. The best way to build that up is to win and continue to win. And by "win" I mean post-season baseball. Not just hanging on to first place for a few months out of the season. I can pretty much guarantee that if they make the playoffs 3-4 times in the next 5-6 years it won't matter how much the tickets cost. The place will be full. That's probably right. I posted last night how things have changed. Making the playoffs once in a while isn't as tough as it used to be, the only teams in the AL to have a longer playoff drought than the White Sox 4 years are Cleveland, KC, Toronto and Seattle and there are tons of empty seats at those ballparks, 3 of which used to be filled every night.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 17, 2012 -> 10:22 AM) If they had Bears ticket prices? I doubt it. First off, the Bears have a much larger pool of fans than the White Sox. Secondly, many people put a value of attending a Bears game higher than that of a White Sox game. Just because someone thinks something is too expensive doesn't necessarily mean they cannot afford it. If they had 8 opportunities instead of 81, they may value a White Sox game more than they do now. As long as people will always think there are plenty of good seats available, there probably will be plenty of good seats available.

QUOTE (My_Sox_Summer @ Oct 17, 2012 -> 08:52 AM) I disagree, not that you are wrong, I just don't think that people are not going to games because the tickets are too expensive. There are codes for basically every game. They cannot discount every game. Now, what I do think they should do, is the areas that they usually mark down the tickets is just sell them for a lower rate to all games. The corners upstairs for $15 the lower corners for $25. Why did you stop getting seasons? That is something the Sox need to focus on. I don't think the demos would show that people buying tickets without the internet, go to multiple games. Which is where Dynamic Pricing comes in, those deals are available at the box office with no code and no fees. Day of game, dynamic pricing is outrageous. We were debating it, and were probably going to drop them, then my ticket partner was in an accident and died. We realized Stubhub was a better option. I could still go to the games for a lot less money. The only thing we would be missing out on is playoff tickets. From what we save during the season,we could pay up for playoff games or watch them on my sweet Samsung 46" HDTV, and still come out ahead.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 17, 2012 -> 08:23 AM) Serious question, how many people who have no access to internet are able to buy baseball tickets? I am guessing those demographics don't overlap a lot. All you really have to do is check the lines at the ballpark ticket windows when tickets first go on sale. I actually know 3 huge baseball fans that do not have computers at home. They can get on at work and go to the library, but there are a lot of people that don't have a computer at home or cable. The question is do the Sox really want to sell the tickets or not? If they do and are willing to sell them at a certain price for those that go on the internet find a code and enter it, why not just sell them to someone walking up the day of the game at the same price? Why eat it? What the Sox should do is throw a bunch of tickets on Stubhub.

QUOTE (My_Sox_Summer @ Oct 17, 2012 -> 08:12 AM) They make coupons too, should everything just be lower in price because people are too lazy to bring a coupon? I mean come on. That is what dynamic pricing is supposed to do, no codes and you get that low price. I think they also only do it online because they re-coup some of it with the fees. If someone is too lazy to use Google, they deserve to pay full price IMO. Then the Sox lose out. My point being, is if they are willing to sell tickets at a certain price, sell them at that price rather than sitting on them because someone doesn't have a code. They become worthless when the game ends. I used to have season tickets, this year I did not. I used codes and Stubhub and never paid anywhere close to full price. It may seem crazy, but not everyone has access to the internet, not everyone is aware codes exist, and usually they are the people who can least afford paying full price.

With the new playoff formats the only AL teams to go longer than the Sox current 4 years without a playoff appearance are Cleveland, Toronto, KC and Seattle. How are they doing attendance-wise.

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 03:24 PM) I think whenpeople say "tix are too expensive", they really mean "lower deck tix are too expensive" Too many lower level snobs. Upper deck tix with a code were as low as $7 thi year yet the upper deck was half empty. You are correct, but I don't think people want to look for a code. What I don't understand is why they require codes for the discount. If they are willing to discount it with a code, just discount it for everyone. I think the upper deck will always be problematic unless they either offer steep discounts or some other gimmick. There are some decent seats up there, and some real bad ones. I do think in the infield in the first few rows they are way better than downstairs in the corners or the outfield if your there to watch baseball.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 03:17 PM) If Sox tickets are too expensive at $50 for someone, Bears tickets aren't affordable at $200 for that same person. Not necessarily.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 02:59 PM) When people are saying ticket prices are too high, they aren't saying that only if there were less tickets for sale, they could afford to buy tickets. They are saying the price of tickets are too expensive. Not counting secondary markets, there are probably less than 100,000 people that actually purchase Bears tickets during a season, and when a team plays 8 home games a year, one game is actually more of an event than going to a baseball game where 10 times the number of games are played. People are willing to pay up for the event, and if they are not season ticketholders the experience of a Bears game. More people go to White Sox games each year. Its like if you needed some gym shoes, if the K Mart shoes were $75, most would say they were too expensive. If the Air Jordans were $85, the same person wouldn't think the same thing. White Sox tickets are too expensive for the non diehard. Some things you are willing to pay up for, some things you aren't. White Sox tickets apparently are on the are not list for the majority of people living in this area.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 02:52 PM) Yet getting people to spend five times that to go to a Bears game isn't a problem at all. The Bears have about 500,000 seats to sell. Probably 450,000 or more are sold to season ticketholders with a waiting list probably 20 years long, so the reality is, they have to sell about 50,000 seats a year at most.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 02:45 PM) But if tickets were $5 apiece, then payroll would probably have to be drastically reduced. Then you might have a hard time selling 3.2 million tickets to watch a s***ty baseball team. The point being if the prices were lower, more people would attend which means price has to be an issue. If it isn't an issue, why don't they just double the prices?

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 02:41 PM) So maybe that's the main problem. A small fan base, not pricing. Opening a new ballpark & winning the World Series both expanded that fanbase for a while, but now it's back to it's core again. I don't think it's as simple as high prices. If the Sox priced every ticket at $5, parking was free, beer $.50, hot dogs $.50, I'd bet they would set an attendance record. The problem is, the Sox attendance problems sort of create a snowball effect. All the talk of attendance woes, seeing empty seats on TV when in first place, decreases chances of tickets being sold, especially at inflated prices.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 02:35 PM) In other words the face value of the tickets aren't the problem. One way to increase demand is to make it more attractive. Lowering the price usually is one way to do that. When stores want to get rid of inventory, they occassionally have sales. If the Sox want to sell some more tickets, they should lower the prices and make their pricing model easy enough for a monkey to understand.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 02:30 PM) If you compare those teams to other teams in the same leagues, they all are among the highest in average ticket price and attendance. It doesn't appear that the economy & high ticket prices have had an effect on them. Other NHL/NBA/NFL/MLB teams have much lower ticket prices, yet also have attendance issues. If the economy in Chicago is so bad, why don't any of the other teams have issues like the White Sox? Their season ticket bases are extremely high. A lot of that is corporate, also its not an 81 game committment but a 41 game committment. The Bears is a 10 game committment with pre season. There is also a larger pool for those teams, as many people loyal to the Cubs won't go to a Sox game if it were free. You don't get buses from Iowa at Sox games on a Wednesday afternoon. In fact, one article I read had a Cubs official saying 40% of their attendance was tourists.

Weren't the Sox TV ratings up this year as well? People are watching, just not at USCF.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 01:55 PM) It's funny, everyone keeps blaming the economy and high ticket prices. Yet every other sports team in Chicago has relatively high ticket prices and seems to be enjoying tons of success at the gate. The Cubs did have a decrease, but even with a 100 loss team, they were still top 10 in attendance. Apparently, White Sox fans are the only ones affected by the economy. The Sox average more customers per game than the Blackhawks and Bulls. Comparing them to the Bears with 8 home dates isn't fair. Plus those 3 are the only teams in town in their respective sports. If ticket brokers owned the same number of season tickets for the Cubs as they do for the Sox, their attendance would be far less, but we all know there are more Cubs fans in the area than Sox fans. The Sox are drawing from a fairly small pool compared to the others except probably the Blackhawks, but if they go a few seasons without the playoffs, their attendance will be dismal. People will come, but pricing is a problem.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 01:18 PM) I think there's truth in this. Can you really expect people to pay $25-100 on a ticket plus parking plus food on something that happens 162 times over a 6 months span? I understand football being expensive as there are less than twenty games a year. I always think the media is talking to me when they complain about attendance, but I always attend a handful of games each year. How much are we expected to attend? Am I really the problem or are they only targeting people that go to zero? We talk about prices like they're a one-time expense, but don't we really need a bunch of people going to a lot of games to improve attendance? If you want someone to go to ten games, you're asking for several hundred dollars. Now, if you're taking a family of four, you're talking potentially thousands. I don't think there's any question if you asked 1000 random Sox fans why they don't go to more games in 2012 the #1 answer would be financial the #2 answer would be time committment.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 12:20 PM) That has been pretty well blown out of the water too. Outside of a couple of series, there were pretty much always cheap tickets available somewhere. Not walk up. Stubhub purchases don't increase attendance. There were some deals if people want to try and find them. Walk up attendance is usually pretty minimal even when there is high demand for tickets. Rarely do the Sox sell more than 5k tickets day of game. Plus, dynamic pricing really blew any chance of a big walk up in 2012. If the White Sox season ticket base drops, their attendance will most likely drop no matter how well they do that season. The Sox attendance was higher in 2007 than it was in 2005. It was a residual of winning the WS. In fact, stubhub having better deals with better locations than the Sox dynamic deals hurts attendance, and causes some to rethink their investment in season ticket packages.

Once you get into Sept. and Oct. football takes over. I read something yesterday where 50% of people watching the NFL is due to fantasy football. Maybe one reason the Yankees didn't sell out on Sunday. 2011 had an impact on 2012 attendance. Bad season, lose Buehrle. Even in 2005, when the Sox were never out of first place, there were some lame attendance figures in September. 2012 should help next year's attendance. But 6 consecutive downturns should probably make Brooks a little nervous whenever someone tells him JR wants to see him.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Oct 15, 2012 -> 07:08 PM) I understand your point but it could sway a young fan in my opinion. I have White Sox and Cubs fans in my family. I could have gone either way. When I was a kid, Frank Thomas came up. I am a White Sox fan because of Frank Thomas. What if a guy like Courtney Hawkins is awesome. If the Sox affilaite was in say Schaumburg, it is possible that a young kid could reasonably have Hawkins (or any other spect) as his/her favorite player. I know that isnt a scenario that is extremely common but it is reasonable. I would imagine the vast majority of Frank Thomas fans are fans because of what he did for the White Sox, not the Birmingham Barons. As a Sox fan, it would be interesting to have a minor league affiliate in the area, just to watch once in a while. I really doubt it would have much impact on the future size of the fan base.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Oct 15, 2012 -> 02:38 PM) I'm trying to figure out what sort of competitive advantage that would give them other than saving a few bucks on travel costs. How often does a situation really come up where they need to get a player from one minor league team to another on short notice? Seems to me it would make more sense to want to get a player from the minors to the major league club on short notice. I think its more for their staff of evaluators and roving instructors.

I'd probably take ARod for $10 million a year. Maybe he's not very likeable, but certainly more than Albert Belle, plays a position of need and in a bad year was still at about the same OPS as Adam Dunn. He probaby would hit more homers with home games at USCF as opposed to Yankee Stadium. He also would probably sell a few tickets. I don't think it would happen. But its getting to the point the Yankees and ARod are both going to be looking to get him out of the Bronx. You would have to work out those 5 $6 million bonuses. The other problem with ARod is he hasn't been able to play 140 games since 2007.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 15, 2012 -> 08:25 AM) At the end of the day we will know if it was profitable in 2012 by how it is used in 2013. It seems this year it was used like airlines use their pricing methods. I remember Brooks being quoted as basically saying the system was something that they expected fans to take some time getting used to. Obviously, having tickets drop to next to nothing the day before and day of the game isn't going to help revenue. I think they should ditch the system until the attendance starts trending upward.