back to the mid-late 90's - the park is empty
by mendelbob on Apr 5, 2008 5:37 PM PDT
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Printdon't get me wrong, i like winning just as much as the next guy, but being raised on an a's team that was bad more often than good, i'm also a fan of paying for the cheap seats and sitting wherever I want. well folks, if the first weekend day game of the season, against last year's cy young winner who happens to be local, is an indication, those days have returned. with a group of 4, we got plaza reserved tixs today and spent most of the game in the plaza infield, until we followed the sun in the later innings. ushers were few and far between, and the general sense of "we're just glad you came" was in the air. the field level in the outfield ($30 bucks?) was totally empty.
I've definitely enjoyed watching billy bean turn this team into a winner, but i gotta admit, today made me realize how much i missed the a's of the mid-late 90's that fielded the best AAA team in the majors, and where you could pay as little as you wanted and sit just about wherever you wanted.
these days are limited guys. once the team leaves oakland there will be no $9 tix, even with obstructed views of all deep balls to the outfield. but right now there is cheap baseball to be seen in our home town. yes, when you share the coliseum with only abother 10,000 folks, you can't help but be reminded of how ugly it is since mount davis was erected, and sure, we're gonna lose a lot of games this year, but if today is indicative, this year will be a great opportunity to get a close view of some unproven players trying to prove themselves. Sound familiar? 1997? 1998?
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Emptiness?
It's amazing how the media's opinion can shape attendance. At least thats the way it seems to me. The casual fan isn't going to attend the games because of the lack of recognizable players, and the idea that the guys won't be competitive. For me, this team is fun to watch, probably more so than any team since 2003. Every guy out there has something to prove, and you can almost guarantee they will be playing hard every single day/night. Not only that, but with no real dominant team in the west there is no reason they can't compete for the division.
It's just too bad the average fan isn't going to recognize this. It's nice to see that all the diehards in left field and people starting the "Let's Go Oakland" chants are still devoted to the team. The bay area is one of the most populous regions in the country, and having under 20k at a game in the first week of the season is borderline embarrassing. This makes the move to Fremont seem all that more necessary.
emphasis on "seem"
If Billewolffisher wanted to aggressively counter/correct the media's "they're gonna suck just like the Giants," they could do so with a relatively minimal amount of cash and effort.
It's one of those freak things that seems to happen to me quite frequently. @('.')@
How?
I'm not seeing this. If they spend a bunch of money on advertising, they're just going to seem desperate... like the Giants do.
The only solution attendance-wise is for the team to start winning games. I agree that the media trope is damaging the team's finances, but a bunch of paid-for propaganda is not likely to change that.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
Even at the height of the A's success this decade
they were only (barely) able to draw two million fans. Winning games isn't enough, apparently.
So it goes.
Ok, but "winning games plus some pithy commercials"
doesn't exactly strike me as a major improvement.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
Agreed that it isn't simply advertising
but there has to be more the A's can do. Living in Sacramento, it is evident to me that the A's do little to establish a footprint here, despite the presence of their very own AAA team. Even when you go to Raley Field, you can hardly tell who their parent club is. I appreciate the A's are constrained by MLB and by television, but successful businesses try to come up with workarounds for those kinds of constraints.
Right now, the A's strategy seems to be to weather the storm until they can tap directly into the San Jose market, which isn't a terrible strategy, but which is also very frustrating in the interim. It also puts them in the very comfortable position of having all of their eggs in one basket. If Fremont fails, they have nowhere to go but out of the Bay area.
So it goes.
I'd add
that if the A's want a great example of how to do this, they need to look no farther than Arte Moreno. Moreno lowered concession prices, made a huge point of meeting and listening to fans, and it has really shown up at the gate.
So it goes.
lower ticket prices
i envision all sorts of special offers for discount tickets this year and a very loose policy on moving down from the cheap seats. today they were giving away scratcher cupons, many of which were for 2-for-1 tix. but if today is any indication, they're going to draw well under 2 million this year.
i saw some other budgeting moves too that surprised me. a major, and often popular, section of the parking lot was closed today. i had never seen that for a weekend day game. in the bottom of the 1st i saw what looked like about 20 ushers going home. the bars in the east side club and basically all the outfield consessions on the second deck were closed. it was eerie to see just how dead the plaza level concourse was.
who knows, maybe it was a fluke in part due to the ncaa games, but today they were tightening their belts for sure. the whole scene was remincent of a mid-week day game 10 years ago when there would only be about 8,000 of us huddled at the bottom of that giant bowl. obviously it wasn't quite that bad (although 16,000 strikes me as a generous estimate), but it sure was an "oh yeah, this is what it used to be like to come to games here" experience. Accept of course the fact that i paid 9 bucks instead of 5 and my favorite free parking spot has long ago been eliminated.
Zito: You ever think about the space time continuum?
Huddy: Uh... no.
advertising is a subset of marketing
"The only solution attendance-wise is for the team to start winning games"?
That's 100% untrue. There's an unlimited series of opportunities for the franchise to market itself irrespective of the on-field product. Broadcast advertising -- which, granted, has been about all the A's have done marketing-wise the last decade (I'm disregarding the captive marketing of, say, sponsored dot-racing) -- is an unimaginative, passive, and (in this market especially) doomed strategy to drive attendance.
Look, Beane is (a) a smart guy and (b) a part-owner of the franchise. (Wolff and Fisher ain't rubes, either.) You think that if he really wanted to increase attendance, the only thing he could do would be to improve the on-field talent, then shrug his shoulders and say it's out of his hands?
And what did we do once we discovered a rift in the fourth dimension? We launched a monkey into it. @('.')@
Well, considering that he doesn't do marketing,
yeah, that kind of is all he can do.
I mean, I'm sure the Brand people are going to pay attention if he sends them an email, but ultimately the marketing of the team is a different sphere of the company. (Crowley? in charge.) And one that I've felt for some time was far more poorly run.
Let me make clear: I don't think that the A's can't do anything long-term to increase attendance. Just that an explosion of short-term "we don't suck, honest!" propaganda will be a waste of money. And with the team moving soon-ish, it's not clear how effective long-term strategies are right now.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
We sat in 107
and we had only two other people in our row and the section was pretty empty as you say. It's sad to think that people only come to the games for name players. These young guys were fun to watch. I enjoyed every minute.
I'm only watching on MLB.tv,
but I agree. This team is already much more interesting to watch than the team of the last few years.
It's sad
Traveling across the country to see an A's home game is on my list of things to do before i die. It's sad to me that people have an opportunity to see them up close and don't take advantage of it.
"Put some ice on it. After that, there's nothing a few beers won't take care of. " -Pink
by OrlandoAsFan on Apr 7, 2008 11:44 AM PDT up reply actions
I don't think it's just "name players"
How hard is it to find a pocket schedule? When I was a kid, they were on countertops at every sports-related venue in the East Bay. Now I have to phone the A's box office and specifically ask them to mail me one.
How enticing, to the casual fan, are the cutesy ads the A's have run the past few years? Ads which, ironically, depend on knowing and loving the individual personalities/quirks of the specific players - who are then not around for that long.
How affordable is it to the average working layperson who doesn't happen to own a large corporation to have to buy first or second deck tickets because there's a big tarp in the way where they could afford to sit (not everyone likes "outfield" seats - I love them, but not everyone does)?
It's not that the A's lack "name players" any more than it's that they market for an empty stadium. And they've got one!
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
I hear you.
When we were younger and had trouble affording games ...those upper deck seats offered a way for a young family of 5 to enjoy the game.
Oakland's fan base isn't exactly rich,
and the economy is not exactly booming - if you want to sell hot dogs and souvenirs you have to make it possible for people to get through the turnstiles. The A's would do better to give away 10,000 tickets/game in "lucky lotteries" - sell concessions and souvenirs and create an atmosphere of excitement every night, until enough casual fans are hooked that you don't need to do it anymore. Emptiness begets emptiness.
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
layperson?
I thought you laysheep ...
It's one of those freak things that seems to happen to me quite frequently. @('.')@
not after they've been sheared.
Contrary to popular belief, Nico really doesn't wanna re-lay shorn sheep.
Dibs
so, he prefers them shaggy ...
... and he's looking for more of a worn fleece ram?
And what did we do once we discovered a rift in the fourth dimension? We launched a monkey into it. @('.')@
I bought a computer just because
I heard it came with a lot of ram. Waste of money.
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
Like many fans,
I make a point of skipping the most popular games. Squeezing into obstructed view seats amid Red Sox fans just isn't as enjoyable as casually upgrading to a good seat where I can stretch out a bit. For the most part, I'll take a crowd of 15,000 serious fans over 36,000 inflated-by-the-enemy.
Whatever else it might lack, the Coliseum still offers a great value for your sports fan dollar. That's been a hallmark of the Oakland A's: when most other franchises stopped caring about the value-priced fanbase, the A's still did. That's in sharp decline in the Wolffish era, and it'll be gone forever when/if Fremont happens. So gather ye rosebuds while ye may...
There is an A in Whimsy.
I could be wrong but I would be that attendance in all major sporting events will slowly start to decline,
With gas prices rising to the 4-5 dollar range, layoffs ahead and a shaking economy I see people holding onto their money. Large purchases and dropping over 100 bucks for your family to see a sporting event will become a second thought. I hope im wrong but I see small and medium markets struggling.
by asfaninpismobeach on Apr 6, 2008 9:40 AM PDT reply actions
I see it going the opposite way -
just a few more rounds of foreclosure, and I can see many, many fans calling the ballpark home!
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
I could be wrong on this front, but I don't recall as many games being televised in the mid-late 90's as there are now, so it seems that you have a lot of fans (esp. families) who upon weighing the option of attending a breezy Tuesday night game with the Royals, in which you almost certainly have to leave early to get the kids in bed at a reasonable hour, and staying at home (and thus eating in as well) to watch it on TV, choose the latter.
I'm here to talk about the past.
BTW
I will be there today in Sec 122, Row 35, Seats 20-21 if anyone wants to come by and say hi.
If, like Englishmajor noted, you happen to have a copy of this with you, I'd be happy to sign.
I'm here to talk about the past.
Even the East notices
I was talking the normal junk w/ a buddy after the first game against Boston at the Coliseum and the first thing he said back to me was our fans are weak. He said its the first game of the season in the states and our joint was empty. I had to agree with him and was embarrassed. I am stationed in Connecticut and cant wait to get back home to catch a game. The oppertunities to see the boys where they (should be) are getting slim. I guess you dont know what your missing until you dont have it.
From the cheap seats talkin' smack. Oakland underdog
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