Are there public records for season tickets sold?

by rayweaver on Sep 18, 2008 1:42 PM EDT Comment 1 comment

Does anyone know where to find out how many season tickets are sold annually for each franchise? Is this information public?

I was listening to Baseball This Morning on XM today, and Mark Patrick decided once again to insult the Tampa Bay area and the lack of attendance for the Rays. Just as most other radio/tv show hosts spout off on something without doing research, Mark Patrick once again did this in regards to discussing attendance. He questioned whether the Rays had sold out a game this year occurred other than the game on the LL Cool J concert night. Buck Martinez at least chimed in with the the nightly attendance for this Red Sox series, though he threw in a jab implying that more of the fans may have been for the Red Sox. (This was probably only true on Monday as the tide evened out on Tuesday and then turned the Rays' way by Wednesday. I saw way more Rays fans at the game last night.)

This got me wondering about two things: First, does anybody remember hearing the White Sox fans being called out in 2005? They won 99 games and still only finished 7th in AL attendance. They increased their attendance by 21% from 04-05, but they were not selling out and they averaged just under 29,000/game in a stadium with 40,615 seats. Second, why is it that a lot of the media don't understand what we've been discussing all year about how (season and single game) ticket sales don't increase dramatically until the next season after the successful season (i.e. win div, make playoffs, WS). The White Sox averaged 36,500/game in 06, the year AFTER the WS championship. They had a 53% increase in attendance from 04-06.

We've also discussed that it takes time to build up the fan base, but the media expects instant sellouts for an 11-year old perennially losing franchise, and the media often compares Rays attendance to that of 100+ year old franchises. I've heard some say that anything less than 30,000/game is unacceptable. So I looked up some attendance numbers on baseballreference.com, and saw that in 1998, the Devil Rays averaged almost 31,000 fans per game for that season. This proves that at one point, this area had 2.5 million that were interested in this team or at least in watching MLB. It seems to be that the area was excited about a new team back in 1998 and they bought the season tickets in advance assuming they would have a fun team to watch that would also be competitive. I assume that after the first horrible season, a lot of people turned their backs on the team because of the product on the field. They felt betrayed. I don't know how many of those fans in 1998 were season ticket holders, but I would assume a nice hefty chunk of the ticket sales were from season tickets. I would like to know how many season tickets were sold that first year and how many were sold in the years after. Also, I would expect an upswing in attendance for the Rays from 07-09 like the White Sox had over 04-06, but I would like to know how season ticket sales affect this attendance.

Does anyone out there know where to find this information? Is it public information?

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I don't know where to find the information

But since Pinellas County owns the stadium and the City of St. Petersburg makes debt payments to cover its construction and subsequent renovation, I would think that there is a way to find out. I have heard various numbers mentioned before in news reports, but I don’t know where they get their information. They could very well be supplied with a figure from the team, but considering the city collects a percentage of the revenue from each ticket sold, you’d think that they would have an accounting of season ticket figures, and that this figure would be easy to find. But honestly, I’m not sure where.

As far as 1998 goes, there was most definitely a huge season ticket base that season that arose due to the team playing its first season and the excitement that goes with that. You’d expect season ticket figures to be high as a result of that, but the figures also were almost certainly aided heavily by previous season ticket drives that took place over the decade prior. Various deposits were made in attempts to land the White Sox, an NL expansion team, the Giants, etc., and though some of those deposits were cancelled, others rolled over and were given priority status for when a team finally did come.

by Patrick L. Kennedy on Sep 18, 2008 4:21 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs