2011 Ticket prices raised

[underdog]

That officially took this thread down an unexpected and bizarre rabbit hole.

Yeah, I should probably put up a sign before that sharp of a turn. But we were already kinda headed that way with the one guy blind to BT's unnamed disaster and the other guy yelling but going anyway (think that was supposed to be me). Regardless, I would very much like to see the Orioles organization reach out to the fans they have lost and do something to make these people feel like they would be welcomed back. I just find it offensive that such a profitable company should tell its former followers "We don't miss you. We will just hit up the few thousand people who can't stop coming to pick up the difference. The rest of you can just keep paying your cable bill."

Jon, I agree that inflation can be one component in conjunction with a price increase, I just don't feel that that alone would be a basis for such action.

While I agree that wins and not names will bring fans back, for the last several years they have provided us with neither. When the Nationals first came, all the Orioles could talk about was how when MASN got off the ground (their Comcast windfall was an unexpected pleasure) they were going to spend the money necessary to compete with the MFY's and Sux. They haven't done enough for us to compete with the Blue Jays. So they need to be reminded to back up their words with their deeds. Or sell the team to someone who can (and use the money as a down payment on the Steelers, they could use some MacPhailure):wedge:. But they need to know that if they keep telling us we are turning the corner, but we still end up losing 90-95 games, that people can, and should find fault with them. As Casey Stengel said, and pardon my paraphrasing "they key to managing well is keeping the guys that hate you away from the guys that are undecided". There are some fans who I am sure are gone forever. A majority would likely come back for a winner. Those people need to hear about how a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark with a young, exciting team is a pretty darn good day. And that a Friday fireworks night is a fantastic start to a weekend (one might even get lucky:2yay-thumb:) They don't need to hear "Well if you're going to come out and see this team that loses most of the time, with 75% of its seats empty, it is going to cost you more money". What they REALLY needed to hear was, "You know all that extra money you have been spending on cable for the past few years, well we took a tiny piece of it and got Cliff Lee for the next 5 years". Next winter?? Please.

Well that was more than I planned to rant. Go back to what you were doing.

[SilentJames]

I had a 13 game plan through 2006, my schedule changed and I only go 3-5 times a year now. I catch the last 7 innings every night on TV. So I guess the Orioles are my crack pipe.

I mean, who would you rather be, someone asleep for the duration of flight 93 on 9/11, or one of the people that rushed the cockpit and forced the plane down into a field, instead of into a major city and potentially killing thousands of people?

Okay, we are talking about a couple bucks here, not the worst terrorist attack in American history. But let me see if I can talk you down here.

One, inflation DOES matter. You might want to try and convince yourself it doesn't, but it does. Prices will never stay the same and Orioles ticket price increases have held up with that standard very well over the history of Camden.

Two, The Orioles haven't raised prices since 2006, and I would venture a guess that the last time before that was something between 2000-2002ish area.

Three, The Orioles are still one of the biggest bargains in the game. There are no triple-digit seats in the ball park, on any day and you can get pretty much right on the field for under 30 bucks/ ticket - you can't do that in most any other ballpark.

Four, The Orioles run so many ticket promotions throughout the season that you rarely get only a ticket for the price and, when you think about it, there are only like three days out of the week where you might actually have to pay full price (depending on where you sit).

Five, Simple economics. You want to increase selling season plans - make them more valuable. A 13-game plan is a bigger value now. The 4 and 6 game mini-plans they will sell will be a bigger value. The Sunday Plans will be a bigger value, so therefore you sell more of those which usually leads to an increase in your overall attendance.

[underdog]

Well I do agree that the amount of the increase isn't going to break anyone. I just feel like the front office shows the fans no respect by raising the price and not having a MacPhail or Angelos address the fans and show a little contrition for the last decade and a half. All they have done over that time is make money. They haven't been putting a winning team, or even a particularly entertaining team, on the field for longer than it takes to go from kindergarten through high school (Jack Cust going from third to home doesn't count, although I will give you April and May of 2005). I occasionally wonder why I am still paying attention, but then I remember that I learned to read from the sports page of the News American, so I don't have a choice but to be a lifer at this point.

What I would rather see instead of the price increase, would be for MacPhail and/ or Angelos to step up and show half of the commitment to making the team better that Steve Bisciotti did yesterday for only being one of the top ten teams in the league and not number one. If people were to buy into it, perhaps attendance would rise by 5% (an average of about 1200 a game), which would wash out the price increase and then some, not even taking into account the additional revenue from concessions. There will likely be some who will want to buttress my point by saying that the other team in town didn't raise prices after making the playoffs again, but based on their track record, I think it is a sure thing that they would have if not for the potential of a work stoppage (don't even get me started with those millionaires and billionaires each holding a gun to the golden gooses' head), so I don't think it would be fair to rub that against the Orioles.

Lastly, I would like to apologize if anyone found the 9/11 reference offensive. I wrote it because I felt it was the most descriptive analogy I could use to express how far apart Baltimore Terp and I are on this issue. I respect the fact that he is always on this site and is consistent in his opinions. What really bothers me on this issue is that there are so many who will allow the organization to insult them this way, and then turn around and support this ineptitude with their wallets, without a peep, to the point of disparaging anyone who takes exception to it. Even those who disagree with me on this issue would have to admit that the Orioles could have done FAR better than that snarky little press release, but they obviously don't think that their fans are worth that effort.

[Mark Carver]

Interesting... I wish gasoline, food, housing, clothing, etc have not gone up in over 3 years.

For the first time since after the 2006 season, the Orioles are raising single-game ticket prices at Camden Yards.

source

[Enjoy Terror]

I personally have made so much of a big deal about the Orioles over the years that people approach me with free tickets they don't want. Our unused company seats are typically offered to me first also. Oriole tickets are still very inexpensive in spite of the increase, and tickets plans were unaffected by the increase.

[DrungoHazewood]

Yeah, I should probably put up a sign before that sharp of a turn. But we were already kinda headed that way with the one guy blind to BT's unnamed disaster and the other guy yelling but going anyway (think that was supposed to be me). Regardless, I would very much like to see the Orioles organization reach out to the fans they have lost and do something to make these people feel like they would be welcomed back. I just find it offensive that such a profitable company should tell its former followers "We don't miss you. We will just hit up the few thousand people who can't stop coming to pick up the difference. The rest of you can just keep paying your cable bill."

Jon, I agree that inflation can be one component in conjunction with a price increase, I just don't feel that that alone would be a basis for such action.

While I agree that wins and not names will bring fans back, for the last several years they have provided us with neither. When the Nationals first came, all the Orioles could talk about was how when MASN got off the ground (their Comcast windfall was an unexpected pleasure) they were going to spend the money necessary to compete with the MFY's and Sux. They haven't done enough for us to compete with the Blue Jays. So they need to be reminded to back up their words with their deeds. Or sell the team to someone who can (and use the money as a down payment on the Steelers, they could use some MacPhailure):wedge:. But they need to know that if they keep telling us we are turning the corner, but we still end up losing 90-95 games, that people can, and should find fault with them. As Casey Stengel said, and pardon my paraphrasing "they key to managing well is keeping the guys that hate you away from the guys that are undecided". There are some fans who I am sure are gone forever. A majority would likely come back for a winner. Those people need to hear about how a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark with a young, exciting team is a pretty darn good day. And that a Friday fireworks night is a fantastic start to a weekend (one might even get lucky:2yay-thumb:) They don't need to hear "Well if you're going to come out and see this team that loses most of the time, with 75% of its seats empty, it is going to cost you more money". What they REALLY needed to hear was, "You know all that extra money you have been spending on cable for the past few years, well we took a tiny piece of it and got Cliff Lee for the next 5 years". Next winter?? Please.

Well that was more than I planned to rant. Go back to what you were doing.

I agree that the Orioles need to be careful with how they treat their fans, and that they shouldn't burn too many bridges if they want them to come back when they start winning again.

But...

Fans will come back when the team starts to win, and it's certainly debatable if the Orioles would win more games by over-paying to get top free agents to come to Baltimore. I think the way they're approaching building at team, while it has holes, is much more fundamentally sound than dropping $150M+ to try to get free agents to come here. Building up the farm system in conjunction with prudent acquisitions like Hardy and Reynolds is better for the long-term future of the team than Jayson Werth type deals.

That's how the O's can pay some respect to the fans: build a self-sustaining, long-term organization that has the potential to compete most years.

Also, raising prices on some tickets for the first time in five years seems like less of an insult to fans than an admission of reality. How many major professional sports teams in North America haven't raised prices in five years? The O's have to be in a very tiny minority. Not only were the O's going backwards in attendance, but their revenues were going down at a higher rate compared to the competition that was often raising already higher prices on an annual basis.

And I am quite confident that Cliff Lee would have cost VASTLY more than "a tiny piece" of their MASN revenues. Lee would have cost $150M+ to come here, and estimates I've seen indicate MASN brings in less than $30M a year. Lee would have eaten up almost the entire (current) MASN revenue stream for the length of his contract.

[underdog]

Interesting... I wish gasoline, food, housing, clothing, etc have not gone up in over 3 years.

source

But they raised the price of game day ticket prices only last year, just to stick it to the guy who makes a spur of the moment decision to go to a baseball game, instead of paying months in advance to sit in a predominately empty stadium.

I just want the team to make people want to go to the games. I don't like being one of the few people I know who are still Oriole fans. It's a civic embarrassment to flip on MASN in the 5th inning on a Tuesday in May, and see 85% of the seats in our awesome ballpark empty, unless there is a team with a national following in town to inflate the attendance. Stop giving people more reasons to stay away!

[DuffMan]

If they win on a consistent basis the seats will be filled.

[DrungoHazewood]

But they raised the price of game day ticket prices only last year, just to stick it to the guy who makes a spur of the moment decision to go to a baseball game, instead of paying months in advance to sit in a predominately empty stadium.

I just want the team to make people want to go to the games. I don't like being one of the few people I know who are still Oriole fans. It's a civic embarrassment to flip on MASN in the 5th inning on a Tuesday in May, and see 85% of the seats in our awesome ballpark empty, unless there is a team with a national following in town to inflate the attendance. Stop giving people more reasons to stay away!

Why do you say it's sticking it to the guy? It's pretty standard industry practice, as in almost every team does it, to incentivize people to pick season tickets over single game tickets. That's the single biggest reason teams are building smaller and smaller stadiums today - to lower supply and force more people to buy tickets up front. If OPACY were built today it wouldn't have 40,000 seats.

[underdog]

I agree that the Orioles need to be careful with how they treat their fans, and that they shouldn't burn too many bridges if they want them to come back when they start winning again.

But...

Fans will come back when the team starts to win, and it's certainly debatable if the Orioles would win more games by over-paying to get top free agents to come to Baltimore. I think the way they're approaching building at team, while it has holes, is much more fundamentally sound than dropping $150M+ to try to get free agents to come here. Building up the farm system in conjunction with prudent acquisitions like Hardy and Reynolds is better for the long-term future of the team than Jayson Werth type deals.

That's how the O's can pay some respect to the fans: build a self-sustaining, long-term organization that has the potential to compete most years.

Also, raising prices on some tickets for the first time in five years seems like less of an insult to fans than an admission of reality. How many major professional sports teams in North America haven't raised prices in five years? The O's have to be in a very tiny minority. Not only were the O's going backwards in attendance, but their revenues were going down at a higher rate compared to the competition that was often raising already higher prices on an annual basis.

And I am quite confident that Cliff Lee would have cost VASTLY more than "a tiny piece" of their MASN revenues. Lee would have cost $150M+ to come here, and estimates I've seen indicate MASN brings in less than $30M a year. Lee would have eaten up almost the entire (current) MASN revenue stream for the length of his contract.

Assuming for the sake of argument that Comcast has 500,000 subscribers that have access to MASN programming (that number is absurdly low, considering the affiliates in other Comcast markets that carry MASN as well, not to mention afilliates of the Nationals, since the money all goes to the same place. I am sure the real number has to be at least twice that) Take the $3 monthly fee that each of those subscribers pays for MASN, that is $18 mil a year. That doesn't take into account any of the advertising revenues that the network brings in from the Orioles or the Nationals. They have been socking that money away and not reinvesting in the team since the Nats have been around. But a lot of people on this board are content with the ownership group keeping all that for themselves instead of putting it back into the team, as they promised they would at the inception of MASN. But they haven't signed a major free agent since 2004 (please correct me if I'm wrong, but the initial signing of Tejada is the last big one I remember. Anyone who tries to correct me with Ramon Hernandez should be slapped repeatedly). Cliff Lee is just an example of how it would be possible for the Orioles to improve themselves markedly in one stroke of the pen if they were truly committed to doing so. Doesn't anyone else even want to see them try?

To be fair, I agree that the best way to build a team for long- term success is through player development, and I applaud the efforts of the FO to improve things in that area, but in order to compete in the AL East, this must be accompanied by aggressive pursuit of some free agents. At least one big time player every 2-4 years This will be our 7th consecutive year of not landing a single big fish. They were way too quick to accept "no" as an answer from Teixeira. Worst case scenario, they could have made the Yankees spend a few million more to get him. Nobody is going to come here for market value because of our record, but by being unwilling to do what it takes makes us a non- participant in a process that is essential for contending in this division (and no, I don't consider offering Adam Dunn a pay cut as participation).

As fans, we need to encourage the FO to do more, not defend them for doing less.

[BaltimoreTerp]

But they raised the price of game day ticket prices only last year, just to stick it to the guy who makes a spur of the moment decision to go to a baseball game, instead of paying months in advance to sit in a predominately empty stadium.

I just want the team to make people want to go to the games. I don't like being one of the few people I know who are still Oriole fans. It's a civic embarrassment to flip on MASN in the 5th inning on a Tuesday in May, and see 85% of the seats in our awesome ballpark empty, unless there is a team with a national following in town to inflate the attendance. Stop giving people more reasons to stay away!

First, the Orioles are saying that their walkups were virtually identical to the previous season, so the additional fee affected essentially nobody.

Second, the Orioles could lower prices to $10 for all seats, general admission, force the concessionaire to halve the cost of food, subsidize parking in their own and surrounding downtown lots...and still draw under 50% capacity (they were at ~47% last season) until they start winning. Only then they won't have any money available to do anything with the success.

[underdog]

Why do you say it's sticking it to the guy? It's pretty standard industry practice, as in almost every team does it, to incentivize people to pick season tickets over single game tickets. That's the single biggest reason teams are building smaller and smaller stadiums today - to lower supply and force more people to buy tickets up front. If OPACY were built today it wouldn't have 40,000 seats.

Jon, I really appreciate having this debate with you. I have been on here long enough to know that your posts are thought out and much more enlightened than "if you don't like it, don't go".

What you are saying is that they haven't increased ticket prices in 5 years, when in fact they did so within the last 12 months, for people who don't wish to but their tickets in advance. The fact that other teams do it too is irrelevant. It is still an increase.

And if OPACY was being built today, unless our divisional opponents to the northeast were in town, they would be in fine shape with only half of those 40,000 seats a vast majority of the time. But I find it hard to believe that is what Oriole fans would prefer. These days, it looks like it was a waste to put in the upper deck on most nights. Nobody really cares that the team has expressed rational excuses for stinking, both on the field and at the box office. We just want it to stop. I want demand for seats here to be so great that we will go see the O's at Fenway because it is a bargain, because all the seats here were sold in January, and anything on StubHub is hundreds of dollars. I want want New Yorkers and Bostonians to not even consider coming here because Oriole fans are so into our team, that all the tickets were sold out months before the first pitch. If you think that this is far fetched, consider that there is another team in town that already accomplishes that, and I have a ticket stub from a fall day in Foxboro to prove it. And the host team wasn't even in 5th place.

[BaltimoreTerp]

Jon, I really appreciate having this debate with you. I have been on here long enough to know that your posts are thought out and much more enlightened than "if you don't like it, don't go".

What you are saying is that they haven't increased ticket prices in 5 years, when in fact they did so within the last 12 months, for people who don't wish to but their tickets in advance. The fact that other teams do it too is irrelevant. It is still an increase.

And if OPACY was being built today, unless our divisional opponents to the northeast were in town, they would be in fine shape with only half of those 40,000 seats a vast majority of the time. But I find it hard to believe that is what Oriole fans would prefer. These days, it looks like it was a waste to put in the upper deck on most nights. Nobody really cares that the team has expressed rational excuses for stinking, both on the field and at the box office. We just want it to stop. I want demand for seats here to be so great that we will go see the O's at Fenway because it is a bargain, because all the seats here were sold in January, and anything on StubHub is hundreds of dollars. I want want New Yorkers and Bostonians to not even consider coming here because Oriole fans are so into our team, that all the tickets were sold out months before the first pitch. If you think that this is far fetched, consider that there is another team in town that already accomplishes that, and I have a ticket stub from a fall day in Foxboro to prove it. And the host team wasn't even in 5th place.

Why do you act as though you are the only person who wants that?

The thing is, none of that matters until the team wins. And there's very little fans can do to change that outside of giving up and spending their money elsewhere.

That's what "Fine, don't go," (what I actually said, not what you think I said) means. Either continue watching (and increasing the ad revenue) and going to games and understand what that means as a fan and a critic, or stop going and watching and actually do something.

[underdog]

If they win on a consistent basis the seats will be filled.

Baltimore has great baseball fans. Even a .500 team would double their gameday revenue if we played everyone tough. You are correct Duff.

[crowmst3k!]

Baltimore has great baseball fans. Even a .500 team would double their gameday revenue if we played everyone tough. You are correct Duff.

Let's rewind to last August: The last game of the eventual three game sweep of the Angels to start the Buck Showalter era was on.

The Orioles were buried in last place and it was not even close.

That broadcast on MASN was the most watched show in the market at the timeslot for that night. THE MOST WATCHED. People definitely care about their Orioles, and with some improvement on the field, they'll show that with their wallets.