It wasn’t long ago that the Dodgers were one of the hottest tickets in LA and one of the top drawing teams in baseball. This year, the Dodgers are eighth in MLB in home attendance (according to ESPN’s figures), trailing their neighbors to the south, the Angels by nearly 2,000 fans per game. The drop in attendance is due to several factors.
The top reason most fans with whom I associate aren’t attending games is because they’re too expensive. Ticket prices have doubled under the McCourt regime, and keep in mind this is only their seventh year as owners. The next reason far fewer fans are attending games is because they don’t want to support the McCourts. This has to do with the revelations about their embarrassing and offensive spending habits that emerged during their hideous divorce trial. Third, the Bryan Stow beating on Opening Day created such negative publicity it turned many fans off from wanting to attend games.
Now that the team is being overseen by MLB and in danger of not being able to meet May’s payroll obligations, they’re getting extremely desperate to sell tickets.
LBS contributor Sam Ahn pointed out to us that the Dodgers are offering a special on Yelp for next week’s Dodgers-Giants series:
I know midweek games are tougher to sellout than weekend games, but you typically don’t see the Dodgers putting together half-off promotions like that for a series against the rival Giants. Maybe the Bryan Stow beating is scaring people away from attending Giants-Dodgers games (or Dodgers games in general).
Now if the Yelp special wasn’t enough, the Dodgers also announced that they’re having a 30-hour sale offering $30 tickets to the Dodgers-Brewers game on Monday May 16th. As Darren Rovell pointed out, the ticket special is in recognition of Andre Ethier’s recent 30-game hitting streak.
As I said, there was a time when the Dodgers didn’t need to resort to offers like these to sell tickets … and that time was only two years ago. It must mean the team is really desperate to sell tickets in order to help meet payroll. Honestly, the only way to reinvigorate ticket sales at Dodger Stadium is with new ownership. The fans are waiting to come out to the stadium again, they just need a good reason (besides special deals).
