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Poor performance, unfavorable schedule leave attendance short of projections
By Sheldon Ocker
Beacon Journal sportswriter
Published on Monday, Jun 30, 2008
CLEVELAND: The Indians are paying for their losing record at the gate.
At the outset of the season, the executive vice president of business, Dennis Lehman, and his lieutenants projected attendance would rise from 2.2 million last year to 2.5 million this season.
So far they are 145,000 short of the incremental goal after 43 dates, despite being on target in two important areas.
''Our full-season ticket sales and group sales are right around the plan,'' Lehman said Sunday. ''The challenge is in individual-game sales.''
Virtually all season tickets and most group tickets are sold before the season and are dependent on expectations for the team based on its performance the previous year and offseason moves.
Individual-game ticket sales are more of a reflection of the current state of the club and outside factors, such as the weather.
The Tribe probably hasn't played in rain more than usual, but even if dark clouds and showers arrive in the afternoon and disappear by game time, attendance is affected.
''Last Thursday, there was a crawl on TV for two hours in the afternoon about storms in the area,'' Lehman said. ''When people are making a decision whether to come to the game, they see that and figure they'll go another time. But there's nothing we can do about that.''
When school lets out for the summer and the weather turns warm, the Indians can reliably depend on substantial weekend crowds. One problem with this year's schedule is that there are too many home dates in April and May.
Consequently, a four-game weekend series against the New York Yankees in April lured 119,519 to Progressive Field. The July 10-13 weekend series against the Tampa Bay Rays is likely to be a bigger draw. Two weekends later, a three-game series against the Minnesota Twins already has sold 85,000 tickets.
In anticipation that the Indians and Detroit Tigers would be battling for the Central Division championship in September, fans have purchased more than 80,000 tickets for the final home series of the season.
''We have such a small inventory of games (in prime months), weekends have to be gangbusters,'' Lehman said. ''So if we can get hot, we'll be fine.''
To date, the club has sold almost 2 million tickets for the season. Last year, it took until the end of July to reach that total.
Including Sunday's crowd of 37,079, attendance for 43 home dates is 1,142,409, an average of 26,568. Last year after 43 dates, the average was 24,327 and a total of 1,046,077.
Sheldon Ocker can be reached at socker@thebeaconjournal.com.
CLEVELAND: The Indians are paying for their losing record at the gate.
Get the full article here.
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