WEATHER THERE IS A PROBLEM

Jeff Passan sees a potential MLB problem. In his latest column, he sees a pattern of attendance drop-off in large numbers, notwithstanding the horrible national weather.

After a weekend records for game  postponements, attendance is down precipitously, enough that one league official expressed concern that this isn’t simply a manifestation of the weather but something deeper and more troublesome for the game.

“I’m worried,” and executive told Passan. “The tanking scares me.”

Inside front offices all spring, officials wondered whether the significant number of teams that neither spent in free agency nor harbored realistic notions of contention would have a tangible, negative effect on fans attending games. The early numbers are chilling.

Compared to last season at this juncture, the Boston Red Sox are down about 2,500 fans a game. For the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, it’s nearly 5,000. The Cleveland Indians’ average crowd has dropped more than 5,000, the Texas Rangers’ more than 7,000 and the Pittsburgh Pirates more than 7,500. The Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals each are in the 8,000-fan range, and the Miami Marlins are pushing 10,000. The most severe is the Baltimore Orioles, who have played six games at home and are at almost 16,000 fewer per.

Even if some are obviously weather-related, the numbers are nevertheless staggering. The average crowd of 27,532 over the 221 MLB games played this season is about 2,700 fans per game lower than last year through the same point. Over the course of a full season, that would amount to a drop of more than 6.5 million fans.

Now, the last time the league suffered through an April with more postponements than this was 2007. Over the first 225 games that season, the average crowd was 29,888. By the end of the year, that number leaped to 32,704 per game for a total of more than 79.5 million, still the largest attendance figure in the game’s history.

However, last season drew only 73 million fans.  A projected decline of 6. 5 million would be a 8.9 percent decline in attendance. Or at least $325 million in lost gate revenue to the owners.

Weather may have been an early factor. But the high cost of attending games and younger children not playing the sport as much due to school, video games and other entertainment options are other factors to consider. The King of American Sports, the NFL, saw a large decline in TV ratings. Some attributed it to the anthem protests. Others thought it was because parents have stopped allowing their children to play contact football because of concussions. If kids don't play the games they watch on TV, they will likely not watch those games as adults.

TICKET HIKE

On average, Cub ticket prices for 2016 will go up approximately 10 percent.

The number of marquee games also has been increased from nine to 14 in the bowl and the bleachers, while one section of outfield terrace reserve has been reclassified to corner box reserve, with a 38 percent increase.

Colin Faulkner, senior vice president of sales and partnerships, said the team's annual analysis of ticket sales from 2015, along with its renewal numbers, the waiting list for tickets and the huge demand for postseason tickets, led to the team's highest increase since 2010.

"We've clearly seen an increase in demand, so that helped factor into an increase in our prices," Faulkner said. "Our goal is to remain competitive for the long term and provide value to our fans for a competitive baseball team, but also (value) in their tickets."

Faulkner said a team analysis found there was a 20 percent increase in 2015 for tickets on the secondary market over 2014, while postseason tickets were going for three to four times face value.
The first payment deadline of 20 percent is Dec. 2, with the full amount due Jan. 12. Faulkner said the majority of fans have put their postseason ticket refunds for the unplayed playoff games (Game 5 of the NLCS and three World Series games) toward next year's tickets.

In other words, the Cubs are trying to capture some of the "secondary market" value of Cub tickets. This goes back to the philosophy that ownership seethes about: no one but the Cubs should make money off the Cubs. The spike in prices for post season tickets is a natural occurrence and a benefit to season ticket holders who paid for years of dreadful teams. But the Cubs only want the team to profit from its success.

The Cubs had the third-highest average ticket price in the game in 2015, according to Team Marketing Report. They finished sixth in major-league attendance at 2.959 million fans after ranking 11th at 2.562 million in 2014.

The Trib reports  the increases will range from about 7 percent in the upper box midfield/outfield to 14.5 percent in upper infield reserve to more than the 38 percent increase in some of the newly reclassified terrace boxes.

The highest average ticket price, a club infield box, is $105.24 per game, or $118 with the 12 percent amusement tax added. The lowest, upper deck outfield reserve, is $20.37, or about $23 with the amusement tax. Bleacher tickets remain about the same, from $16 to $65 before taxes, though the addition of marquee games will increase the total price.

One section of the terrace reserved outfield, affecting about 900 seats, or about 350 season-ticket holders, will be reclassified.

"Those are going up 43 percent," Faulkner said. "We found the first five or six rows are much different than the seats that could potentially be in Row 28-29 or 30 at the back of those sections."

SPENDING MONEY TO MAKE MONEY

SB Nation (via another publication) calculates that the Blue Jays trading deadline moves not only helped the club vault into first place but also helped the bottom line.

When the Blue Jays traded Jose Reyes and prospects for Troy Tulowitzki, no money exchanged hands. Tulowitzki was owed $94 million after this season and Reyes was owed $48 million. That means the Blue Jays assumed an extra an extra $46 million. It was a risk. Except, the Blue Jays have already made that money back.  From Financial Post:

Overall, (Team Marketing) estimates that group of four would pay $270.43 for the whole trip to the ball game, just a few dollars over the MLB average.

That works out to $67.61 per person. Multiply that by 465,000 more bums in seats and you’ve got a whopping $31.4 million — more than triple the extra spending on salaries.

I recall when Harry Carey commanded the Wrigley Field press box. A Tribune executive secretly whispered that Carey was the most underpaid person in the organization. Why? Because he brought in fans to the ball park. But beyond mere attendance, he brought in beer drinking fans (the most profitable segment of concession sales.)

For example, another 10,000 in ticket sales per game by fans drinking $7 worth of beer for a home season calculates to $5.67 million. Plus Carey was a great ambassador for the beer company, who would spend millions more on ball park advertising.

WHAT YOU PAY FOR

"You get what you pay for."

That is an old saying, usually referring to underpaying for a product then finding out that it is quite inferior to another similar product.

I have heard from several Cubs season ticket holders who continue to pay the major league prices for a vastly inferior product.

Some admit they are dumb for continuing to pay thousands of dollars on season seats at Wrigley. They like baseball. They like Wrigley. They are Cub fans. But they are not fans of the team as it currently is constructed for 2014.

They admit that they understand the baseball rebuilding plan, but it is hard to swallow a team tanking three seasons in a row.  They are coming down on the side that the front office could do their minor league rebuilding program but also field a competitive team. They cite even the White Sox 2014 turnaround as an example. They also find the Cardinals, who consistently draft lower than the Cubs, being able to bring up their prospects faster to the majors.

Then there are those who are angry. Many in this group gave up and canceled their season ticket packages. Some say they had been season ticket holders for decades. They felt they were being played for fools: paying premium prices for minor league games. They felt they deserved a major league, i.e. competitive team, which is what ownership said it was going to strive for when Ricketts took over the club. They don't feel it is their responsibility or obligation to fund the Ricketts expansion plans which seem to constrict what the baseball team can do, financially.

There would be less distrust, anger or resentment from the paying Cub fan if there was a secondary market to unload their expensive tickets. But that market collapsed when the Cubs lost 100 games. It is nearly impossible to give away Cubs tickets. Not even a casual fan wants to spend the effort to go see the Cubs when there is a 60 percent chance they will lose the game.

And when the Cubs market the team the past few years, it was under the guile that fans should continue to come out and "see the future" core players in action. Well, Castro and Rizzo have been up for a while, and they may be part of the future - - - but they are no longer young prospects. The marketing department got ahead of the actual baseball team player development. This leads to a perception of a disconnected organization.

In a similar light, long time Cub standard bearer, WGN, decided it was not getting what it was paying for in local broadcast rights.  With some late season games registering a zero rating, and the station losing money on every game, WGN sought to renegotiate the contract. Too bad season ticket holders can't renegotiate their ticket prices during the season. But WGN bowed out and will no longer be the flagship station for the Cubs. Many fans think this a bad milestone for the franchise.

Cubs fans are willing to pay premium dollars for baseball. But they are not willing to pay for bad baseball. That past golden goose is cooked.

MONDAY MORNING MATH

Sunday was the best weather so far this season.

But of the 26,712 announced as tickets sold Sunday, it was estimated that 14,000 showed up. This was the smallest paid crowd on a Sunday at Wrigley Field since May 10, 1998 (26,710).

The no show rate was 45.5% of tickets sold. Wow.

If we take the estimated "season ticket holders" of only 16,000, that means only 10,712 non-season ticket holders bought tickets to see the game. Which means approximately 6,000 season ticket holders (37.5%) failed to show up for the game. But the no show rate was higher!  That means at least  8 percent of non-season ticket holders who specifically bought tickets for Sunday's game decided at the last minute to NOT go to Wrigley Field.

Sunday's attendance was also down 12,000 from Opening Day, which itself was a 31.7% drop at the turn styles. There appears to be no groundswell of public wanting to "celebrate" Wrigley Field.

OPENING DAZE

The email blasts have been coming from the Cubs. Opening Day tickets still available.

From what we gather, there are a lot available.

The green sections show where tickets are available. Some have calculated based upon the Cubs and other ticket sites that there is approximately 12,000 unsold seats for Opening Day.

That would make the projected opening day attendance at around 29,600 based on current capacity of 41,600.

Past Cub openers:

2013 40,083
2012 41,176
2011 41,358
2009 40,077
2008 41,089
2007 41,388
2006 40,869
2005 39,892
2004 40,483
2003 29,138
2002 41,555
2001 38,466


This projects to the worst opening day crowd in a decade.

NOSTAGLIA

Just what is the Cubs selling?

The team is at a marketing crossroads. For the past several months, executives continually state that they won't tell their fans how to spend their money, but they should continue to come to Cubs games to experience the progress in the grand rebuilding plan for the future. The executives claim that fans who ride out these bad years will get a better sense of happiness or sense of accomplishment when the team eventually turns around.

It is a soft sell approach. But the hard truth is that the 2014 team will not feature any new pieces to the rebuilding puzzle. The first two "core" players, Starlin Castro and Anthony Rizzo, regressed in 2013. It will be years away when the touted prospects in the low minors will have a chance to make the major league roster.

Long time Chicagoan and sports fan, Hub Arkush, the past publisher of Pro Football Weekly, recently said that he was a Cubs season ticket holder for more than 20 years. But when it came time to renew his Cub season tickets, he made the decision to give them up. He explained that he could not give away his unused tickets last season. He said that the way he views the rebuilding plan, the Cubs will not be competitive for two, three or four more years. Based on that viewpoint, he said it was not worth spending $25,000 for a 2014 season ticket package, let alone $75,000 for the next three years of the same bad team.

You can see his point. A business decision finally outweighed a fan decision. In an economy that still in-flux, $25,000 to $75,000 is a lot of money to spend on a luxury item such as entertainment. That type of savings could pay for a most of a state college education, a down payment on a house or a major cushion for retirement.

So the Cubs are selling The Future. Hope.

But it will be 69 years since the Cubs last played in a World Series. That is really two full generations of fans that have lived under the Hope banner. At a certain point in time, Hope turns into Harsh Reality.

What does a fan expect when he or she buys a ticket? They expect their team to win. In baseball, a small market team with limited resources that fields a replacement level quality squad would be expected to only win 30 percent of their games. An average but competitive team would be expected to win 50 percent of their games. A championship caliber team would be expected to win 60 percent of their games. There is a much closer gap between a championship caliber team and a .500 club than a .500 club and AAAA team. It is the closer gap between 50 and 60 percent expectation that should drive attendance because people will know that it is more than likely their team will win the game.

So what is a baseball team's owner's role? It depends on how the owner views his ownership of the team. In a corporate setting, where executives have to answer to shareholders, the concern is profits. If the owner is a wealthy individual or family, profit may be a concern but at times it is will to win that is controlling baseball decisions. So there are is a spectrum gulf in ownership strategy, from pure profits to having a fan's expectations.

The idea that you want fans to come to your team's games with the "hope" that the team will win is not the same as fielding a team that has the opportunity to win the game. The former has a 20 percent or more chance it will not win the game, which is a significant variation from the average.

So what keeps the Wrigley Field turn styles spinning?

There is a part of the fan base that is so absorbed in the Cub culture that they will come to support their team without any expectations; like patients who love to go to the dentist to get their teeth drilled.

There is a part of the fan base that likes baseball that they will come to see the stars of other teams play at Wrigley Field; like historians mentally documenting their era of their favorite sport.

There is part of the fan base that is there to experience and pass down to the next generation the aura and history of baseball. Tom Ricketts has been adamant that he is not running a museum, but the perception of many fans is that 100 year old Wrigley Field, with its ivy covered brick walls, manual scoreboard, antiquated restroom troughs and city neighborhood setting is a rare moment of the national past time frozen in time. A grandparent cannot take their grandson to Petco Field and point to the field and tell a story that the great Babe Ruth stood their during championship game; but he could at Wrigley Field.

The easiest thing to sell Americans is nostalgia. It is an easy sell because it tugs at the fond memories from someone's past. A weekend game at Wrigley Field used to be a family outing. A tradition. An experience. A father with a young family may want to rekindle what he experienced as boy with his children. He could go to Wrigley Field and find it exactly the same as he remembered it.

There is a societal comfort level in such touchstones. A culture built upon strong institutions will survive longer than those who do not have strong bonds with the people. In a small way, the Cubs and Wrigley Field are a city institution. But there are cracks developing in that foundation.

The Cubs cannot sell nostalgia if ownership dramatically changes Wrigley Field. There are many fans who came to Wrigley and found the RF party deck and LED scoreboard totally out of place. It was not in character with the traditional cathedral of baseball. It ruined the symmetry and sight lines of the outfield walls. The plan to add a jumbrotron and large beer sign in RF bleachers will further erode the iconic vision of Wrigley Field as a time capsule to the past. To most, the new elements will detract from the beauty of old Wrigley Field; it would begin to look like any other cookie cutter stadium design.  It is clear that the Ricketts have no plans to preserve Wrigley Field for the purists, traditionalists or the past generations.

Change is a natural cycle in life. But dramatic change creates dramatic results, some of which have unintended consequences. Many fans may become disillusioned or turned off by the commercialism if they are looking for the Ernie Banks statue but find it lost amongst a congested mini-Times Square of electronic advertising signs and beer carts. Many fans may become disillusioned or turned off by the changes inside the ball park: the additional party decks, advertising signage, aggressive non-stop concession stands. The consequence could be that portion of the fan base which likes Wrigley Field for its nostalgia factor will no longer come to the games because the their memories have no further connection to the new Wrigley.

It would seem that new ownership has dismissed the powerful draw of nostalgia as it relates to Wrigley Field when it created its new business plan. A business plan which does not focus solely on the Cubs team, but tries to create a multi-purpose entertainment complex.

DARK CLOUD

If there is a dark cloud hovering over the Cubs, it may be tied to its loyal fan base.

The Cubs have sent out a notice requiring season ticket holders to put down an immediate deposit for next year's tickets. It signals that the team needs to accelerate its off-season cash flow after another losing season.

A losing season that showed a remarkable number of no-shows at games. It is estimated that out of the 2.6 million tickets sold for Wrigley games, 820,000 people did not show up to watch. Even if the no shows only spend an extra $10 during the game, that is $8.2 million in lost revenue (which was almost 10 percent of the opening day team payroll.)

But the more worrisome trend for the bean counters is that if those 820,000 no shows turn into non-ticket buyers. With the Cubs estimating that each patron is worth $25-$50 per head, that could turn into a $30.75 million revenue shortfall in 2014 if the Cubs paid attendance falls to 1.8 million.

The last time the Cubs fell to 1.8 million attendance was the last year of the Jim Frey era, in 1986, when the team finished 70-90 after two good previous seasons.

The idea of losing baseball income at the same time as spending hundreds of millions of dollars on construction projects is a huge lose-lose for the Cubs. No wonder the Cubs have not pushed forward with any major reconstruction projects this off-season.

The Cubs have been historically bad. Under Ricketts ownership, the team has amassed a record 375 losses in four years. Under Epstein's leadership, the Cubs have lost a record 197 games in two seasons. The closest previous mark was 193 losses in 1965-1966 and 1961-1962.

Supporters of The Plan continue to state that the Cubs had to lose games in order to rebuild their organization from the ground up. Except, that is a partial fallacy. The rebuilding of the minor league system by signing young prospects has little immediate impact on the major league roster. Yes, the team may lump all the costs and expenses of player development and MLB payrolls, but those aspects are separate and distinct. By lumping a new farm system with the current team, the Cubs have managed to divert attention to the major league roster towards the glowing reports of future stars.

But fans pay big money to watch a major league team play at Wrigley Field. And in the past four seasons, that has been a difficult proposition.

Also, the part of the fan base that continued to go to Wrigley Field just to go to Wrigley is also in decline. Older sentimental fans are reaching retirement age, on fixed incomes, and may not be able to afford season ticket packages. This has been reflected with the loss of large group sales during the summer from out-of-state tour groups. The problem is that this fan base will be lost because their Wrigley Field is going to dramatically change with the addition of a jumbotron and more signage.

Further, season ticket holders must now ponder whether the new front office actually can pull off their grand plan. Their major league talent evaluations and veteran signings have not been very good (as the team record shows). And it is a hard Castor oil pitch to tell existing season ticket holders that they should keep their seats for several more years of bad Cubs teams in order to have a front row perch when the prospects arrive to turn things around. It is no longer "Wait Till Next Year," but "Wait Several More Years." A premium ticket price to watch a AAA team is no bargain in any major league city.

The Cubs are coming to a narrow cross roads. The historic losing is turning off loyal fans. The Ricketts business model of full houses no matter what the team record has been shown to be a mistake. The transformation of Wrigley and the surrounding properties is no guarantee of success on the diamond. We may be watching a major market franchise fall through the mid-market team level to struggle as a small market team for years to come.

PURISTS

A local columnist brought his son to Wrigley Field in late September not to watch lousy baseball but to have his son experience Wrigley Field before its jumbotronic advertising make-over.

Which leads to an interesting point. How many baseball purists come to Wrigley Field because Wrigley is a time machine to the golden age of baseball a century ago?

It may be more than one thinks.

There was quite the uproar when Ricketts took out the RF seats to create his own "mini-Green Monster" wall and party deck. It still must sting in criticism because if you notice during Cub broadcasts, the cameras do not pan into the RF corner to show this change in architecture.

And that RF project was out of character for the ball park. To some, it is a hideous boil on the face of the franchise.

And now, new signage and a huge electronic scoreboard has been approved for LF and RF. It will be a dramatic change from the current sight lines of most fans in the inner bowl. It will also clash with the iconic manual CF scoreboard (which begs the question, what will it be used for when you have a jumbotron three times larger in LF?)

Ricketts gets quite upset when people criticize his  Wrigley rehab plans. "I'm not running a museum," is his favorite counter-punch. But in reality, he is running a museum called Wrigley Field. He sells guided tours before the games. The Cub fan base grew up with the old charm of a historic landmark. Many came to games because they were played at their Wrigley Field.

But that is all about to change.

In the next two years we will find out how much of the Cub ticket buyers were coming out to the park just to go to Wrigley Field for a day to soak up its history rather than watching bad baseball. Attendance declines may accelerate in proportion to the changes inside Wrigley Field.

Ownership claims that it needs these drastic changes into order to get new revenue streams in order to field a competitive team. But after tanking two seasons and gutting the old ball park, the purists may find no reason to return even if the Cubs turn around their losing ways.