Yesterday I got an envelope in the mail from the A’s regarding postseason tickets. As fans in the 2000’s, we got used to getting a bit of price gouging, with bleacher seats often going for as much as $35. Imagine my surprise, then, when I took a look at the pricing table and saw no change from existing season ticket prices. Keep in mind that the season ticket prices listed below are for non-premium games. Shocking, really.
Parking for all 10 games is $191. Broken down by round, that’s $17 per game for the ALDS and $20 per game for the ALCS and World Series.
A couple of conditions:
- Deadline is September 15 to pay for tickets
- If you buy a full game strip, credit for unplayed games can either be applied to 2011 season tickets or refunded. Those buying less than full strips must accept credit towards 2011 season tickets.
Would the pricing strategy be different if the A’s were in first place, instead of 8.5 games out as September begins? Who knows? Whatever the motivation, this is a great gesture towards fans.
newballpark.org 
When do they ship the tickets out? Sign up, get the tickets, get a refund and have a unique & silly souvenir.
The post season is highly unlikely. I do remember winning the “lottery” for A’s World Series tickets in 2006. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it.
Great gesture my patootie. They’re just trying to optimize their free money as they always do this time of year. Of *course* they’d be charging more for the tickets if they were in first place. This isn’t really about the ticket prices so much. It’s about this: “How can we get as much money sent to us for two-to-nine months so we can collect the interest on it instead of our customers.” As they say in Moneyball, “Be the house.” Or in this case, “Be the bank.” Even when I was a full season ticket holder, I always refused to do this, as I hate being on the wrong end of a bad deal.
@Ken Arneson – The $27 they might get from me for a single bleacher strip for the ALDS is infinitesimal compared to the $30+ million revenue sharing check they’ll get in December. Hell, all of the postseason proceeds combined don’t add up to that check. And if the A’s do go on an impossible run and the Rangers fall flat, what is that? Lost potential revenue since they could’ve legitimately charged more.
Teams do this stuff. One year the Sharks were having an awful, abysmal season. But just before they were mathematically eliminated from post-season contention, they sent out playoff ticket invoices, noting the playoffs were “still possible.” That’s an interest-free loan from the ticketholder to the team, which then collects interest itself.
Nice gesture to the fans? What a load of crap. The A’s have zero chance at making the playoffs – this is just a lame way of ownership claiming they are fan freindly and getting interest on free money.
The revenue sharing check is completely irrelevant to this issue. The question is, does this pricing structure for the playoffs maximize the A’s revenues or not?
All sports teams want their customers to prepay their tickets as much as possible. Playoff tickets, season tickets, individual game tickets, whatever. The more they prepay, the more you maximize your revenues.
Prepaid playoff tickets do two things to maximize revenues:
1) You get to keep the money for awhile to collect interest
2) You psychologically lock season ticket holders into renew for next season with a partial prepayment (since even if your team makes and advances in the playoffs, you usually don’t play all the potential games)
At a 0.5%-2.6% chance of making the playoffs (depending on your favorite Baseball Prospectus algorithm), how are you going to maximize the amount of money that season ticket holders send in to prepay their playoff tickets? Obviously, by keeping the price low.
Sure there’s a 2.6% chance that this isn’t the optimal revenue strategy. But there’s a 97.4% chance that this isn’t a grand gesture, it’s just basic economic revenue-maximizing behavior.
@Ken Arneson – I understand what you’re saying, and it crossed my mind more than once before I posted. But consider this.
I pay $27 for the 3 ALDS games. They sit on that money for let’s say 4 months, which is about the time I expect to renew (a given). If they put that $27 in an account earning 0.4% monthly, they get a grand total of 43 cents. It cost them more to mail the offer out.
On average, they could make $17.50 per fan over six months, if 10,000 full strips were purchased ($700 per strip, 2.5% return over six months). What’s the yield there? $175,000. Many people would apply their credit towards season ticket renewals in the offing, further reducing that figure. In the grand scheme of things revenue-wise, that’s a rounding error.
So the 3rd deck will still be tarped? Stupid. Price it affordably and you may sell them out, including maybe Mt. Davis. I doubt if they’ll make the playoffs, but that will be one hell of a finish and there may be some interest in playoff tix.
I still got my tix stubs from the 1989 playoffs and WS . $35 for playoffs, $50 for WS, great seats in section 220. Only got to see the first 2 games of each series and had to sell my unused ones back. I recall the set of 4 tickets to all 8 games was $1360 but got half of it, or $680, returned.
Ken, I assume since you’re bitching about the current pricing structure, you have something better in mind?
Teams with the potential of making the playoffs will always be faced with this situation. You have to allow for a certain amount of lead time in order to be able to process the ticket orders. Because the A’s are so far out of first place, I assume most STH will wait until the last minute to decide whether to purchase post season tickets, I know I will. This means ticket services will have roughly 3 weeks to process the orders and get that information over to the printers for the printing and mailing of tickets. In the meantime, ticket services will then have to start accepting and processing orders for non-season ticketholders.
If it’s pricing you’re complaining about, here’s a comparision of Giants vs. A’s playoff tickets.
A’s – MVP section 116 (behind homeplate) $38.00 – $55.00 – $225.00
Giants – Club Level Outfield (3rd base/bullpen) $80.00 – $115.00 – $210.00
Giants – Field Club Premium (behind homeplate) $115.00 – $160.00 – $300.00
I don’t think A’s fans have anything to complain about. As you can see, these prices are pretty sweet.
I’m not bitching about the pricing structure. I’m just saying that it’s exactly what you would do if you were trying to maximize revenues. Hence, this isn’t a “grand gesture”. It’s just business as usual, no big deal.
Another point: a $175,000 rounding error can buy you a pretty good prospect in the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. If they had bid another $175,000 on Aroldis Chapman, he’d likely be throwing 105 mph fastballs in the A’s bullpen right now instead of Cincinnati’s, and we’d be psyched beyond belief about next year’s pitching staff. I don’t want the A’s to throw $175,000 away. I want them to maximize revenues.
@Ken – So you approve and disapprove of this at the same time? That sounds like what you’re saying. That’s why I mentioned the revenue sharing bit. $175,000 doesn’t mean much when they get $30 million in revenue sharing every December. It’s not going to be the difference maker for an Aroldis Chapman.
1. I approve the A’s trying to maximize their revenues
2. I approve me trying to maximize my own personal revenues and minimizing my own personal expenses
3. Where (1) and (2) conflict, I disapprove any bad deals for myself, but approve all my fellow A’s fans falling for the bad deals in order to benefit the team and myself.
4. All of this is basic economics playing itself out, so I disapprove calling this a “grand gesture”
$175,000 is about how much they lost the Aroldis Chapman bidding by, which is why I mentioned it.