From: snichols@adobe.com (Sherri Nichols)
Subject: Re: Frank Jordan strikes again
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 16:30:50 GMT

In article <71655@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>I wouldn't count on them. The Brewers are strongly against going into the
>NL, and the Mariners haven't said much at all about it, but since AL teams
>and NL teams are structured differently (because of the DH) and it'd affect
>players, contracts, strategies, farm clubs and lots of other issues, it's a
>long-term issue and not something to be decided quickly (at least, decided
>quickly in the affirmative). It's a lot different doing an NL/AL swap than
>East/West.

Agreed, I don't think it will happen, but I read one of the owners other
than Bud Selig talking about it a day or so ago.  

>Here we disagree. The A's have done a better job of marketing their team,
>but they have a better stadium to start from and more control of the various
>aspects like parking and concessions. 

Agreed.  I absolutely agree that Candlestick is a drag on attendance; I
just think the Giants could have done a better job even with Candlestick.
Keeping Candlestick cleaner, for example, would help.  

>The bottom line, though, is that this is a 3 million a year attendance
>market in an average year. Unless both teams are in the hunt, baseball is
>going to sell no more than 3 million seats. 3.5 maybe, but not four.

I'm not convinced of that.  

>Candlestick is such a deterrence that even when  the Giants play well and
>the A's don't, the A's draw better (taking into consideration the difference
>in counting procedures in the league).

That hasn't always been the case.  Remember the 70s?  The A's built a great
team, but drew terribly.  And it wasn't that long ago (1985) that the A's
were supposedly on the way to Denver.  

> When both teams went to the World
>series we broke 4 million, but that's not a situation you base marketing
>on.

Actually, if you do things right, your big boost in attendance should come
the year *after* you go to the Series.  Check out St. Louis attendance
sometime.  

>And it'd STILL be a dump. They tried day ball. They tried the Croix. They
>tried early family nights and alcohol free family sections. I don't think
>there's much more they can do with the facility they're given. If they could
>have done it better, Sherri, what kind of things should they have tried?
>Remember that they have limited control over concessionaires and parking and
>facility modification.

I mentioned cleanliness earlier.  But there are aspects to marketing the
team outside of the stadium.  Take for example the year of the lockout,
1990.  The beginning of the season was delayed.  I held tickets to the home
openers of both the A's and the Giants.  The A's policy in this situation
was that if you bought a ticket to the home opener, you had a ticket to the
home opener, no matter when it was played.  If you didn't like that, you
could get a full refund.  The Giants policy was that if you bought a ticket
to the home opener, you had a ticket to a game between the Giants and the
Braves that would be played in early October, and if you didn't like that,
you could go to the box office and exchange that ticket for another game,
but you could not get a refund.  Points to the A's.

>(and it should be "millionaire businessman who's been spending $3-5 million
>a year for the last 5-8 years in losses on the team in the hopes of getting
>that new stadium he was promised four times", but that's a nitpick)

And it's a nitpick with no evidence other than the statement of the
millionaire businessman who wants us to buy him a stadium.

>And the primary beneficiary would be the citizens of the region who, because
>the stadium wasn't built, is losing their team. Yeah. Lurie's really losing
>out on this deal.

Whoa.  I'll accept that baseball fans would benefit from a new stadium, but
"citizens of the region"?  That's where we run into problems.

>Bottom line: if the stadium was built, we'd have a team.

Bottom line: we do have a team.

Sherri Nichols
snichols@adobe.com