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Anaheim Angels: We Don't Need Poor Fans, and We Don't Want Them
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2015/06/anaheim_angels_poor_fans.phpAnaheim Angels of Anaheim beat reporter Pedro Moura has been on fire all season, and really since he began a couple of years ago at the paper. He has broken stories, pilloried owner Arte Moreno for his increasingly tyrannical ways, and done this in an environment where he has to deal with some of the most thin-skinned fans in sports. But Moura published a jaw-dropper of a piece yesterday in a most-interesting vein: social inequality.
Moura and other Halos writers have recently focused on the Angels' dramatic drop in attendance this season--they're on track to attract less than 3 million fans this year, which would be the first time since 2003 that that's happened, and the largest season-over-season drop in at least 15 years. But rather than bemoan that point, Angels vice president of marketing and ticket sales Robert Alvarado told Moura that ticket revenue for 2015 so far is higher than 2014 because they're making more money off higher-priced tickets. So it's not a matter of bringing out as many fans to the ballpark as possible; it's a matter of squeezing out as much money as possible from those who can attend....
"We may not be reaching as many of the people on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder, but those people, they may enjoy the game, but they pay less, and we're not seeing the conversion on the per-caps (Gustavo note: spend more money like other, wealthier fans, in Halospeak)," Alvarado said. "In doing so, the ticket price that we're offering those people, it's not like I can segregate them, because I'm offering it up to the public, and I'm basically downselling everybody else in order to accommodate them."
To review: Alvarado doesn't want poor people at the Angels Stadium because they don't spend that much money. By trying to attract them, he worsens the experience for wealthier fans. And if he could, he'd segregate the poors from everyone else.
Moura and other Halos writers have recently focused on the Angels' dramatic drop in attendance this season--they're on track to attract less than 3 million fans this year, which would be the first time since 2003 that that's happened, and the largest season-over-season drop in at least 15 years. But rather than bemoan that point, Angels vice president of marketing and ticket sales Robert Alvarado told Moura that ticket revenue for 2015 so far is higher than 2014 because they're making more money off higher-priced tickets. So it's not a matter of bringing out as many fans to the ballpark as possible; it's a matter of squeezing out as much money as possible from those who can attend....
"We may not be reaching as many of the people on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder, but those people, they may enjoy the game, but they pay less, and we're not seeing the conversion on the per-caps (Gustavo note: spend more money like other, wealthier fans, in Halospeak)," Alvarado said. "In doing so, the ticket price that we're offering those people, it's not like I can segregate them, because I'm offering it up to the public, and I'm basically downselling everybody else in order to accommodate them."
To review: Alvarado doesn't want poor people at the Angels Stadium because they don't spend that much money. By trying to attract them, he worsens the experience for wealthier fans. And if he could, he'd segregate the poors from everyone else.
And here I was thinking they were the slightly less objectionable of the two SoCal teams. 
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