I thought Washington DC wanted a pro baseball team!!

[cboy4]

The Washington Nationals gleaming new stadium has too many empty seats, but ownership isn't admitting to concern yet.

Weak attendance could be a National emergency

By Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports 14 hours, 17 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – Stan Kasten’s two families converged this week. Down south, his daughter graduated from the University of Florida. And here, where he’s president of the Washington Nationals, his baby turned a month old.

Nationals Park, the city’s $611 million gift to bring baseball back after a 34-year hiatus, is a perfectly acceptable new stadium. It is not transcendent like its Beltway neighbor, Camden Yards in Baltimore, and not a billion-dollar homage to gluttony like the new Yankee Stadium will be. It is a good place to take the family for $5 a ticket, grab a drink in the packed center-field bar, watch a footrace involving people wearing giant foam heads of dead presidents, ogle the HD video screen and soak in a gorgeous day like Sunday, when the sun beamed, a breeze whistled through the Southeast and the game-time temperature registered at 72.

Not even the perfect afternoon could fill the stadium for the second time, and it may be a while until the Nationals play to another sellout. Since packing Nationals Park on Opening Day and watching Ryan Zimmerman christen it with a game-ending home run, fans have been curiously absent. On Sunday, the Nationals’ announced paid attendance was 30,564, just above the 41,222-seat stadium’s average of 29,686 that ranks in the bottom half of baseball.

<snip>

The Nationals’ season-ticket base, though up from 15,000 last season to 18,000, remains significantly short of the 22,500 sold during their first season in 2005 after moving from Montreal. They’re almost guaranteed to finish with the worst attendance in all numbers – total, average and percentage – for a new stadium since Cincinnati opened Great American Ball Park in 2003. In Washington’s low point, the second game in Nationals Park actually had worse attendance than the second game at decrepit RFK Stadium last year. :wow:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb

[northzax]

1. no, we were told we did

and those particular seats, the ones in the picture? $400/game, season packages only. They are all owned by law firms and lobbyists, who aren't going to use them often.

oh, and there ARE no $5 tickets. there are $7 tickets, but you can only buy one per person, at the stadium (there is one window selling these tickets) within an hour of the game. how long will you wait in line with the kids on a weeknight? regular bleacher seats are $27.

[cboy4]

2. I just went to the Nationals website and there are

$10 seats.




18,000 season ticket holders in a city with so many rich movers and shakers in a brand new stadium?!!

The Giants have drawn 3,000,000 people every single year since AT&T Park opened in 2000.

The season ticket holder base has dropped off to about 28,000 due to Bonds leaving and three consecutive terrible performance years.

But okay, you say DC didn't want a team.

You know more about it than I do, but I had a different impression.

This is just another example of what a crime it is to move teams, just to move them.

[TZ]

3. Some of us wanted a team.

But I'm not up to buying a season ticket at the moment.
They are still pulling int 2-3 times what they were getting in Montreal remember.
But he is right about the good seats being gobbled up by lawyers,lobbyists and big companies that are only occaionally gonna use their seats.

[cboy4]

5. The stadium holds more than 40,000 -- and the season

ticket holder base is 18,000.

Come on, there are plenty of good seats.

If you go on the Nationals' website and punch in you want to purchase good seats for various games this year .. there are ample available.

And then there are external sites like Stub Hub.

San Francisco is in the heart of the Silicon Valley .. it's a major city with lots of corporate executives ... you don't think they buy seats at my team's stadium?

And yet, you can find Giants games this year where there are plenty of great seats, despite 28,000 season ticket holders taking up 65 percent of 43,000 seat venue.

[northzax]

8. Yes, there are plenty of seats

that's the point. Problem is, they are too expensive for what they are. How many times are people going to pay to go see a building? And not a particularly notable building at that. The stadium is nice, but it's no Camden Yards, it's just another stadium. Perfectly servicable, great revenue streams, but kind of blah. So who's going to pay higher prices to see the same awful team play in a new building? Die hard fans of the sport, maybe, there isn't enough history to have die hard fans of the team.

Dc isn't a good sports town, honestly. There is a ton of money, but most is outside the city commuting in. Ever since the Lerners reneged on their promise to build another ten thousand underground parking spaces, it's just not that convenient to get to the stadium, you either take metro and walk through construction zones in a part or town infamous for crime historically, or park at RFK and take a bus. There are no bars or restaurants near the stadium yet. Oh, and it's Bren a chilly, wet spring. Once you get there, even at half capacity, you wait 30 minutes for a hot dog and beer.

So if the stadium won't draw people, the team has to. And let's be honest, the team isn't even trying to be good. There is one marketable star, Ryan Zimmerman, who's hitting .217. They are actually less talented than when they were the freaking expos. The Lerners and stan kasten have said, publically, that they hope to field a competitive team in 2010. Who wants to pay the highest average ticket price in baseball to see a team that stinks? Yes, the average seat at nationals park is higher than Fenway, higher than the Bronx, higher than Shea, higher than Chavez Ravine...for a team that won't spend money this year. Name a quality free agent the Lerners have brought to town? Just one. someone the casual fan has heard of who could be part of this team in two years? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

So you have a middling stadium, a muddling team and no history in a bad sports town. (how bad? Despite the most electrifying player in hockey, the caps didn't sell out playoff games. The wizards can't sell out playoff games in a basketball town) combine that with the new ethics rules about gifts and you get a lot of empty seats.

One more thing: we are told the Nats have one of the best farm systems right why not just go see the Potomac Nats instead? Wait till next year only works if people care, and if there was a last year. If you go now, you are just putting money into the pocket of billionaires. Nationals park (they can't even sell the naming rights!) quadrupled the nats' revenue from RFK, and they lowered the payroll. They are top ten in revenue and bottom ten in payroll. That works if you win, not if you lose.

[cboy4]

9. Alright, well I don't know what to say.......I do know that

it seems silly placing another MLB team so close to the Orioles.

The team should have stayed in Montreal.

[northzax]

10. no, Montreal was a bad idea

there was no real oopportunity for support there, and they weren't getting a stadium. I think the Nats will be fine, but I think they blew it by not spending cash NOW on a couple of marketable stars to draw people while the team rebuilds. you only get one chance to capture attention, especially among the young (and youth baseball isn't all that big around here) and I think they blew it. Sure, the purists love the 'grow slow' model, and the 'team' model, but they'll come anyway, you want a superstar to light up the scoreboard and attract fans early on.

[madinmaryland]

11. Actually, the Nationals are a bit different. They were in a horrible

market in Montreal, and were lucky to draw 500,000 a year.

:shrug:

[cboy4]

13. Yea, I should have been more clear.....in the Expos' case,

I know they didn't just move them to move them.

They drew 4,000 a game, they played in some domed monstrosity and they were owned by Major League Baseball.

I'm talking about situations, especially in the NFL such as the Oakland Raiders moving to L.A., the L.A. Rams moving from Anaheim to St. Louis...the St. Louis Rams moving to Arizona...the Houston Oilers moving to Nashville...the Cleveland Browns moving to Baltimore,,,and so on.

I just don't like teams leaving cities.

[Kingofalldems]

4. Some baseball fans in DC infected by Oh-riole-itis

It will take a while for them to see the light. I think it's great to have baseball again. BTW, check out the Oh's attendance this year--terrible. I hear they will flee to Portland, Oregon soon.

[cboy4]

6. Oh I know.....they're drawing crowds of 11,000 this year!

Who would have guessed it would ever come to this, considering the way they used to draw after Camden Yards opened, and all of the excitement surrounding Ripken.

I hadn't heard about the Portland talks.

[MeanMeanJellyBean]

7. The Nationals trading Bush to Iraq?

Washington just wanted a baseball team so they could trade Dubya... guess it didn't work out...

http://dencotton.nationalsportsreview.com/2008/05/05/americans-finally-considering-gw-trade-to-baghdad/

[madinmaryland]

12. I went to a Saturday evening game a couple of weeks ago with my

daughter and the entire top tier was elementary students from throughout the state who had been given free tickets (probably 5,000). The announce attendance with 22,000, but there couldn't have been more than 15,000 people in the stands (at best)

[CatholicEdHead]

14. Some still remember the Senators

who left in the 1960's and became the Minnesota Twins.

No, you cannot have them back.