Is professional baseball dead in Toronto? And if so... whose fault is it?

As a change of pace from my usual weighty or irate posting, today I'm going to wax philosophical about a question I saw on the front page of a local paper recently. I'm going to pretend I have a knowledge of marketing beyond mere common sense. I'm going to pretend that anyone reading gives a flying rat's ass about my thoughts on the subject, too ;)

Question: Is professional baseball dead in Toronto

Answer: It certainly looks that way. The Jays played a sold out Home Opener (because, let's face it, it's been months without baseball... people have forgotten how painfully mediocre (at best) the team usually is... and hope springs eternal). But then drew barely 10,000 - 11,000 for their next 2 games. A drop in the bucket at the SkyDome... sorry, Rogers Centre... with a capacity for baseball of nearly 50,000.

So, assuming that the answer to the first question is 'yes'... it sparks another question: Whose fault is it?

Answer: I'd say it's the fault of the Blue Jays organization. Not the team, per se. The marketing department and the folks who set prices.

I'll be the first to admit that the team hasn't done a whole lot for the fans in the city since, oh, the back-to-back World Series'... but it's been more than 15 years since that (damn I feel old *laugh*). I'll be the first to admit that I find the sport of baseball more boring than watching grass grow, and that my opinion of both the sport and the team was not helped by the last time I went to a game... I showed up 15 minutes after the opening pitch was due to be thrown only to find them at the bottom of the 2nd already... and the watched the designated hitter strike out in 3 at-bats. Wow... and that's the designated 'hitter'? Not good. I have no love for the sport or the team.

But sports teams in this city seem to labour under the mistaken impression that just because the Leafs are (incomprehensibly) adored, ALL the sports teams will be adored regardless of how poorly they perform. The folks who set ticket prices seem to believe that just because the Leafs manage to be the most expensive team in the league to watch and still manage to sell out, that they can charge whatever they like and people will pay it. Not so, my friends. This is Canada... as we've all been told a zillion times, hockey's not a sport here, it's a religion.

When was the last time you saw an ad for the Blue Jays or for an event at one of ther games? No, wait, before you answer that, let me clarify... NOT an ad for ONE player... an ad for the team, for the organization, or for a 'deal'. Frankly, I can't remember. All I remember seeing for the past years beyond count (mostly, I'll admit, because I can't be bothered to count) is ads featuring a particular player. Hmm... ok, if you can GUARANTEE that I'll see THAT player when I go to a game, then it's a worthwhile ad-spend. I'm thinking, though, when the featured player is a pitcher and you've got 3 in standard rotation, you can't make that guarantee... so... no, I'll keep my money and catch the highlights on the news. I remember when "nose bleed seats" used to be cheap. $13 to sit high enough to suffer from being in the smog layer and watch ants run around a patch of pseudo-grass doesn't seem like much of a deal to me. $5 for a 500-level seat, I could maybe see... if there was something to draw me in... some give-away... some small chance of catching a ball... or a t-shirt... or anything other than a cold and the ash from indoor fireworks (assuming they do that still... and assuming if they do, that there's a home-run to prompt it).

Concessions are over-priced. Tickets are over-priced. Events and features are under-publicized. Example, "girls night out" features... to encourage groups of women to go out, take in a game, get a few perks... meet a few players... ok, I heard about it because of a friend trying to organize a group and because I happened to be tuned in to a radio station on the one morning when they gave away one package. Other than that... if you don't haunt the Blue Jays website, there's not a whole lot of publicity going on. At least, not on non-baseball related locations. Not that I've seen. So, fewer ads, fewer draws to the stadium... means fewer butts in the seats. But, rather than take a risk on profit margin and buy into the Wal-Mart or Zeller's scheme of small return but more sales and drop the ticket price to get more butts into the seats and make it an experience they'll want to repeat, they seem to instead buy into the "OMG, nobody's buying tickets, we need to charge more to make up the difference" school of thinking... which is really one of those evil death-spiral ways of thinking. You don't give people a reason to buy tickets, so they don't buy tickets, so you increase the price, so the people who were kind of on the fence about the value fall off into the "I'm not paying that much for a mediocre team" side, so fewer people buy tickets, so you increase the price, so the people who were on the fence... you see where this is going? It's going to $25 nose-bleed seats and an empty stadium.

So... I say professional baseball's dead in this town, and the Blue Jays have no-one to blame but themselves for approving questionable ad campaigns and pricing themselves out of the market.

But that's just me ;)

Oh... and since I've just looked at the Jay's website. My bad... $14 for nose-bleed seats. No group discounts for less than 20 people, and even with 20 people, you only get a discount of $2 - 4 (based on nose-bleed seats) per ticket (depending on who they're playing and when). Wow. There are no words.