Dallas
If the Colorado Symphony Orchestra performed one night with guest artist Itzhak Perlman on his Stradivarius, and then the next with the clarinetist who plays “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at the corner of 20th and Blake on most Rockies game days, the ticket prices wouldn’t be the same.
And we would understand.
As aggravating as it can be for sports franchises to adjust their ticket prices for individual games based on the opposition, it’s not un-American. It’s supply and demand. Sliding prices based on the lure of the product. It all was in the lecture notes at the bookstore for Econ 101.
But when the Rockies’ single-game tickets went on sale Saturday, after the prolonged season-ticket and ticket-package campaigns, it re-emphasized how brazen the Rockies are being about all of this.
They want support and fervor, they want patience and understanding, and most of all they want patronage. Yet their opportunism in manipulating their prices mocks the fans they’re trying to reach.
The Rockies’ catchy “GenR-ation” sounds better than what their own marketing strategy implies: “We stink, but we play the Yankees!”
Clint Hurdle is promising the Rockies will bunt less this season. Maybe that will be so, but that will contradict ownership’s offseason approach. It called for the squeeze at every opportunity.
The often amiable Rockies ownership grouses about disparity and free-spending irresponsibility in the sport, yet manipulates prices and packaging to get the most out of the free-spending Yankees’ June series at Coors Field.
The Yankees are only the most glaring example. The Rockies have so many single-game ticket prices based on opposition, a magnifying glass is required – or at least it was for me – to read the small numbers in the huge newspaper ads. The face value of an infield box seat can go for anywhere from $42 to $75, depending on the team in the visiting dugout.
The Rockies aren’t the only team that does it. In Dallas, the Rangers don’t open their single-game sales until March 2. They are pushing packages until then, mostly featuring the Yankees and Red Sox. The single-game prices for “Premier Games,” four against Boston and two against New York, are listed at $61 for a lower box, as opposed to $47 for other games.
The Rockies have taken this to a new level. Their approach is “working,” but it’s both tacky and potentially counterproductive in the long run.
They should be courting the non-native baseball constituency in a market so filled with transplants. The way to get the Yankees (or Cubs or Mets or Cardinals) fans to return to Coors for the series against the Diamondbacks and develop a second affection for the Rockies is NOT to gouge them. They come into the park with a chip on their shoulder, making them far less likely to walk away saying something like, “Hey, Holliday and Atkins can play, and that Francis is a battler and it’s still a great park … and I’ll be back.”
The expansion and the new-park honeymoon periods ended long ago. Until this franchise is capable of playing moderate-budget baseball as well as Oakland and Minnesota, or better yet, loosens the strings to acknowledge that winning would fill the seats with native Rockies-first fans and transplants alike, goodwill should be a far more important part of the Colorado franchise strategy.
On Sunday, I went to the Rockies’ website. Asking for the “best available” two seats for the June 19 game against the Yankees, I was offered tickets in Section 247, the last section in the club level down the left-field line, at $60 apiece. When I asked for tickets in field-level sections down the left-field line, I was told they weren’t available, but I could get two in Section 116, roughly halfway between first base and the right-field foul pole – on the side of the Rockies’ dugout.
Previously, tickets for the Yankees series were available to non-season-ticket holders, but only as part of packages, one of which was the “Interleague Pack” of the Yankees, Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. That would be like a big-box store last fall taking advantage of the mania over Sony PlayStation 3’s release by requiring the nutty first wave of buyers to also purchase the infamously bad “Jaws Unleashed” and “Torino 2006” video games as a way of clearing out unpopular inventory.
The overall strategy is a knockdown pitch.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
