AND...because it screws the home team so completely...and is so screwed-up-besides for a bunch of other reasons...MLB actually reimburses the "home team" for the entire loss of not actually holding the event in their own facility. It is that important-to-do for MLB and yet that cost-prohibitive to the teams involved. :rolleyes
Why Jonathan? I never understand this. What does a new park have to do with it? It always seems to me that seats get filled when the team is doing well.
The three oldest parks in baseball do pretty well when it comes to selling seats (although I'm not sure about the Cubs, it seems as if they are always at or near capacity).
The Fremont A's actually would have the smallest park in the league, I think - something on the order of 33,000 seats. Most of the attendance spike when teams get a new park is just curiosity; I don't know how many have been sustained when the team started doing poorly (Cleveland crashed hard, IIRC, and the honeymoon period has gotten shorter and shorter over the past 10-15 years; Baltimore probably avoids it mainly by New Yorkers and New Englanders coming to see their teams).
That just doesn't sound right. But it's a whole lot better than the Denver or Tampa Bay A's. I always thought the A's should move to the Dublin/Pleasanton area. Better location IMO and easier to attract the Central Valley fans. The Giants seem to have the South Bay rapped up.
They average about 20,000 per game. Sure, not sellouts but considering we also split fans with the Giants, that is respectable. If they built the stadium in Fremont, it would draw much more of the San Jose crowd (which is a large part of the fanbase).
I would really hope so. I personally think they should move to San Jose. One thing for sure is the Coliseum is in a really crappy area. And ever since they built Mt. Davis it just doesn't have the same feel anymore. And it is lacking personality. You go to the new park in SF, that is a nice park. Safeco in Seattle is a nice park and so is the one in Anaheim. I can just imagine the feel that Fenway must have.
From what I remember, the A's looked at Santa Clara first and MLB was going to give the Giants some big $$$ to aprove it (anything to get the A's out of the Coliseum) but the Giants still refused to allow it.
Yeah, I do remember hearing about them looking somewhere off 237. No wonder I can't stand the Giants. I've been blaming it on Barry for years but now I have a new reason.
Just scored some bleacher seats for the second Yankees/Red Sox game of the year!
Been a while since I've gone to one of those games - it's hard to buy tickets and at some point it seemed like people went from "excited and boisterous" to "angry and hostile". But, ironically, this was the game I could find four tickets to today (after my brother informed me he wouldn't be able to use the tickets I got him and his family for his birthday), so I'll "settle" for it.
I wonder what the Giants attendance will look like this year without Barry and his home run chase and (more importantly) a seriously crappy team. I love going to AT&T park but the Giants, c'mon, its going to be ugly. The best A's games (for fans) should be their Bay series at AT&T (again like last year). I never saw so many A's fans living it up than last year's Sat & Sun game when they swept the Giants. Anyway, I digress. I wonder if the Giants will finally see their attendance take a hit.
IAs nice of a park as it is, I think the "newness" has worn out a little. Combined with the slow economy, no Barry, and most importantly a lousey team (Peter Gammons called them "the Orioles of the west") I think a loss in attendance will happen. Even if tickets are sold I'm betting on quite a few no-shows. They will still outdraw the A's though. Just not enough hard core fans here (including myself) to fill two stadiums.
I gather the Giants have hedged it a little, in that they required people to buy season tickets for '07 and '08 at the same time in order to get tickets to the All-Star Game, so they might wind up deferring the big hit until next year. But no doubt, they're going to be a bad baseball team for a while, since there's really no hope on the farm.