Troubled Ass Relief Program: Fanny may sit elsewhere.
Most teams try to sell as many tickets as they can, especially during the playoffs. The Oakland Athletics have a different philosophy. A’s management said Friday they plan not to sell 20,878 of the Coliseum’s 55,945 seats next week for the A’s division showdown with the Detroit Tigers. Those seats account for 37 percent of the Coliseum’s baseball seating capacity and A’s management has sealed then off with tarps since 2006 due to low attendance.
But now the Oakland A’s are drawing sold-out crowds. So many fans showed up for the last game of the season Wednesday that A’s management warned people to stay away because there were no tickets left.
Fans are demanding that the team remove the tarps to let more people in - some have started a petition via a website called Removethetarps.com. Many have pelted A’s management with complaints.
On Friday A’s management explained to The Chronicle why they would not remove the tarps.
A smaller crowd, A’s managers said, would create a closer, more intimate environment for the American League Division Series.
“The fan experience is better without spreading fans out over more seats,” A’s managers wrote in an e-mail. “The energy in the park and the fan experience over the last week (when the seats were tarped) was incredible.”
Repoz
Posted: October 05, 2012 at 10:51 PM |
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1. Commissioner Bud Black Beltre Hillman Posted: October 05, 2012 at 11:04 PM (#4256263)Yeah, that's the ticket. Or lack of available tickets.
Why else would you put "intimate" in quotes?
Wait, what are you intimating here?
Someone is ####### under the tarp.
My sentiments exactly. Here you've got a team that has never really drawn well, even when successful. You're in the postseason, and have an exciting young team to watch. Yet you'd still rather keep 1/3 of the seats under a tarp? What ever happened to taking advantage of your recent success to attract new fans? Why not milk all the fans who can't get in for every penny they're worth?
I refuse to believe that it's better economically for them to keep these seats empty. Looks to me like a bonehead ownership decision, pure and simple.
Did somebody say my name? I've been waiting all my life to hear my name here.
>Looks at profile
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Join Date May 04, 2004 04:44 AM
Wat...
The 1985 World Series makes so much more sense now that I have read you Primates' lurid, prurient thoughts.
Exactly a month late. Or 479 months early.
Read the article again. Pay attention to the quotes by Paul Siri near the end.
Siri has it all wrong, Oakland has been pushing the team out the door for years.
Oakland should tarp more seats and quadruple ticket prices. The sorry excuse of a fan base didn't even show up for the last third of the season when the As were fighting to hold on to a playoff berth, now hey want accommodations and cheap playoff tickets?
I can only assume that you have held a marketing position with the A's for the last twenty years. That theory would explain a lot. They're driving away the fans not through incompetence, but out of spite.
In the city across the bay they're not shy enough for tarps.
Then their position that the tarps come off for the World Series doesn't make sense.
I just think that the.. uh.. their appeal is becoming more selective
Ah well. Go A's!
I know most baseball games go 9 innings, but I love any game that ends up in extra innings, esp when this one goes to the 11th.
I guess they didn't leave their tarp in San Francisco.
I thought the guy was content doing it in the Yankee Stadium bathroom.
Bah. Save your pity for poor Kumquat Hitlerpenis
which garnered 32,000 & 34,000 respectively according to b-r.
Back when without the tarp, the fans were scattered all over the section
and the stadium didn't look any different from an ordinary weekend game.
It was a bit let-down (game result too).
But fireworks will work.
Really what this has taught me is that A's playoff attendance patterns are all kinds of goofy.
Granted, they've sold out games 3 and 4 so far, but there are even tickets available for game 5 right this very moment.
Basically, I just don't think the demand is there, sad as it is.
How well covered from the elements are you in the top sections? I'm in section 356. I think I'm going to need a tarp.
Or right on time if using a 0-based month system like JavaScript.
</geek>
Only over potentially incinerated police cars.
Not .NET, though.
EDIT: To ask, are the seats literally tarped? I know they untarp them for the Raiders' games, of course, do they put the tarps back every time?
It's easy to get to them. Fans are dissuaded from entering those areas only by plastic chains.
In order to get to those seats behind home, you actually are forced to walk by the entrances a number of tarped sections. There's no purpose to wandering the area behind those seats, which is just a lot of cement and closed off concession stands. You could get to the tarped seats in an instant but I imagine you'd be spotted pretty quickly. Having never done it, I don't know how tight the tarp is or how much fun you could have under it.
Those upper deck seats behind home are actually the best tickets to get - during the regular season they are $14 and it includes a $6 credit for food/beer.
I agree with 20, 39, 42, and 43. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed a courage little seen in this day and age.
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