Angels Fever Rallies Team’s Apparel and Souvenir Sales
Players and fans aren’t the only ones who have enjoyed the playoff-bound Anaheim Angels’ winningest season ever.
The team has also been a boost for sporting goods stores, souvenir vendors, sports bars, restaurants and others who cater to the baseball team’s energized fan base.
“Some of the product that we order, we can’t get it fast enough,” said Louis Avila, manager of Sports Avenue at Westfield Shoppingtown MainPlace mall in Santa Ana, about the jump in sales of jerseys, T-shirts and other Angels paraphernalia.
The Angels, who last week clinched their first playoff berth since 1986, headed into the final three-game homestand of the regular season averaging 28,000 in attendance, up 13% from last season.
The Angels had already drawn nearly 2.2 million to Edison Field, compared with just under 2 million for all of 2001. Fans recently flooded the box office, phone lines and Internet to order tickets for the first round of Angels home playoff games; only a few seats remained.
The increased fan interest is also translating into sales of Angels’ gear and souvenirs. Early in the season, vendors say, the Angels’ new uniform and revised logo gave memorabilia sales a short-lived pop. Sales have picked up again in recent weeks along with the Angels’ strong showing on the field.
At Sports Treasure, also at the MainPlace mall, employee Primo Sillo said, “Before, we got customers coming in here looking at (Angels merchandise). Now that they’re in the playoff hunt, we get a lot more people coming in here and purchasing it.”
“We sell a lot of hats because they’re cheapest, but we sold about 15 jerseys once the winning streak began,” said R.J. Weston, a worker at Just Sports in The Block at Orange.
At National Sports Grill & Bar on State College Boulevard diagonal to Edison Field, Manager Johnnie Atkinson said that sales are up,especially on nights the Angels are playing out of town, when fans come to dine and watch the game on the big-screen televisions. He said he’s noticed an increase in liquor sales, too, when the Angels are winning and fans are celebrating.
Even further from the ballpark, at the Press Box Sports Bar & Grill on Glassell Street in Orange, General Manager Noel Sayegh said there have been “an additional 15 to 20 customers on big game nights” since the mid-season All-Star break. That’s three or four times the normal crowd. And the customers stay longer,often through an entire game telecast,and spend more, he said.
The Hungry Hunter restaurant on East Katella Avenue near Edison Field doesn’t even target Angels fans, but it has also enjoyed a small increase in business on “important game nights” at Edison Field, said Manager Jeff Stewart.
This story was compiled by Cliff Morman, Shane Savage and Edward Vera, students in Rick Reiff’s business journalism class at Chapman University.
