The name change to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim doesn’t seem to be hampering ticket sales for the baseball team.
To date, the Angels have sold 21,594 season tickets,up 30% from the same time last year, according to the team.
The total is just 300 seats shy of last year’s season ticket tally with two months to go before opening day on April 5.
Some of the season ticket buying could have been in the works before owner Arte Moreno changed the team’s name early last month.
So perhaps even more telling is that businesses and other season ticket holders seem to be sticking with the team.
Angels Baseball LP, Moreno’s holding company for the team, didn’t disclose cancellation numbers. But spokesman Tim Mead said that whatever cancellations there have been were made up by other ticket buyers.
“Things are going full-steam ahead,” Mead said. “Nobody with seats between the bases has cancelled. No long-term accounts have cancelled. Most of the cancellations were recent season ticket buyers and were for seats outside the bases. And those already have been sold.”
The news is encouraging for Moreno, who raised the ire of Anaheim officials and fans who saw his renaming of the team as a blow to local pride.
Moreno’s goal is to expand the team’s appeal and boost TV and merchandise revenue.
The Angels just started selling what the team calls mini ticket packages, which include seats for 20, 27 or 41 games. The team expects to sell enough mini packages to equal about 3,000 full-season packages, Mead said.
“By the time the season starts, we’re forecasting sales of about 27,000 season seats in total, including the mini packages,” he said.
Angel Stadium of Anaheim’s seating capacity is about 45,500 people.
Last year, the Angels chalked up 3.4 million total ticket sales with an average of 41,675 seats sold per game.
That was the third highest attendance in baseball after the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers and was a record for the Angels.
Major League Baseball’s average attendance per team last season was 2.3 million.
The early season ticket numbers suggest businesses, unfazed by the naming flap, are renewing box suites and other tickets.
What remains to be seen is whether casual fans return to games this year as they did in 2004.
Angels merchandise isn’t expected to change this year. The team last year removed “Anaheim” from its jerseys, shirts and other souvenirs in favor of just “Angels.”
One exception: A prominently featured item in the sales section of the team’s Web site last week was a remake of a 1961 Los Angeles Angels wool jacket, priced at $450.
The jacket harks back to the Angel’s first season, when the team played in Los Angeles.
City of Anaheim officials lost two court bids to halt the name change. The City Council this week is expected to get a list of options and cost estimates for the legal battle this week, which could determine whether Anaheim presses on with its case in court.
