Season ticket sales for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are up as opening week unfolds but the baseball team is dealing with something it hasn’t seen in a few years.
Some businesses that buy tickets for dugout and other suites are showing some “hesitancy,” said Robert Alvarado, vice president of marketing and season ticket sales for Angels Baseball LP.
“This is discretionary spending” and some companies are looking at how they want to spend their cash, he said.
Some companies have dropped out, Alvarado said. Their spots have been filled by others on a waiting list.
The Angels sell season tickets to companies under contracts that can run from a year to five or seven years.
A couple of companies have inquired about their options under the contracts, Alvarado said.
“We try and be flexible,” he said.
The team offers installment payments or can help find another company to take over the contract, according to Alvarado.
The hesitancy among some businesses hasn’t dented overall season ticket sales.
As of last week, the Angels had sold 29,300 season tickets, up from 28,800 at the start of the 2007 season, Alvarado said.
Nine of 10 past season ticket holders,both companies and individuals,have renewed for this season, according to Alvarado.
New season ticket sales have helped make up the difference and put the team ahead of where it was a year ago, he said.
The team plans to keep selling season ticket packages up until May or June, according to Alvarado. That should put the team ahead of last year’s sales of 29,900, Alvarado said.
The Angels project to end with slightly more than 30,000 season ticket holders.
Season ticket sales include full season, 81-game ticket packages as well as partial packages.
Attendance
The Angels, which finished first in the American League West last year but lost in the playoffs to the World Series-winning Boston Red Sox, did well at the gate last year.
The team drew 3.37 million fans to home games in 2007, although that number was down 1% from the team’s record attendance of 3.4 million in 2006.
The Angels ranked fifth among Major League Baseball’s 30 teams in terms of attendance last year, trailing the St. Louis Cardinals, the New York Mets, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees.
The Angels have raised their ticket prices for this season, ratcheting up the cost of the best seats.
Prices for season tickets were hiked by an average of $1.85 per ticket per game for non-premium seats, while prices in premium areas went up more in some cases.
Full-year corporate suites, which can hold 12 to 16 people, range from $70,000 to $240,000.
Having a dugout suite is worth the cost to some companies.
“We’ve found a lot of value in being able to visit the friends of the firm and take them to Angels’ games,” said Paul Ward, chief marketing officer for Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, a Newport Beach law firm.
Stradling Yocca shares a suite with another company, Ward said.
“We just buy a select number of games, so what happens is that a lot of people go in together,” he said. “For us, we’ve never taken a huge number of games, so it was a no-brainer just to continue on our path.”
Ward said he has seen some companies be more selective in which games they buy.
The Angels still could be considered a relative bargain in baseball. Figures from Team Marketing Report, which tracks professional sports, showed that the team’s overall average ticket price of $19.49 in 2007 was below the MLB average of $22.77 and well below the most expensive ticket, that of the Red Sox, which averaged $47.71.
“You get, we feel, a full entertainment value,” Alvarado said.
Owner Arte Moreno, who bought the team in 2003, is known for trying to attract families with lower ticket prices. Those packages are continuing, including a food and beverage package for $39 that includes soft drinks, hot dogs and seats for four.
The Angels also offer child tickets for people up to 18 years of age. Other clubs cut that pricing off at either 12 or 14, Alvarado said.
“We do things different than most,” he said. “We want teens in there. They’re part of the family mix.”
