Sunday, April 02, 2000
Reds have already won at gate
'99 success, Griffey have fans snapping up tickets
BY JOHN J. BYCZKOWSKI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Before the first pitch of the season is thrown, the Cincinnati Reds are batting 2 million. That's at least how many tickets the team has sold for its 81 games this year, according to an Enquirer analysis.
The Reds won't elaborate on how tickets are selling. Chief Operating Officer John Allen said sales are “brisk” and acknowledged that Opening Day is the only game sold out. Beyond that, he had no comment.
Fans with Internet access can check ticket sales from home. Ticketmaster.com displays the best available seats for Reds games this year.
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WHAT'S LEFT
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Best seats available
for every Reds home game |
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HOTTEST TICKETS
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Here are the five hottest Reds tickets this year, according to Ticketmaster.com:
• Opening Day. Monday's game vs. Milwaukee is sold out.
• Any Cleveland Indians game. The July 8 game is nearly sold out. For the games July 7 and 9, only upper-deck outfield seats are left. This could challenge the record for biggest three-game series: 152,565 vs. the Dodgers, in 1974.
• The May 5-7 weekend St. Louis Cardinals series. Best seats available are upper deck in foul territory. Better seats are available for the series June 26-29.
• The April 8-9 Chicago Cubs series. Decent seats can still be had for the Friday, April 7, game. Good seats remain for the weekday series Sept. 11-13.
• The May 28 game vs. the Florida Marlins. That Sunday is Kroger Photo Day, so fans can bring their cameras. Smile, Junior.
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A look at ticket availability for the Reds' 81 homes games shows:
• Besides Opening Day, the Cleveland Indians game July 8 is very close to being sold out. The only seats left this week were “top six” in center field — the seats farthest from home plate in Cinergy Field. Keep in mind, Cinergy Field, with 52,953 seats, is the eighth-largest ballpark in baseball.
• The best seats in the house, blue and green boxes, are sold out for every game not involving the Milwaukee Brewers.
• For 39 games — just short of half the season's games — the best seat still available is in the upper deck.
“Ticket sales have been very good, and we're just extremely pleased with the fans' response,” Mr. Allen said Friday. But he declined to comment further, because “people read stuff like this and they think they can't buy tickets.”
Spring training is proof, he said. The hype about ticket sales produced a disappointing Opening Day crowd March 3 of just 3,439 at the Reds' 7,200-seat ballpark in Sarasota, Fla. Many fans thought there weren't any tickets available, Mr. Allen said.
But not every fan was put off: Total attendance for the
Reds' 15 home games in Sarasota was 89,401, 48 percent more than last year. That included a record 7,619 for the last home game Wednesday against the Boston Red Sox.
At the Reds' Dugout shop downtown, Erica Rose of Mariemont was shopping for souvenirs when she overheard a fan ordering tickets for the June 3 game, when the Reds' 1975 World Champion team will be honored. She stepped into line, and minutes later walked away smiling with four seats in the upper deck for that event.
“I'll take whatever I can get,” she said.
Junior's presence
The impact of superstar Ken Griffey Jr. joining a team that won 96 games last year is being felt by fans across the area. For the two Kid Glove Games, which raise money for children's baseball, the crowds are likely to be huge. Executive secretary Paul Kramer said he expects to sell out of 60,000 ticket vouchers for the games April 18 and May 30. If that happens, the group will raise more than $330,000 to purchase equipment, a record.
The reason? “Two letters: J-R,” he said. “It's Junior, plus the fact that they had a fantastic year last year. When the trade was announced (for Griffey, on Feb. 10), I started getting 30-40 phone calls a day” for vouchers.
The fans buying those vouchers are rushing to trade them in for tickets, as the good seats dry up. That's what Andrea Carey of Deer Park did Friday at the Cinergy Field ticket window.
Asked if she was pleased with the seats she got, she scrunched her face. “No,” she said — behind home plate in the upper deck, 16 rows up.
“They could always be better,” she said. “I don't think my son cares. He just cares about Ken Griffey Jr.”
All this only begins to hint at the “Griffey Effect” on the Reds. Overall, it's hard to judge. Opening Day actually sold out before the Feb. 10 trade, and the Reds have said tickets were selling well anyway, coming off last year's 96-win season.
But fans interviewed Friday let it be known Junior's a draw. Lloyd Alleyne of Golf Manor bought tickets for six games Friday. Where are the seats? “In the center field seats, behind Griffey,” he said.
Ryan Henry of Fort Thomas is a Big Brother who bought tickets to take his Little Brother to the Reds' second game of the season, against the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday.
His seats are green level, right field — home-run territory — and he's surprised the seats were still available. “If Griffey Jr. doesn't hit a home run the first day, maybe I'll catch it the second day,” he said.
Brokers busy
Jeff McDonald, of the ticket broker 721-SEAT Riverfront Choice Tickets, said “we've got three full-time people, and that's all they do is buy Reds tickets.”
Prices charged for tickets are a third higher than last year, but the company is also paying more for tickets, he said.
He said he sees six sellouts and a record attendance of 3 million for the Reds, topping the 2,629,708 drawn in 1976.
“There are going to be a ton of games where you're sitting up in the reds in center field,” he said.
The Milwaukee games this week and in September are the only games all year where field-level “blue” seats are still available. Otherwise, all blue box and green box seats are sold out — 17,211 for each game, and a total of 1.4 million for the season. Many of those are season tickets, and the Reds won't comment on how many season tickets they've sold.
Scalpers also are banking on an Opening Day bonanza. Fans are advertising tickets for sale in classified ads and in online auctions.
There were about a dozen ads in Saturday's Enquirer, including Kimberly and Ross Warren's offer to sell four blue seats in Aisle 118 — and a parking pass — for $2,000.
By late-afternoon Saturday, the couple had a few phone calls, but no takers.
“We're OK with that,” Mrs. Warren said. “We had been told by others that we could get that much money, but I guess they were wrong. We'll just go to the game ourselves.”
At online auction sites, such as eBay, not all offers were drawing bidders. For instance, someone offering four blue seats for $1,200 drew no response.
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