Thursday, May 03, 2007
How Much Novelty is There for PNC Park?
There was a newspaper report that pondered the question “wondering why the Pirates' attendance has fallen off?” While some people may enjoy a few extra seats for elbow room, consider that the average attendance thus far this year—17,602—is down about 20 percent from this point last year, when it was 22,401. At this pace, the team will draw a projected 1.377 million, the lowest in the seven years PNC Park has been opened and about the same as Three Rivers Stadium.
The front office puts the reason for the decline in season ticket packages, which are down 20 percent from last year, on the norm for cities following the year they host the All Star Game. “Our season-ticket sales are where we had expected them to be based on what other teams have experienced in the year following the [game]”.
Even in the All Star Year the team’s total attendance was only 1.861 million which itself was a slight bump over the 2005 total of 1.794 million in 2005, which was the run-up to the All Star Season.
So here’s what the Pirates’ organization and the region’s boosters who lobbied for an increase in the sales tax and then cobbled together Plan B need to hope for: a significantly improved product on the field that boosts attendance more in line with those grandiose promises.
After all, you can only debut the park once, and it will be a good while, at least twenty years, before the All Star Caravan comes back into town. Fireworks and bobbleheads can only do so much.
The front office puts the reason for the decline in season ticket packages, which are down 20 percent from last year, on the norm for cities following the year they host the All Star Game. “Our season-ticket sales are where we had expected them to be based on what other teams have experienced in the year following the [game]”.
Even in the All Star Year the team’s total attendance was only 1.861 million which itself was a slight bump over the 2005 total of 1.794 million in 2005, which was the run-up to the All Star Season.
So here’s what the Pirates’ organization and the region’s boosters who lobbied for an increase in the sales tax and then cobbled together Plan B need to hope for: a significantly improved product on the field that boosts attendance more in line with those grandiose promises.
After all, you can only debut the park once, and it will be a good while, at least twenty years, before the All Star Caravan comes back into town. Fireworks and bobbleheads can only do so much.
