Field of Schemes: A's owner: Freeloading fans should buy season tix, dammit

July 26, 2005

A's owner: Freeloading fans should buy season tix, dammit

New Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff has plenty of ideas for his new dream stadium - condos in the outfield, 12th-row luxury boxes - but he makes clear the main reason he wants a new home for his team: It's too easy for fans to buy tickets. Wolff envisions a stadium that, at 35,000 seats, would be the smallest in baseball. His reasoning: "Right now our capacity [43,662] is too big, and it makes it too hard to sell season tickets. That's why we have the highest walk-up traffic in major league baseball." Artificial scarcity: It's the new black!

Wolff also admitted, contrary to previous headlines, that he'd be asking for public subsidies for the project: "The majority of the transaction would be private, but not 100 percent. We'd need the city or county's help wherever we wind up."

COMMENTS

You read the bottom of the article about Lew Wolff's stadium ideas? Some lady's throat got slashed by a 16 year old. Why is this on the same page as an article about a baseball stadium? Strange.
Posted by: Michael at July 27, 2005 12:43 AM

Hey, a violent mugging is very similar to a stadium deal... someone you previously thought as harmless sneaks up on you, and all of a sudden you're on the ground, bleeding profusely, wondering where the heck all your money went.
Posted by: Andrew Ross at July 27, 2005 08:25 AM

I, for one, applaud Mr. Wolff's efforts. Those walk up crowds tend to be really noisy in support of their "team," which can hinder business development. They also tend to wear tee-shirts and shortpants to the games, instead of button up shirts and khaki slacks.
Posted by: Blogsy McBlog at July 27, 2005 12:17 PM

If he gets away with this, what will happen to the upper deck at SkyDome in Toronto? I mean, the Jays having 50,000 seats is making it really easy for me to go to games. I think they may just close the whole fifth deck, solely required to hold up the roof. Joel
Posted by: Joel at July 27, 2005 03:19 PM