June 22, 2004
Stadium fatigue, revisited
A report from the San Diego Padres' new Petco Park, from Baseball Prospectus' Joe Sheehan (subscription only):
"This was the 33rd game in the new park, played on a pleasant Saturday night in June. (It was even an interleague game!) So I was more than a little surprised to see entire sections in the second tier empty, and more than a few vacant seats in the upper deck. If the new-park honeymoon is getting shorter and shorter, then the Padres barely made it back from the beach before trouble began.
"At Petco, the Padres have stripped down the promotion calendar a bit while ratcheting up ticket prices; they may have overshot the mark, judging from the crowd I saw. ... Unless this team continues to play well, and I mean winning-the-division well, they are going to have a tough time filling the park with the walkup attendees who can make the difference between black ink and red. The $45 price tag on loge outfield seats is going to keep more people away than it brings in."
Posted by Neil deMause
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