I like the St. Louis Cardinals model, where they have a monthly membership option of $30 a month during the season that gets you into any home game in a standing room only location. I know its baseball which means more games, but I think its a unique idea.
St. Louis is also big time baseball country, like Columbus is to Buckeyes football, St. Louis is to Cardinals baseball. Not saying it wouldn't work for the Crew do to something similar, but it's important to note that demand is significantly different between the two.
Reds did a similar thing as the Cardinals last year, tickets were assigned in the top 6 rows of the ballpark, though if you got in the ballpark you could move almost anywhere after the first few innings. Demand for Reds tickets I think was far lower than Crew. https://www.mlb.com/reds/tickets/specials/top6 On the other hand, the Oakland A's came up with a unique concept of season tickets. Even partial season ticket holders get SRO access to every game, parking, concession and merchandise discounts plus access to MLB.tv for out of market games (Similar to ESPN+ for MLS). https://www.mlb.com/athletics/tickets/season-tickets
Reds have had some variant of "top six" for many years now--it goes back to Riverfront Stadium days....
On the Soccer Speakeasy podcast this week, Arace said that he thought the Crew had sold about 8K season tickets so far this year. He didn't report this as fact - it was sort of an offhand comment - which in itself is somewhat frustrating; that's I want local media to do, dig up facts. But I do wonder if the 10K number we've been batting around in here is a 'fact' built on a foundation of sand. Its roots go back to 1996, when supposedly we sold around 10K season tickets. Or at least had that many deposits. But I really doubt if anyone outside of the organization truly knows what the number was, and how it broke down (full season vs partial season, etc.). Then, of course, there was the 10K goal the club announced back when McCullers ran the FO. Obviously, we never reached that goal, since I assume the club would have (quite appropriately) congratulated itself publicly if we had. And unless I'm mistaken, PSV during its dark reign never really made any clear, firm announcements about the number of season tickets sold. Oh, they'd talk about revenue (tickets or corporate sponsorships) being up a certain percentage over the previous season. That kind of thing. But unless you know the base numbers upon which those comparisons are being made, the percentage claims don't mean very much. In the 2.5 months that the Haslam and Edwards families have run the club, we've had similar, non-definitive kinds of announcements. From those, we've tried to reverse engineer season tickets sold data based on iffy remarks like the one Arace made on that podcast and previous 'percentage increase' stats made by the club. Toss in that 12,300 #STC season ticket pledge list and, voila!, we've sold 10K tickets! Except that, maybe, we haven't. Which would also help explain last Saturday's attendance versus Dallas. It's sorta fun to speculate. And like many of you say in here, and Arace said on the podcast, addressing the team's fan base challenges is going to take time and sustained commitment. But in the end, I don't think we'll ever really know what our real season tickets sold number is until and unless Bez goes on the record with an official statement. And don't hold your breath waiting for that. From what I've seen, the only clubs that do that regularly are the ones who are selling out their stadium every week. The rest of the league - like the Crew - avoids those announcements, preferring to speak about percentage increase over last year, etc.
When I was in college we did that all the time. Top 6 tix were $3.50 (or $3). One of our friends had a summer job as a beer guy.
I think at one time the Reds accounted for at least 95% of all fifty-cent pieces in circulation thanks to the "top six" prices at Riverfront. Maybe 99%.
We need to use more dollar coins. Too bad they haven’t been more accepted. I HATE trying to feed a dollar bill into a vending machine. So annoying. I usually carry 1-2 dollar coins in my wallet just in case.
Yea way back in college we would drive from dayton down to cinci for the $3 Reds tickets....by the 2nd inning we were sitting behind the dugouts. It was a great deal..parking cost more than tickets, a beer and a dog.
I'll admit I wasn't there in the beginning, but in my defense I didn't move to Columbus until 2011. And I do see your point, we too had numbers like Cincy does right now. We can't say for certain that will be permanent in Cincy but there's no saying it can't stay this way with large crowds. All I know is that other markets of similar size and similar stadiums are crushing it with attendance and we need to be back to being like them. We have a ways to go but by the time the new downtown stadium opens in 2021, and the Edwards and Haslams have had over 2 solid years to re- endear this team to this city I don't want to have to keep chasing other cities in attendance. I want others to compare themselves to us!
I guess. Look, there are more cities struggling with butts in the seats than packing the house. Not saying it can't/won't happen, just pointing out that Columbus seems to be the only team constantly being called out for it and it really shouldn't matter to the fans how many were in attendance. I know I don't care if anyone compares their attendance to ours, I would rather compare trophy cabinets.
Sad to say that I just exchanged my ticket for this week's match for an extra for our May mid-week game vs. the Galaxy. I had been hoping to take my bigger kids this weekend, but Saturday's weather forecast is too dire. The silver lining is I've added tickets for both of the upcoming midweek matches, which surely will be poorly attended. I have friends and family that I'll be taking to those matches--and you can't exchange tickets twice--so I sure hope the weather improves!
I'm going to try to go to the game on Saturday. If it is thunder storming, I'm not standing around under the stadium all night. I'll go back home and wait for it to be on TV.
I'll almost assuredly be there with Connor. I have an extra ticket as well since the wife has to work that evening.
My forecast showing rain and dropping temps (mid 40s) for the game. Yuck. Worst weather of the week, again.
And I'm showing just over 13,000 tickets sold (given all my normal caveats). About 2,850 seats for sale, and about 3,800 blocked as of this am.
On Reddit an Atlanta supporter said they have about 75 coming for the game Saturday. So that'll be more than the 0 sitting in the away section last game.
Oh, all things considered, I don't think the weather for the first two home games was all that bad, considering they were in early March. The March 2 match had better weather than the next day's, and wasn't the coldest day of the previous week. The one on the 16th was pretty chilly, yeah, but at least it was sunny. Now, last Saturday would have been a glorious day for a soccer match, but what can you do? Anyway way you slice it, tomorrow's going to be terrible weather. But it'll be around freezing on Sunday, so that's not an improvement. I love Columbus, but our weather isn't exactly ideal for planned outdoor activities. Cold in the winter, hot and humid in the summer, with lots of afternoon/evening thunderstorms.
No surprise on worst weather of the week. Wife and daughter won't be going due to the elements. Girl got to stay home sick today and the wife says no way is she taking her out in that tomorrow. So, I'll have to look for other people to go with me who don't mind drinking beer with water falling from the sky.
I will be in attendance tomorrow and my daughter is bringing her boyfriend to his first ever game. I told her the weather forecast and this was her exact reply "I guess we will find out how serious he is about dating me" I must have done something right!
I saw a dozen or so Dallas fans wandering throughout the tailgate and the game. Nothing organized though, so it'll be nice to see an actual Atlanta section.