Interesting story here. What do you think?
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...?cmpid=twitter
A's management said Friday that it does not plan to sell 20,878 of O.co Coliseum's 55,945 seats next week for the A's division showdown with the Detroit Tigers. Those seats account for about 37 percent of the Coliseum's baseball seating capacity, and A's management has sealed them off with tarps since 2006 due to low attendance.
But now the Oakland A's are drawing sellout crowds. So many fans showed up for the last game of the season on Wednesday that A's management warned people to stay away because there were no tickets left.The A's rationale is that most games are far from sellouts, so they want fans to gather in the lower decks rather than scatter throughout the stadium.
"Here's a team that says they need to leave Oakland because there's no support. Yet here you have thousands of people who are begging to put money in the A's pockets, and they tell fans, 'Sorry, you have to watch it on TV,' " said Doug Boxer, a former Oakland planning commissioner and organizer of an A's fan group called Let's Go Oakland. "It doesn't make any sense." So far this year, the A's have sold out only seven of 79 games in the 35,067 seats in the non-tarp area.Longtime sports marketer Paul Siri of Redwood City, a former executive with IMG, said he'd never seen an owner say "no" to the chance to sell more tickets, hot dogs, beer, T-shirts and other merchandise at a high-profile game that's sure to sell out.
The move makes sense only if Wolff is trying to convince Major League Baseball he can't build a successful team in Oakland, Siri said.
"Looking at this from his point of view, this is the worst thing that could happen," Siri said. "His team wins, media exposure increases, the stadium sells out, and suddenly he loses his leverage to move. It kills his argument. ... I don't blame the fans for being upset."