Dodgers fill stands with fans, NFL fumbles badly in Winnipeg offering
Credit to Author: Gord Kurenoff| Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2019 21:09:37 +0000
The best team in Major League Baseball continues to impress with the Los Angeles Dodgers heading into the weekend 41 games above .500 following an entertaining sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Two signature Dodgers walk-off wins lifted L.A. to a .659 clip and 85-41 record. That kind of instant gratification at home has kept the Dodgers atop the attendance charts yet again this summer.
Their dominance of the NL West in recent seasons has made the Dodgers the hottest ticket in MLB, with an average of 48,712 fans per game and well north of 3.16 million fans through the turnstiles this season.
They’re among the top MLB teams on social media, including 2.2 million followers on Twitter. Their heritage brand status, bicoastal history and four-generational national fan base also makes them a perennial merchandising favourite.
All the Dodgers need now is a resolution of the cable carriage dispute that still prevents more than half of their fans from seeing the team’s games on TV.
Sure, they’re still collecting a whopping US$334-million per year on the 25-year, US$8.35B marketing rights deal with Charter Communications (formerly Time Warner Cable), but it’s an embarrassment for the Dodgers and MLB that the dispute hasn’t been resolved with DirecTV and other cable distributors to bring such winning baseball — six NL divisional titles and counting — to Sportsnet L.A. and the majority of their fans in Southern California.
Bizarre TV issues aside, who doesn’t think it’ll be the Dodgers against either the New York Yankees or Houston Astros in this year’s World Series?
If you thought the ball was fumbled badly in the marketing of the six-year, Buffalo Bills Toronto Series (2008-2013 at Rogers Centre), then there’s probably no word to describe how much of a debacle Thursday’s NFL pre-season game was at IG Field in Winnipeg.
Despite having two storied heritage brands in the mix — the “home team” Oakland Raiders and the Green Bay Packers — the event needed a last-minute rush on slashed ticket prices to reach 20,000 in attendance.
That’s all on promoter John Graham and the Toronto-based On Ice Entertainment. Learning nothing from the failed ticketing strategy of the Bills Toronto Series, On Ice fixed an average ticket price north of $250 (topping out at $340). Their initial modest allocation of $75 seats were gobbled up to leave Category 2 prices of $191.50 and all categories north of that twisting in the wind of an ice cold market response in Winnipeg.
A Miller Light sponsorship deal opened up end zone seating at the lower price points but didn’t do what the event should have done: Sold out quickly and easily — or at least matched the average attendance of 25,000 enjoyed by the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Yet the brutal miscalculation on ticket pricing was only the beginning. The flop extended to concerns arising from creating NFL playing field dimensions and that resulted in an 80-yard playing field, no kickoffs and no starters to play for those who forked over hard-earned money for their Raiders-Packers’ tickets.
That is more on the NFL for not specifying or inspecting field standards before it was too late.
• The Sport Market on TSN Radio rates and debates the Bulls & Bears of sport business. Join Tom Mayenknecht Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. for a behind-the-scenes look at the sport-business stories that matter most to fans.
Follow Tom Mayenknecht at: Twitter.com/TheSportMarket
CLICK HERE to report a typo.
Is there more to this story? We’d like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com