The Sellout Streak is Dead and Not Coming Back
Red Sox COO Sam Kennedy recently echoed the same sentiments that Larry Lucchino shared earlier this offseason that the Red Sox much-maligned sellout streak's end is imminent. Chances are that the club will acknowledge the obvious as soon as the second home game of the season.
Where Kennedy is lying is tail off is when he says that he is confident that the Red Sox will start a new streak. Kennedy is not a stupid man. I am sure if you asked him off the record whether he thought this was realistic or not we all know what the answer would be.
Kennedy's primary job is to fill Fenway Park. Nobody can fault him and the Red Sox front office for trying to start a new streak. The reason why we will never see a streak like we have seen has nothing to do with the Red Sox and has everything to do with the sport of baseball itself. Whenever the streak actually ended and how long the Red Sox continued to announce sellouts even as there were swaths of empty seats doesn't change just how impressive and unprecedented the real streak was.
Baseball is not the NFL where fans pay to be on waiting lists for years or decades to buy arguably the worst in-game experience in sports. In most markets, most of the times a fan can go to a ballpark on a whim, buy a good ticket at the window, and not pay through the nose. Before last season it had been a long time since a Red Sox fan had been able to do that without waiting all day for a day of game ticket. Even with the Red Sox merely freezing ticket prices a fan can now at least buy tickets on StubHub.com and still afford beers after the game or souvenirs for their kids.
Whether there's a streak or not the Red Sox attendance and ticket revenue will still be the envy of all of baseball. That includes the Yankees who destroyed their game-day experience for the average fan by building an anti-septic, corporate morgue of a ballpark. Hell, they doubled down on the fail by overpricing the premium seats that pushed the real fans further away in the first place.
If the Red Sox young players develop like we think and hope they will demand for tickets will pick back up again. If the Red Sox are running away with the 2014 or 2015 AL East they will likely sell out lots of games and maybe most of them. If they don't sell out a cold, rainy Tuesday in May that just makes the Red Sox like almost every other baseball team in the history of the sport. Next time you're bored on the internet go to BaseballReference.com and look at attendance figures from baseball's "Golden Age" of the 1950's. Putting the streak in that context makes the club's prolonging of it even more absurd.
Where Kennedy is lying is tail off is when he says that he is confident that the Red Sox will start a new streak. Kennedy is not a stupid man. I am sure if you asked him off the record whether he thought this was realistic or not we all know what the answer would be.
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| Empty at Fenway seats as fans bundle up. Shocking! The Red Sox are just like the rest of baseball. |
Baseball is not the NFL where fans pay to be on waiting lists for years or decades to buy arguably the worst in-game experience in sports. In most markets, most of the times a fan can go to a ballpark on a whim, buy a good ticket at the window, and not pay through the nose. Before last season it had been a long time since a Red Sox fan had been able to do that without waiting all day for a day of game ticket. Even with the Red Sox merely freezing ticket prices a fan can now at least buy tickets on StubHub.com and still afford beers after the game or souvenirs for their kids.
Whether there's a streak or not the Red Sox attendance and ticket revenue will still be the envy of all of baseball. That includes the Yankees who destroyed their game-day experience for the average fan by building an anti-septic, corporate morgue of a ballpark. Hell, they doubled down on the fail by overpricing the premium seats that pushed the real fans further away in the first place.
If the Red Sox young players develop like we think and hope they will demand for tickets will pick back up again. If the Red Sox are running away with the 2014 or 2015 AL East they will likely sell out lots of games and maybe most of them. If they don't sell out a cold, rainy Tuesday in May that just makes the Red Sox like almost every other baseball team in the history of the sport. Next time you're bored on the internet go to BaseballReference.com and look at attendance figures from baseball's "Golden Age" of the 1950's. Putting the streak in that context makes the club's prolonging of it even more absurd.
