Welcome to DK Sports Radio and a new Daily Shot of Pirates, my every-weekday, half-hour program on the local baseball franchise. Today's episode: Will selling tickets to PNC Park in 2021 really be that hard?
Oh, and hey, there's a transcript below, as well.
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TRANSCRIPT
In December, the Pirates hired a gentleman named David Burke to be their new head of ticket sales. And that led to all of the predictable jokes about the toughest job in town and everything else.
And you know what? I don't know that it'll be all that tough.
The Pirates will be opening Grapefruit play at LECOM Park in three weeks and, when they do, they're going to be allowing to 2,000 fans per game. If you're familiar with that place, it holds like 7,000. If you're not counting the new boardwalk, then you're talking about 6,000. So it's in Florida, where they really don't care about coronavirus at the state government level -- I mean, I've been there, it's unbelievable, like it's not even happening -- so you're not going to have much in the way of tight regulation. Regardless, it's something that the Pirates, and every team that participates in Grapefruit ball, is just going to basically have to manage for themselves out of their own concern for fan safety until we have more vaccines distributed. One out of every three seats being filled is a little rough right now. But whatever.
By the time baseball gets to Pittsburgh -- which is what matters -- PNC Park will be sitting here with 38,000 seats. And it remains to be seen how many of those can be filled. Meaning as allowed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and, of course, Allegheny County. But it also remains to be seen how many will be filled.
Think about that for a second, as I'm not sure that this has become enough of a topic. You hear constantly how everybody just can't wait until there's sports again, and movies and shows and Kennywood and Idlewild and everything. But are they really going to go back? Are they really gonna go rushing back, like, instantly? I don't know about that.
Here's what I think I know: It's going to depend on the numbers allowed. If you see a really low threshold applied by the Commonwealth, and they say for example, you have a 38,000-seat stadium, so you're allowed to have 5,000 in there max. And I'm going with that number because that's what was given to the Steelers at Heinz Field holding 68,000, same as it was for the Eagles on the other side of the state. So the same thing should apply to the Pirates and Phillies, at least the same principles.
Well, if it's 5,000 tickets, I can promise you all 5,000 will be sold. And they might be sold at a premium. That's just how this goes. The Steelers had a a system where, because season-ticket holders basically account for most of Heinz Field, they had to do a lottery thing so they weren't playing favorites with anybody. The Pirates have full-season ticket holders, but it's a low number. It's been a while since I've checked on it, but the last time that I was able to get a figure from anybody, it was, like, close to 1,000. I'm not kidding. Even in their three playoff years, that figure never got really high. And when I say full-season ticket holder, I'm not talking about somebody who's got 20-game plans or 40-game plans, right? I'm talking about the full 81. That is a rare bird in Pittsburgh these days. So I think they'll have an easy time distributing.
Based on fairness, if I'm the Pirates, I'd give out all the full-season tickets immediately. That's it. If you commit to my team, and I'm selling tickets for all 81 games, you're in. Simple as that. Now, that still leaves another 4,000 or so. But let's say it gets bigger. And it will, at some point, I mean, we do have vaccines and they are effective. It's just a matter of time. Let's say the number goes to 20,000. Yeah, right. See what I mean? It's kind of a fun little thing to think about.
Would you really get 20,000 people in Pittsburgh to go watch the Pirates and attend an event in public with that many people after you just spent the past year and change avoiding even your own family?
Here's I remember something that Tom Rooney, the former CEO of the Penguins back in their Civic Arena days, told me about ticket tension: If you have a certain finite supply, and people are aware that you have a certain finite supply, it puts an extra demand on the purchases. That's common sense. I think that's that's just business sense. That's not necessarily anything that's unique to sports or insight that Tom thought of himself, but the phrase stuck with me. That ticket tension was supposed to make PNC Park so attractive from the business standpoint when it was built as the smallest ballpark in the majors. If the pirates ever got good, and they built their season-ticket base to 20,000 or 25,000, you'd have only 13,000 single-game tickets available for any given game. And that would create that tension.
Well, here's a different form of tension. If you know that X number of people have been using the only 5,000 tickets available to a certain stage and then they expand to 20,000 ... yeah, I just don't think the Pirates are gonna have a hard time selling tickets in 2021. And you can say what you want about Bob Nutting or how the team's gonna stink or being a Class AAA affiliate for the Yankees, blah, blah, blah. Fact of the matter is, after a year and a half of pandemic, there are a lot worse things you can do with your life and go spending a day in the world's greatest ballpark, watching the great game of baseball. Believe me, I'm not trying to sell tickets here. I couldn't care less how they do. I'm just saying I think that's how people are going to respond.
'Really? We can go watch baseball now? Heck, I'm gonna do that! I don't care if the team stinks. How many tickets are available?'
And then somebody says the number and you go, 'Whoa, we better jump on that now,' and then they start buying them in advance.
I think the Pirates are actually going to have a good year for selling tickets. I know that sounds crazy. But you watch. We'll come back to this one.