The MLB Giants continued to see strong sales of single-
game tickets, and by 4:00pm PT on Saturday, 52 of the 81
home games at Pac Bell Park were sold out, according to
Matthew Yi of the S.F. EXAMINER. Giants VP/Ticket Services
Russ Stanley: "I really don't remember us selling tickets
like this ever. We expected it to take us about two weeks
to sell out all the single-game tickets, but I think we'll
be sold out by the middle or the end of next week." Yi
wrote that the tickets were sold via the Internet, BASS and
Wherehouse ticket outlets, Giants Dugout stores, the team's
ticket hot line, 3Com Park box office and the exhibition
center. Giants Dir of Sales Rob Sullivan said that "for 15
minutes in the first hour of ticket sales, heavy traffic
slowed access on the Giants' Web site," but "corrections
were made and transactions followed" (S.F. EXAMINER, 2/27).
In San Jose, Sheldon Spencer wrote that attempts to buy
tickets "were mixed," and as the Giants' site contained a
message "warning of heavy traffic" and a link to BASS'
Giants page, the BASS site "encountered a similar overload"
(SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 2/27). In CA, Peters & Roderick
wrote that Internet sales were suspended last Thursday to
due heavy volume. Giants Senior VP/Marketing Tom McDonald:
"On Tuesday, we had 8,000-9,000 orders per hour, and that
was more than our system could take" (C.C. TIMES, 2/26).
McDonald "disputed" a report that the site "had been ravaged
by ticket scalpers," saying that "only 500 to 1,000 seats
wound up in the wrong hands" (S.J. MERCURY NEWS, 2/26).
NEW PARK ALL THE RAGE: Giants VP/Public Affairs Staci
Slaughter said Sunday that 2.91 million tickets have been
sold for the 40,800-seat ballpark and 150,000 tickets
remain, but they "could be gone by Saturday." The team has
surpassed its previous season-ticket record of 12,000 for
Candlestick Park by selling 29,000 packages for Pac Bell
(USA TODAY, 2/28). Giants COO Larry Baer, on past sales:
"We'd be lucky to sell 30,000 in a month some years." On
Saturday, Baer noted that last year, the team only had four
sellouts. Baer: "I don't know if this team had 49 sellouts
in its first 40 years here" (CONTRA COSTA TIMES, 2/27).
