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Progressive Field, packed for Game 2, has proved hard to fill for the Indians in recent years.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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The Cleveland Indians, on the heels of a surprising run to the World Series, simply want to be average.
A long-range internal growth plan put into action last year, well before the club’s current October success, calls for the team to rise to the middle of the pack among MLB club attendance, ticket revenue and per-cap spending by 2020.
The “15th in 5 years” plan at first glance may seem underwhelming for a team that once sold out 455 straight games and held MLB’s sellout streak record until it was broken by Boston in 2008. But the last decade and a half has been tough for Cleveland, where the local economy has taken hits and the team followed a sustained run of success in the 1990s with several disappointing seasons. The Indians had the MLB’s third-worst attendance this year at 1.59 million, and second worst last year at 1.39 million.
Forced to become more disciplined in both its business and baseball operations, the Indians have reached the World Series this year with the sport’s ninth-smallest payroll.
Brian Barren, Indians executive vice president of sales and marketing, says that discipline will not change as the team plans for the 2017 season.
“We’re essentially two years into a five-year plan, and we’re not going to throw that out now,” Barren said. “We’re building a whole new framework of how we go to market. The footers are all in place, and we’re going to keep earning it and growing organically.”
That mentality remains even as the Indians have sold more than 1,000 new full-season equivalent season-ticket packages for next year, fueled by an opportunity to gain 2016 playoff tickets with a 2017 commitment. That sales number is roughly 10 times the amount of new ticket sales for this point in a normal offseason, and will be supplemented in the coming months by primarily targeting local businesses, schools and universities, and community organizations.
The Indians hired Barren nearly three years ago from Procter & Gamble, and he has brought with him many of the core philosophies of consumer products industry. Among them is a keen focus on eventually outperforming what the Indians consider their direct peer group of MLB teams. That group, with similar market sizes and socioeconomic makeups, includes Baltimore, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay.
The Indians’ growth strategy also includes continuing to create neighborhoods and enclaves within Progressive Field. That strategy has already produced themed areas such as The Corner, a popular two-story bar by the ballpark’s right-field foul pole.
“There’s been a big push on product segmentation within the ballpark, one that started when [former team president] Mark [Shapiro] was here, and really involves a lot of fan feedback and fan insight,” Barren said. “We think we’re still early in our cycle of product development.”
Getting to the middle of the pack in MLB attendance would mean reaching about 2.4 million, a figure the Indians haven’t hit since 2002. The first step toward that will be getting to 2 million for the first time since 2008.
“Two million is a place we’d certainly like to get to in the coming years,” Barren said. “We can’t control team performance and weather, but we will continue to focus strongly on controlling the controllables.”
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HOT DOGS STILL KING: The Indians along with food and beverage concessionaire Delaware North have made Progressive Field a fertile setting for local food offerings, including popular brands Dynomite Burgers and the Great Lakes Brewing Co. For the World Series, Delaware North introduced a pair of new food items; one of them, a plate of pork shank wings dubbed “When Pigs Fly,” honors the matchup of the Indians, 68 years without a title, and the Chicago Cubs, 108 years without one.
But for all the menu enhancements, the simple hot dog still proved to be by far the most popular food item at the ballpark. Delaware North sold about 10,000 hot dogs for each of the first two games, more than 40 percent higher than a busy regular-season game.
“We’re very proud of our local concepts, and put a lot into them, but hot dogs are still a very big deal,” said Fattar Thomas, Delaware North general manager.
Delaware North’s World Series operation in Cleveland involved more than 1,200 employees, up roughly 50 percent from in-season levels, with personnel brought in from numerous other markets.
