Red Sox Exec VP & COO Sam Kennedy appeared on Boston's WEEI radio Friday after a Boston Globe story "questioned the validity" of the team's home sellout streak, according to Jerry Spar of WEEI.com. The Globe report noted that seats "are being sold or given away well after games start and a Fenway ticket-seller confirmed after a game this week that tickets remained when the final booth was closed." Kennedy said, "We've been screaming from the mountaintops for the last seven or eight years that we have tickets for sale for every game at Fenway, and they're available on a day-game purchase at Gate E. It's kind of ironic, this story this morning is sort of as predictable as the cold and rainy weather in Boston. When the team's not playing so well, I understand that we'll come under attack." Kennedy added, "It's always been pegged to seating capacity. … This is a decades-old standard. It goes back to the early 1990s and maybe even before that, certainly long before we were here. It's a common standard that other Major League Baseball teams use, that other sports teams in the Boston market -- the Celtics and the Bruins, for example -- use. It's just one that has been common practice and one that has worked for most teams." Kennedy: "I think the confusion lies in the fact that there are tickets available on the day [of] game for sale. But any time there have been unsold tickets during the streak, the number of standing-room tickets that have been sold always exceeds that number of seats that are still available." Spar noted the team's relationship with ticket resellers "has come under question in the past." Kennedy denied that the Red Sox "sell tickets to companies such as Ace Tickets, which buys advertising from the team." He said, "We do not sell tickets directly to them for resale. That's our season ticket-holders and other purchasers that sell tickets and get involved in the secondary market. Our concern is obviously the primary market for tickets. We make no bones about the fact that we want to try to sell as many tickets as humanly possible for every game, because it gives us a great revenue base to work from and it gives us a competitive advantage for the players to play in front of a packed house night in and night out" (WEEI.com, 5/4).
FILLING THE SEATS? In Minneapolis, Jason Gonzalez notes it is a "fierce environment on the streets surrounding Target Field just a year after back-to-back seasons of record-breaking attendance." The Twins' "lack of success, poor weather and dwindling excitement over a new stadium have led the secondary-ticket market to its bottom as scalpers are desperate to sell." Attendance has "dropped on average about 5,000 fans per game compared to the past two Aprils." The stands are "emptier than these figures portray, with scalpers struggling to unload their gobs of tickets." Twins Exec Dir of Public Affairs Kevin Smith said that the organization "already has sold 2.4 million tickets" in '12, for an average of "about 30,000 fans a game." In '10 and '11, the club "sold 3 million-plus tickets for average attendance above 39,000." Smith said, "Obviously, we'd like to do better. But we're tracking pretty well right now despite the on-field woes. I don't think it's out of the question we will get to 3 million (tickets sold) this year" (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 5/7).
