Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Butts In The Seats

Unless you count this morning's game (which, like many, I'm having a hard time embracing), opening day is still almost a week away, yet the Yankees have already sold a staggering number of tickets:
The Yankees announced today they have exceeded 3.8 million tickets sold for the 2008 season, marking the earliest the club has ever reached that level. With one week until Opening Day, the current tally is 400,000 tickets ahead of the Yankees' total on the same date last year.
For some perspective here are the Yankees' attendance numbers for their last ten championship seasons:

2000: 3,055,435
1999: 3,292,736
1998: 2,955,193
1996: 2,250,877
1978: 2,335,871
1977: 2,103,092
1962: 1,493,574
1961: 1,747,725
1958: 1,428,438
1956: 1,491,784

It should also be noted that in most of those seasons, the Yankees led the league in gate as well.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am watching as I type, and even so I am having trouble accepting that the season has begun. But I do want to thank you for reminding me that we all live in a millennium* in which the Cubs and Yankees have the same number of World Championships: zero.

*Note to people who can't count, there was no year 0.

Craig Calcaterra said...

Same here. My problem isn't the Japanese setting, really. That's all good. My problem is that there are still spring training games going on. I watched a little bit of the game before work, and my mind said "Yay! The regular season started." Then I sit at my computer and scan the headlines and I am momentarily discombobulated, thinking that the news about, say, the Yankees renaming their field, and performances in yesterday's games are regular season stories. It only lasts a milisecond, but it's disorienting all the same.

I don't care if the regular season starts in Tokyo, Singapore, Lisbon, or Lahore, just make sure that when it starts IT STARTS.

Unknown said...

I hate getting up early, but as a dedicated baseball fan (and Boston resident) I set my alarm for 5:55AM so I could watch those first two games. I nodded off a few times, but stayed awake long enough to follow the plot ;) I missed baseball so much, it was worth it.

Re. the Yankees, the fact that they're opening a new stadium next year probably has a lot to do with the increase in ticket sales. If people buy ticket packages this year, they get preference for tickets in the new stadium in '09.