Insanity

This post is a few days past its sell by date, but...

I went to the A's game Monday night. The experience was typical; the nachos grande was delightful, the weather was cold (as always for night games at the Coliseum), the game was a dog (Angels 4, A's 2, and it wasn't that close), etc. But that's not what I have on my mind. No, I'm thinking about the thing that should be atypical about going to a ballgame: specifically, the price of attendance.

I often hear the argument about how prices for going to a major league baseball game have kept pace with inflation, it's still a good deal for a family, blah blah blah. I'm sure you can make that case, via either lies, damn lies, or statistics. But I think something else is going on there next to the Nimitz Freeway, and I think that because of the parking fee.

Now, I didn't drive to the Coliseum Monday night. I never do; I always take BART to the game, because of the cost of parking. So it had been a while since I actually knew how much parking at an A's game cost, and I had to ask a couple of folks I passed near the entry gate how much the A's and/or the Coliseum are charging for parking these days. That figure is--I'll pause here so you can put on a diaper, because you're about to shit yourself--that figure is $17.

Seventeen dollars. Just to park your car at the stadium. You don't even get in to watch the game for that; you just get to rest your vehicle somewhere in the lot.

Some reading this will shrug in indifference and say, "Well, sure, parking is expensive anywhere you go these days." That's true to a point. In congested areas where there is minimal space for maximum numbers of cars--downtown Oakland, along Park Street here in Alameda, anywhere in San Francisco--there is a premium on finding space to house your vehicle. It will cost you. No surprise there--that's just simple economics, the dismal science in its most fundamental equation: supply vs. demand. Where there is short supply and high demand, prices go up. Simple.

But that's not the situation at A's games. The Athletics are routinely drawing in the neighborhood of 10K paying customers to their games. Among those few who do show up, a sizable percentage take public transit (like I do) to get there. In other words, for most A's games, there are--and I mean this quite literally--acres of area available for parking cars. They're charging high prices where there is virtually no demand.

Worse still, as I mentioned before, that $17 doesn't even get you into the game. If you're a cheapskate, there are three choices of ticket that will get you into the stadium for less than you paid for parking: the bleachers ($13), "plaza reserved" (a section on "Mount Davis" that is above and beyond the bleachers) for $9 (the cheapest seat in the place), or the "value deck" in the nosebleed section behind home plate, where for $12 you get your seat and a $6 voucher you can spend on food or merchandise. (Of course, almost everything food or merch costs more than $6, so don't leave your wallet in the car.) Every other seat in the house costs even more money, from the $18 plaza outfield tickets all the way up to the $48 MVP box seats on the field behind home plate, where (one presumes) every one of your whims is catered to.

Put it all together, and you've got an expensive night out. For a loner like me, if I drove to the game, sat in the cheapest seat, and ate dinner there (rough estimate, $10 for sufficient food and beverage), that's $36 for one night's entertainment. The cost goes up a steep slope if you have a friend or (god forbid) a family; but at least you get to share that parking cost.

And what does this all mean in the great scheme of things? How has this pricing plan worked out for the A's? Just peachy, of course! For instance, we can see that the A's are currently 26th in attendance in MLB; they average 17,997 per game, selling 41.2% of available tickets. Basic math informs us that 58.8% of their tickets--way more than half--go unsold.

And those figures are probably not truly representative. For one thing, baseball teams are notorious liars about attendance figures; teams usually announce tickets sold, not bodies in the seats, for attendance figures. Nor would one be surprised to find that the numbers were fudged beyond that, just to make attendance look more robust for public consumption than it really is. Even if the numbers are wholly accurate, with the A's their attendance gets boosted by selling lots of discounted tickets. (Their "double play Wednesday" promotion always boosts the gate count; plus they engage in various other promotional giveaways and discounts). Most games, the MVP seats are filled, but the rest of the crowd is scattered throughout the wide open spaces of the Coliseum.

In sum: parking--low demand, high supply, high cost ($17). Tickets--low demand, high supply, high cost (most $18 and above). Simple economics would indicate that both the tickets and parking are set way above their price point. And this in the middle of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. What is going on here?

There are, I think, two possible answers to this seeming economic dilemma:

1) Everyone running the A's is insane. They (and their adjuncts with the city of Oakland and Alameda County, who have some input in running the Coliseum) are out of their fucking minds and completely devoid of any connection with economic reality. They should lower prices in order to boost attendance and gain the associated benefits of more bodies in the seats, but their derangement makes them unable to make sensible business decisions. Or,

2) This is not the product of insanity, but a calculated strategy to drive down attendance and make the A's seem to be not viable in their current location.

See, I'm leaning toward option 2. And it's the parking fee that gets me there. I can understand overpriced tickets. People will always want to go to the game; however they get there, when they arrive, they'll pay a few bucks (or much more than a few bucks) to get in the gate. You'll always find a few suckers who will pay top dollar. And no matter how you get there, be it driving or riding or just plain walking, you need to buy a ticket to get in. But $17 for parking? In a lot that, for most games, will never be more than 1/4 full? If the cost of the ticket is spitting in the customer's face, then that parking fee is kicking the customer in the groin. It is an expression of utter contempt for the people who, by any reckoning, should be the ones paying your way.

The next time someone argues that the A's simply can't make a go of it in their current location, in their current stadium, with their current karma, etc. etc. etc., I think that parking fee is the trump card to play against that argument. I think it shows that the current ownership simply doesn't give a damn about making the A's a legitimate and viable organization. They just want to cash their luxury tax checks from the real team owners and slink away into the night. The sooner they do that slinking, the better off baseball fans in the East Bay will be.