There’s nothing like 1. Being a solid team with a real chance to make it to the World Series and 2. Beginning the season in a new stadium to up your season ticket sales. If you wrongly guess demand, you may end up with a shortage:
Unprecedented demand has caused the Cardinals to stop selling season tickets for the 2006 season, but fans will be able to purchase single-game tickets for all games -– including the home opener — beginning Sat. March 4.
Cardinals president Mark Lamping said Friday that the opening of new Busch Stadium, combined with the team’s success the past two seasons, has enabled the team to sell a record 27,500 season tickets. That’s about 6,500 tickets more than the previous high, slightly more than 21,000 season tickets in 2000.
“We do not have the capacity to meet the demand for season tickets that we are experiencing,” he said.
More than 3 million tickets are already committed for the 82-game home schedule through season tickets, group sales, four-game packages, club obligations and charity donations. That leaves only 500,000 that will go on sale to the public at 9 a.m. March 4. .
The Cubs, as usual, are doing well in the ticket-sales department as well:
A sub-.500 season and fourth-place NL Central finish didn’t dampen interest in the Cubs, who broke their own major-league one-day ticket sales record Friday with more than 600,000 sold.
Final figures for the weekend were not immediately available, but the Cubs announced that approximately 20 of their 81 home games are sold out.
Last summer I wrote this post about the popularity of the Cubs in Chicago and surmised much of it has to do with the area around Wrigley Field. Many of the commenters at that time agreed. As is so often the case, even though the Cubs played poorly last year, fans still flock to Wrigley.
