This year they tabbed Bruce Levine to do it.

This is ridiculous at this point. It's starting to bother ME and Im not even a fan. It is what is. Their attendance is not great. Move on.




Levine: White Sox Attendance Is Mystifying
June 11, 2014 10:01 PM

By Bruce Levine-
U.S. CELLULAR FIELD (CBS) – It is an old story but still worth investigating: Why can’t the White Sox draw anything near an average amount of fans to their games?
The White Sox rank 28th in baseball with an average attendance under 20,000 per game. Many explanations have been posed, but few seem to be the exact reason for a free-fall in fan participation. White Sox attendance now has dropped for the fifth straight season.
The game day experience is fan-friendly at U.S. Cellular Field, based on reasonable ticket prices in 85 percent of the ballpark. There is a fair atmosphere in the corridor that surrounds the lower bowl of the seating area, where there are 26,000 seats. The food is as good as any you would find in downtown Chicago specialty restaurants. Wide walkways make it easy to get around, and libations that are easily obtained and consumed are a real part of a fun day at the ballpark.
I still haven’t touched on the best reason to attend a game at U.S Cellular Field. The White Sox have a young team with some really interesting players and are hanging around in the AL Central race. Two names come to mind if you are looking for a reason to attend a game: Jose Abreu and Adam Eaton.
Of course, it appears the real reason people don’t attend games is the location of the ballpark. Over the past five years, traffic patterns have gotten worse, causing fans in the southwest and northwest suburbs to think twice before heading toward the main feeder expressways. Two seasons ago, the Red Line was doing major repairs and shut down for five months of the season. That gave many commuters to White Sox games another reason to take a pass.
Marketing director Brooks Boyer has discounted tickets on the weekends and parking for all Sunday games. Some observers believe Sox fans became bargain ticket shoppers. If that is true, it occurred after years of half-price Monday tickets and Tuesday half-price admission with a Pepsi label in tow.
Although U.S. Cellular Field isn’t historic like Wrigley Field or Fenway Park, the Fundamental Deck in left field as well as the patio and bullpen bar area in right field give the ballpark some real South Side flavor.
Late Chicago mayor Harold Washington insisted upon the stadium retaining a place on the South Side of Chicago, and no stadium deal could be agreed upon unless the mayor got his way. Many believed that a downtown ballpark near the east railroad tracks off of Randolph Street, now condos and office buildings, was the right place to build a a park with a sure draw every night.
Attendance at U.S Cellular field is always a topic that has a dead-end sign attached to it. When you are within 2 1/2 games of the first-place Tigers, as the Sox are, and draw 18,694 fans against Detroit, it is worthwhile to look into why people don’t show up.

I think it's funny how the Score hosts sit there everyday and tell fans that the Sox aren't going anywhere this season and then get upset when those same fans don't go to the games.

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Freedom is our Strength.

It's a marketing tool. The White Sox most likely receive a small bump in attendance when one of the things are written...

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Considering how differently-abled* Bruce Levine is, I find myself wondering how he continues to find work writing, other than perhaps relative to his voice that has all the tonal warmth of a 4th-grade oboist.

* - as in, I don't know what he's 'abled' to do, but it's definitely different than what he's trying to do now.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

It's just lazy, weak and old hat. Therr is no reason to write or even talk about at anywhere near the current rate.

Even Mac gets tired of it, tells us he's tires of it and then does a segment on it.

And the best Sox talk the station can muster up seems to be attendance and how you shouldn't care even though they're doing well.

Great stuff from the FLAGSHIP.

It might be worth a story if someone else wrote it. Yeah the attendance is always bad and not worth writing about, but having it go down 5 years in a row may be worth a looking into.

Right

And then there is the fact that this is going on 10 years. How the hell is it mystifying?


The White Sox have another team 8 miles away that has(had?) a huge following
They lost 99 games last year
The economy and jobs (that create disposable income) have been in the gutter for 8 years at least


There are a bunch of legitimate reasons for the attendance. To pretend otherwise is just silly

Agree with Joe Orr. And RPB, it is what it is, move along. I do think its worth mentioning that while ticket prices and parking have been discounted most games, concession prices still continue to climb. I'm not saying have a 10 cent beer night, but $3 for a bottle of water is a bit insane.

I think it would be fun to try and plan a CSFMB outing to a Sox game. Cubs fan or not, what better way to spend a summer afternoon/evening than watching baseball (and possibly fireworks), while hanging out and drinking?

I also think there are thousands (thousands?!) of people out there just looking to stick it to bigfan. State of IL park is empty again! lol

I just hope its full in October

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boom

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This is my signature...

maybe cuz the team lost 99 games last year and probably has like 2000 season ticket owners left?
maybe cuz the location blows which is why attendance is ALWAYS crappy unless it happens to be the year after they win a world series?
maybe cuz the TV and Radio broadcasts are national jokes that no one in their right mind would actually listen to?
maybe cuz the team is actually pretty lousy and has somehow lucked into being .500?
maybe cuz JR & Co. have spent 30+ years being a walking talking PR disaster?

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Low attendance is just a sympton of small overall fanbase. Expanding the fanbase is the solution not Tuesday Techno Night.

I don't buy the location thing. Its not easy to drive to from the North, but Wrigley isn't easy to drive to from anywhere.

There is a Metra stop on 35th st. I've taken this 5-6 times over the last couple years. $7 for unlimited rides on weekends, you can drink on the train, very fan and family friendly for the most part. There are also two EL stops within a 5-10 minute walk to the park.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

I think it is more obvious because of the small fanbase, but this seems more like a trend where they are unable to attract new fans to replace the ones getting older who are having kids and families and increased job responsibilities.

This will become a problem for a lot of teams though as the age demographics of baseball should be quite concerning.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

And that team is down over the last five years as well.

But really, I think the idea that a losing season is pre-ordained has a lot to do with it. When I was growing up there were some bad teams, but I never remember the media writing them off before any games were played (and certainly not being dismissed with the best record they way bernstein and others dismissed the Bulls). Sure, if you think a team isn't going to win a championship you're going to be right most of the time. Even if you're looking at the Yankees. But it doesn't always go that way. The Sox had easily the best team in baseball in 2005 and much of the media said they couldn't win all the way up until they did. If the current Sox team went on a huge run and won 90 games I wouldn't be any more surprised than when they won in 2000.

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Freedom is our Strength.

Also their tickets aren't necessarily affordable. They're a tad under MLB league average:
https://www.teammarketing.com/public/uploadedPDFs/2014+mlb+fci.pdf
Sure, compared to the Cubs they're affordable but Cubs tix are very overpriced and not representative of their market value. In fact, I'd say all baseball tickets are priced too high.

They're raping consumers by passing their TV deal costs onto us so I might as well stay home and enjoy what I paid for.

BRick, I agree with declining fanbases all across the board. Baseball skews to an older demo.

4.75 at Rickley.

I never thought Id deny my child water but couldnt do it. #ShakesWouldBeProud

people want a freaking entertainment experience. bar hopping before and after. good restaurants. gay hookups, etc.

you ever walked around Fenway, Wrigley, San Fran, Colorado, blah blah. notice a minor difference with what you have on 35th?

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

With about a 2 minute search on Google, you can find ticket codes or groups outfield seats for almost any game for anywhere from $15-25

Its as simple as Googling "white sox grand slam group tickets"

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OK, I'm going with a friend or two. Not a group. Just sayin' they aren't that cheap. And they try to soak fans for premium games. Cubs series bleacher tix were going $80-90

I'm not starting Cubs/Sox. I think all MLB tickets are too expensive.

Correct and the only ones that ARE affordable are the terrible upper deck seats where you have no access to all the concourse amenities they put in for the fans.

I know I went to a hell of a lot of Sox games buying half priced upper deck seats and hanging in the outfield. They no longer get that money.

This attendance thing was not nearly as bad before they started separating the sections.


I think Sox fans have learned the Dont run on the field lesson. Its been ten years. Open up the park again and you will see a noticeable increase immediately

The group is basically public. You type in the code "TINLEY" (or whatever) and you can buy the discounted tickets for "Village of Tinley Park night" online. Its not like the check IDs at the door to make sure you are actually from Tinley Park. They wait and sick the ushers on you later on.

You bring up a good point, RPB. A good idea might be to have them offer like a $10 standing room ticket for the outfield concourse. The way you could have that work is to have ushers check tickets behind the RF and LF foul poles, that way people that have regular tickets but who want to check out the fan deck or whatever could still walk around, but the people who want to hang out on the concourse would have to stay there. Plenty of concessions, a gift shop, beer vendors, etc to take care of everybody. They could do a trial run on a weekday Twins series or something to see how it works.

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Your guy Larry has said on multiple occasions that the bad economy is not a good excuse for Sox fans' lack of interest in attending games.

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drive through some of the vast swaths of lower middle class neighborhoods on the far southside and adjacent burbs and into NW Indiana and you can tell blowing a couple of hundred to go to a Sox game isn't exactly in the monthly budget.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

agreed, plus everything about the ballpark sucks except for the sight lines on the lower level.

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Ticket Nazi ushers. Scary blacks. Jewish owner. Boom.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

And yet...

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I am actually taking my wife to the game tonight. Got 3rd row seats on the left field foul line for 41 dollars each. I paid close to a 100 for a pair of dog shit 3rd level seats at the United Center for a Bulls game this season. If I was a Sox fan I'd go a lot more often as it is a very nice game day experience.

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How many of you have kids that watch sports? Mine want nothing to do with any team and have no interest in watching anything sport related.

I asked them if they wanted to go to a Cubs game and the little one did because of Clark , but the older ones had no interest. Was like asking them if they wanted to go to the laundry mat. My son plays soccer and I asked him if he wanted to go to a Chicago Fire game. He said, nah.

Maybe, I should have been a lazy dad and sat in front of the TV more watching sports instead of taking them outside to play

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In both cases, you severely overpaid. Who's your ticket broker?

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