Friday, August 29, 2008

3 Million Tickets

The Brewers sold their 3-Millionth ticket yesterday. This is fantastic news. It's amazing that a team with the smallest market in professional baseball can have such great attendance. Winning helps, but, as the Rays will tell you, it's not everything when it comes to getting people to come out to a game.

Chris Jaffe at the Hardball Times has a post up about teams that price-gouge their fans. He praises the Brewers as the biggest exception:

If there's one team I've learned to respect from looking at these prices the last two years, it's the Milwaukee Brewers. They do something very rare in pro sports; they treat their fans with respect. They'd rather grow a fan base than gouge one. Not only are they the only team to not have a processing charge, but also they have the lowest convenience fee in MLB.

On the one hand, as a Cubs fan I don't like seeing them move forward because it jeopardizes my team's chances. But I can switch off that part of my brain for a second. Taking a less parochial view, they are the most root-for-able squad out there. They develop from within, do a great job evaluating talent and serve as a model to properly deal with fans. Hang your head high, Brewers fans—you root for a club to be envied.

That's great to hear.

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