Canada Day no longer an automatic sellout for Jays
It has come to this as an attempt to fill empty seats at Canada’s only home of Major League Baseball: offering $1 hotdogs once a month and deeply discounting tickets for a summer holiday game that was once an automatic sellout.
Yes, as Canada Day weekend approaches, the Blue Jays are midway through one of the worst attended seasons in franchise history, with the struggles at the gate mirroring those on the field.
Through the 38 home dates thus far, a disheartening run of baseball in which they have struggled to a 13-25 mark on their own turf, the Jays are averaging a mere 20,420 fans per game.
That’s already third worst in Rogers Centre history, but well within range of eclipsing the low-water mark of 19,173 set in 2010.
Perhaps more stark, the current average is less than half of the 41,878 fans who filled the aging dome as recently as 2015, the first of back-to-back seasons in which the Jays led the American League in attendance.
“I think it’s understandable,” said Andrew Miller, the Jays’ vice-president of business operations.
“From a business perspective, we try to understand the fans. We don’t get focused on (team performance). It’s more on (finding a way of) impacting fans in a positive manner and looking for ways for the fan base to be excited about the environment.”
That’s tough to do when the place is less than half-full, of course, but at least the Jays have been innovative this year in attempting to stem the erosion and counter an on-field product that has purged much of its star power from those most recent glory days.
Cheap beer at limited stands in the stadium, loonie hotdogs and various “bundle” strategies are just some of the measures the team is attempting to win back and keep fans flocking to Blue Jays Way, Miller said.
The team currently sits eighth among 15 American League teams in average attendance, down from fifth during last year’s disappointing season, where 28,705 was the announced average.
The issue now is: How low can the crowds go this season?
For Monday’s Canada Day fixture, a festive, must-attend event for so many years, it’s alarming to look at a stadium map and see the number of seats that remain available.
Several sections at multiple levels are virtually empty, a sales job complicated by the fact that the Kansas City Royals are in town, one of just three American League teams with a worse winning percentage than the Jays.
The Canada Day game was originally designated as a premium priced contest, one in which they attempted to sell 500-level seats for $33 plus service charges.
Earlier this week, the team announced a 36-hour “flash sale” that saw those same tickets selling for a “mere” $15.20 (fees included), a clever marketing ploy in honour of Canada’s 152nd birthday.