How to Dress Up Empty Seats

A road trip the Milwaukee Brewers recently completed is causing me to re-evaluate a blog post I wrote last fall. At the time, I commented that there had been a generational shift, that at one time even the most popular entertainers couldn't sell out venues, but television united millions, whereas now television ratings are in decline and the live experience is at a premium.

I still don't foresee a time when a Super Bowl will ever fail to sell out, the NCAA Final Four will continue to be played in domes with tens of thousands of attendees, and the most popular music acts (which today would be the likes of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga) will continue to sell out venues within minutes. And, yes, Charlie Sheen's tour continues to fill houses. But beyond the very top level, the demand for the live experience seems to be declining.

In back-to-back series that the Brewers played in Pittsburgh and Washington, a viewer couldn't help but notice the gaping sections of empty seats. In one game in Washington it was surreal seeing a grand total of two people in the section behind home plate. And neither Pittsburgh or Washington is mentioned in this article, which details eight teams setting record lows or near-record lows in attendance at their stadiums in the last couple of weeks. Also not mentioned is Baltimore; I watched a half inning of an Oriole game (with sparse attendance) this week and the announcers spent the entire time not talking about the game, but about how great of a baseball city Baltimore used to be. Meanwhile, concert attendance over the last decade has plummeted, particularly among the youngest demographic. And then there is the NBA, which in contrast to the NFL, has opened their books to the players' union, indicating that many franchises are not financially healthy, in large part because of empty seats.

There are probably a number of factors at work here: the economy obviously hasn't been robust lately, and this year's baseball attendance in particular may already be affected by gas prices. Television ratings for any one program or event may not be what they used to be, but the experience of staying home and watching TV, now in hi-def and on-demand, is perhaps more popular than it ever was. (And some argue that baseball teams don't even care that much about attendance anymore, since cable TV revenue streams are where the real money is at). And there are just flat out more distractions than there used to be. A lot of people would apparently rather stare at their phone than sit and watch a baseball game unfolding in front of them. Meanwhile, ticket prices still reflect a time when there were limited sources of entertainment, when demand was higher for diversionary events.

So what can or should promoters do? If they were smart, they would follow innovative ideas coming out of Milwaukee. Several years ago, when the Brewers were terrible, there was a section in Miller Park that was almost always completely empty. One of the TV announcers at the time, Daron Sutton, with a flair of theatricality, confronted the Brewers president on the air, suggesting that they should designate the section once a week as the "Buckethead Brigade" (both Sutton and partner Bill Schroeder had above average hat sizes), selling the tickets at a greatly reduced price, including free T-shirts, and making it a community. The plan was implemented, and every week the section was full of cheering fans in yellow shirts, making as much noise as the rest of the stadium combined.

And this scenario has played out similarly at Milwaukee Bucks games the last couple years. Bucks center Andrew Bogut has bought out an entire section of the Bradley Center, and given tickets away for free to fans who promise to come and act crazy. The result is that even as last year the team's lack of success led to a decline in attendance, there was always a little bit of a home court advantage, with a rabid section (known as "Squad 6" after Bogut's jersey number) of standing, cheering, flag-waving, chanting fans.

But why stop at one section? If you can get good revenues from premium seats, suites, concessions, souveniers, and possibly parking, do you have to try to squeeze additional revenue from every seat in a venue? In an era where creating buzz and generating excitement is at the top of most marketer's agendas, isn't it more advantageous to cultivate a frantic fanbase rather than an affluent but staid fanbase? And if television is the all-important revenue stream, wouldn't you want to project for the TV cameras an air of excitement rather than empty seats?

As for the music industry, I do think it shares something in common with sports. Just as teams benefit from instilling loyalty in their customers, musicians benefit from building brand loyalty. But rather than view concerts as an attempt to exploit the loyalty, perhaps they can be used to build it. Concerts were originally conceived of as promotional vehicles for a band rather than money-making endeavors themselves, and maybe now we have come full circle. Promoters can still sell premium tickets (maybe even lucrative VIP backstage tickets), but perhaps by dropping some prices to bargain basement levels, they will stand to increase in the long run. And they also may want to look into this invention called television. With 3D and surround-sound technology, a concert experience in the home can rival the in-person experience. Charging a five dollar pay-per-view and getting an audience of one million would seem to be more lucrative than charging eighty dollars per ticket and getting an audience of ten thousand, both in the short and the long term.

And who knows? Maybe if live events once again become all the rage, people will turn off their TVs, promoters can begin to slowly raise prices, and we can start this cycle all over again.

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