In the words of the 49ers' top marketing executive, many of the team's fans have a "once-in-a-generation opportunity'' to buy season tickets.
A less-biased view is that the team's famed waiting list isn't what it used to be.
During the 49ers' heyday in the 1980s and much of the '90s, the waiting list was variously reported by the club to include 17,500 or 20,000 names. Because each of those people was presumed to be ready to buy at least two season tickets, the club believed it had a huge reservoir of customers in case those who held the 65,000-70,000 season tickets dropped out.
Those days are long gone. And so may be the days of every 49ers home game being on local television.
In the realm of sports marketing, a club's success is usually driven by how the team did last season, or the last couple of seasons. So if you're the New England Patriots, you're fat and happy. If you're the 49ers, you're eating shoe leather.
The 49ers say they sold 59,694 season tickets in 2004 and slightly more than 90 percent of them -- or roughly 54,000 -- have renewed for this season despite the team's 2-14 record last year.
Since the capacity of Monster Park is 68,277, the 49ers probably will have to sell about another 11,000 seats per game in individual game tickets or additional season tickets in order to maintain their run of 211 consecutive sellouts.
Individual game tickets are expected to go on sale around Aug. 1, the club says. Last year the 49ers sold an average of 3,600 single-game tickets per game, but officials optimistically say they don't expect to have that number available this year.
If 65,000 seats are sold, that probably would be enough to assure that the television broadcasts of home games are not blacked out in the Bay Area. But if the 49ers tank again, the schedule may not provide much help to prevent their first blacked-out games since 1981.
Just two visiting teams, Indianapolis and Seattle, had winning records last year, and late-season games against Arizona and Houston figure to be especially hard to sell out. MORE>>>
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posted by ADMIN @ Sunday, July 17, 2005
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