Sinker pitch: Attendance at 51s games dips

As the Las Vegas corporate base has eroded, attendance at the Las Vegas 51s has come down with it.

During the Pacific Coast League baseball season that ended Sept. 5, 51s ticket sales slumped 6.1 percent from 2010, to 314,000. Although the team noted that it has drawn at least 300,000 fans during each of the 29 seasons it has played at Cashman Field, it has also seen a fall of 16 percent in the past three years after hitting 374,800 in 2008, the best performance since the early 1990s.

"A large portion of our season ticket and group sales have come from the casino and construction industries," general manager Chuck Johnson said. "A lot of them have cut back or just gone away entirely."

In an unrelated matter, Johnson disclosed that the much-hyped sale of the team to Texas developer Chris Milam evaporated over the summer with Milam pulling out. The deal was announced in May with the expectation that it would close in July, with the team becoming a cornerstone for one of the sports complexes Milam has talked about building.

Neither Milam nor a representative of his company, International Development Management in Austin, Texas, could be reached for comment Friday.

In just more than a year, Milam has proposed arenas or multivenue sports centers on four different sites, though he didn't own any of them. One, in the Symphony Park area downtown, called for building part of a stadium on land owned by the World Market Center even after executives there told him they did not want to sell.

His most recent effort involves building on federal land on the southern edge of Henderson.

Johnson said that in trying to turn around the attendance slump next season, the 51s have increased their sales staff and will get them on the phones and into corporate offices with a basic message: if you value your employees or clients, baseball tickets are a low-cost way to reward them.

"We were short on staff in '09 and '10 and maybe we didn't work as hard as we should have," he said. "But we will be working hard this off-season."

Typically, between 28 percent and 35 percent of seats are sold as season tickets or 10-game packages in sets of four. While seat season ticket sales started to slide in 2009, the limited packages dropped dramatically in the early months of this year.

Single-game sales rose, Johnson said, but not enough to offset the loss of group business.

Although the 51s do not play the same number of home games each season, average attendance has followed the overall trend. From selling 5,279 seats per game in 2008, the number dropped 15 percent, to 4,486 this year. Spread over the entire season, the effect is like playing a dozen fewer games.

However, said Johnson, revenue has dropped less than 10 percent during that span, although he did not disclose a number. The team has kept revenues up by eliminating general admission sections, effectively raising the lowest ticket price by $1, to $10, and raising parking fees.

The 2011 food and beverage revenues of $1.5 million were down by about 12 percent, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which owns Cashman Field. As a result, per capita spending went up.

Beyond the economy, Johnson acknowledged that the 51s have a continuing problem drawing fans.

"I'm a AAA baseball team in the entertainment capital of the world," he said. "There is a lot else to do."

The 2011 ticket sales placed the team second from the bottom in the 16-team Pacific Coast League, ahead of only Tucson. Three teams drew more than 8,000 per game, close to double the 51s.

But in 2008, the 51s finished ninth in attendance. Although the recession had begun to grip the valley by the opening pitch that year, many of the group ticket sales were in the books before the economy turned decisively down.

Minor-league attendance, in general, has fallen off but at a much lesser rate than here. According to Minor League Baseball statistics, total attendance hit an all-time high of 43.3 million in 2008, but has since declined 4.6 percent, to 41.3 million.

Contact reporter Tim O'Reiley at toreiley@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290.