eLayaway

Detroit's sports teams work to lure bargain-hunting fans

Last season, Mike Kennedy paid $30 per game for four upper-deck Pistons season tickets. But as this season approached, he decided because of the economy -- and the slim title hopes of his team -- it was a good time not to renew.

"We weren't going to renew, but the Pistons called and made it hard to say no," said Kennedy, co-owner of Sentech Services in Bloomfield Hills. "They made us an offer at a ridiculously cheap price, $10 a seat."

Kennedy purchased two season tickets, which he will share with clients.

His situation is an example of what is going on with Detroit sports fans and their four pro teams. As many fans are forced to limit the money they spend on tickets in a struggling economy, teams are trying to find ways to keep them coming to events.

For example:

• The Wings are offering two upper-bowl tickets, two hot dogs and two Cokes to weekday games through December for $48.
• The Lions, who will be blacked out for the second time this season for Sunday's game against the St. Louis Rams, have established all-you-can-eat and Family Zone tickets. And this Sunday, they will allow fans from 5 to 14 years old to run on the field after the game.
• The Pistons, in addition to lower season ticket costs, offer a number of deals, including one where fans can buy a 16-game plan for less than $6 per tickets.
• The Tigers, who just completed their season, offered tickets and parking for as low as $5.

"I've been involved in selling tickets in this city for the past 15 years and this is the most challenging that I've ever seen it," said Bob Raymond, who worked with the Tigers for 12 1/2 years before becoming vice president of business operations for the Lions. "You have to go above and beyond to give people more for their money.

"We've undertaken several initiatives to try and provide the best entertainment value for fans. We became the first NFL team to offer the 'All-You-Can-Eat-Seat' concept, a ticket and all the food you can eat -- hot dogs, bratwurst, nachos, popcorn, chips and water or soft drinks -- for $57. We have 5,500 of those seats for each game. We also offered Roar Zone upper level seats for as low as $30 a game for season tickets. We sold them all out."

Tom Wilson, president and CEO of Palace Sports & Entertainment, hoped the Pistons would sell out for its Friday home opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder, but realized it's going to be a difficult year. The team reported a sellout crowd of 22,076 for Friday night's 91-83 loss.

"We're in uncharted water right now," said Wilson, whose team had its run of 259 consecutive sellouts end last season. "The economy is overwhelming. People have been laid off or are afraid they could be laid off.

"Our season ticket renewals have been down 20 percent. Corporate people have had a tougher time across the board. So a lot of it has to do with the economy, and we weren't a compelling product (last season).

Wilson is hoping some newly signed free agents, guard Ben Gordon and forward Charlie Villanueva, will help draw fans.

"We're finding out fans still want their basketball fix," Wilson said. "They say, 'Here's my situation,' and we work with them, just like customizing tickets.

"They want 20 games instead of 40 and 10 instead of 20. We've done a lot of marriages where people don't want to lose their great seats. They say instead of 40 we can only take 20 so we broker the deal and find someone to buy the other 20. We feel eventually we'll get them back."

The Red Wings, whose streak of 396 sellouts came to an end in the 2007 season opener, are doing what they can to avoid a sea of empty red seats.

"First of all, this is not something that snuck up on us," said Steve Violetta, Wings' vice president of business affairs. "We saw it coming a few years ago. We've done a various number of things like different payment plans, smaller ticket packages, promotions, more customer service.

"We've tried to be more flexible with our season-ticket holders. This year we've started e-layaway. Just like when you were growing up and Sears and Kmart had layaway at Christmas. We've created customized payment packages where they decide how much they want to pay and what day they want to pay versus a monthly fee or a six-month payment.

"We have the Gordie Howe (nine-game package) and Steve Yzerman package (19-game package). People select from batches of games. There's three columns where they're picking five, five and nine different games from different columns. It's worked out exceptionally well. We'd like everyone to be able to attend every game, but we realize financially and also the amount of time people have that it's difficult to go to 41 games. This lets people be involved and makes them part of the action."

The Tigers worked this past season to market themselves as "Detroit's No. 1 sports value," promoting deals they had always had, bringing back deals from previous seasons and creating offers. The team drew 2.57 million fans, but that was down from more than 3 million the previous two years.

"We maintained our focus on flexibility and value in order to give fans every opportunity to come to the ballpark," said Ron Colangelo, vice president of communications. "We were aggressively marketing our value deals and increased promotions. Throughout the season, we introduced ticket deals that offered significant savings. We did see a positive response."

Among the deals offered were $5 tickets, $5 meals for adults and children and $5 parking.

Colangelo said the way people bought tickets has changed because of the economy. "Buying trends were different than in past years," Colangelo said. "People were waiting to buy their tickets."

All four teams acknowledge cheap tickets and special activities won't draw fans if the team is boring or losing.

Mike Lobsinger, 60, of Bloomfield Hills stopped renewing his season tickets with the Pistons and Lions after the 2008 seasons. He uses the $60,000-$70,000 he saved to make more trips to Florida. "I had four beautiful tickets for the Pistons eight rows from the floor across the Pistons bench," Lobsinger said.

"The face value was $85 when I first bought them during the 2002-03 season. Later on, to keep those seats you had to be a part of a club that included dinner, and they were each $220-$250 the final year I had them.

"To go up almost 300 percent is crazy, but the stock market was way up and I thought it was all just part of a crazy world. Then, things started settling down and it was just crazy to spend that kind of money. You could easily be paying $60,000 or more if they advanced to the Eastern Conference finals.

"I think that ticket was undervalued when I first bought them, but overvalued and at a bad time when I decided to stop going. I stopped going to the Lions games when I started asking myself, 'What are you doing?' "It just wasn't enjoyable. I had four club-level seats, and the four years I had tickets three-quarters of the people were leaving in the third quarter."