Same Shit, Different Public Swindling Tax Burdening Unnecessary Stadium.
Obvious, wasn’t it?
The irony is that it might sound like my exclusively sour grapes at my disagreement to the existence of ScumTrust Park, but such an egregiously overblown acronym can seamlessly be utilized by any one of the many sports venues constructed within the last 15 years that were constructed under similar shady circumstances.
But anyway, surprising nobody at all, the Braves are performing at the level they are expected to, regardless of the fact that they are somehow in second place in the absolutely dreadful NL East. It’s not their fault that there are a litany of other teams that are somehow miraculously worse than the Braves, and it makes me feel like I have to do math and show my work to prove that there are enough teams with good of records as there are as many teams with abysmal, worse-than-the-Braves records out there.
And because the Braves are a crap team, and the honeymoon period of ScumTrust Park is basically over, it’s the shocker of the century #489 that attendance has plummeted and the Braves are resuming their normal operation of playing in front of paltry crowds, especially on weekdays. Ignore all the rhetoric about how the percentages look better than they did at Turner Field, because they’re cherry-picking the fact that ScumTrust has nearly 11,000 fewer seats available, so when 13,000 people show up to a 41,000-seat park compared to when 13,000 showed up to a place that seated 56,000, 32% full > 23% full.
And to counteract the unsurprisingly poor attendance, the Braves have decided to take measures: as is the new standard for mediocre teams with lukewarm fanbases, The Ballpark Pass was brought back out for 2017. This is basically the all-you-can-eat buffet for sports tickets, because fans can pay one flat rate and then attend as many games as they want.
This is basically also the saddest display of desperation for an organization, because frankly teams that actually have dedicated fanbases would never need to do shit like this ever in order to move tickets. The Braves join teams like the Dbacks and A’s as teams that offer some degree of flat-rate/unlimited game promotions which just seems pathetic for an organization to resort to. I’d wager money that it will be a cold day in hell when we see teams like the Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals or Giants offer monthly passes; they’ve cultured fanbases that regardless of their dedication, still enjoy going to the ballpark and buying tickets.
Whatever though. The Ballpark Pass is kind of the new standard of failure as far as I’m concerned, because it entirely is saying that they have little faith in their team’s ability to move tickets on an individual basis, so they’re willing to take the gamble that offering up unlimited games for a flat rate would yield better return. But in the light of always wanting to see the Braves screw up until they’ve learned their lesson to not be so fucking greedy, I would love to see the team just go on this mad tear, and suddenly be knocking on the door for a wild card in September. But instead of the Braves being able to cash in on a magical September playoff chase, they’ll be saddled with a ton of Ballpark Pass holders who will be filling up the upper deck for the cost of peanuts on the dollar for what they could probably have been making on gauged playoff race tickets instead.
Sure, the likelihood of that happening isn’t high, but it would sure be great to see the idea of the Ballpark Pass blow up in a team’s face; and why not the Braves?
