Springfield Cardinals uproot traditional season ticket packages, introduce Red Access
A local minor league team has recently placed a whole new spin on traditional season ticket options.
The Springfield Cardinals, a double-A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, saw their ticket sales fall below average for the last couple of years. In attempt to increase the attendance at Hammons Field, the Red Access membership was born.
The Red Access membership offers many benefits for the fanbase including a general admission bypass gate, which allows each member general admission access to all 70 games. Each member is also able to work with a flexible schedule and switch out their current or past tickets with future games that work with their schedule. Along with these benefits, members are able to enjoy a 20 percent off discount at the team store, concession coupons and the ability to watch batting practice before the gates open.
General manager Dan Reiter wanted to make the change in order to keep the company successful.
“We saw declining season ticket sales, and to me, if we did not make a change to the season tickets it was just a slow death. It was just realizing what our weaknesses were and how we could overcome those problems,” Reiter said. “This is one of those points in our history that we’ll look back on and realize that this was the right change at the right time. It’s got the ability to be a game changer for us moving forward.”
Zack Pembreton, manager of premium sales and marketing, feels that they are offering fans a unique experience compared to other minor league or major league teams.
“Where we fall in comparison to other minor league teams, I wouldn’t say we offer more or less, but we offer something different,” Pembreton said.
Pembreton has seen ticket sales improve, despite going without hosting a St. Louis Cardinals exhibition game.
“This is one of the first years where our season tickets or memberships went up in a year that we didn’t have a St. Louis Cardinals exhibition game,” Pembreton said. “We went up in ticket sales from last year, which were down from the year before when we had an exhibition game.”
Reiter has seen an overwhelming response of the fanbase.
“We’ve been stopped on a nightly basis by fans telling us how much more they like this program, which is pretty awesome when we’re still in the first month of it,” Reiter said.
Before introducing the program, Reiter and Pembreton did their research on other minor league and major league teams with similar programs and teams looking to make the switch.
“The Oakland Athletics did something a little bit similar where they’re allowing fans to come to some of the games with a GA bypass. No other team is really doing that yet. We’ll foresee a lot of teams move to this structure before too long,” Pembreton said. “We think we’re ahead of the curb just in talking with teams at winter meetings this past year. There’s a lot of teams that have said ‘hey, let us know how that goes because we think it’s going to be really successful and we might try to piggy back off of that.’”
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