I think the A’s are in a little bit of trouble. They’ve got renewed stiff competition locally in the face of the Giants. They have a horrible stadium which has deteriorated in terms of maintenance over the last five years. They aren’t getting people to show up even for Red Sox/Yankees games, as the rather stiff prices they are charging to sit in an epic dump with an artificially low capacity - a terrible idea - keep casual fans and fans of the other team from coming, which impacts the A’s bottom line. And most importantly, the team is crap and no fun to watch.

They could easily become the Expos if they don’t get it together. They already struggle for attention, if they don’t put their hands in their pocket to get some players and freshen up the Coliseum while the Giants are good, marketable and play in a palace then they could become totally irrelevant on the local scene. It’s just not that much of a hike for East Bay people who live near BART to go to AT&T instead and the local rivalry isn’t to the level that A’s fans wouldn’t just go put their Giants hats on instead.

Most MLB teams actually held their ticket prices down up until the early- to mid-90s: US inflation historically increased at a higher rate.

The past 10 years has really been a period of adjustment, aided by the replacement of almost all ballparks. Yankees excepted, the MLB ticket market is what economists would call “efficient.”

Some people get angry when they can’t afford to seat their family of 4 in the front rows of box seats, but that’s not a right they’ve ever had (or arguably one they should have - keep those kids safe!). MLB fans who find good sightlines in the cheaper seats (especially the front rows of the upper deck) are the smartest shoppers in sports.

Now, concession prices: THAT’S gouging. But that’s to be expected when the team simply bids for the contractor who promises the highest revenues.

They never reach that capacity because people do not go to the games they want to go to, because they think tickets are gone. The A’s have discouraged walkups, which is a huge part of their ticket base. These people by and large have not turned into advance ticket buyers and the A’s have not found how to replace them.

For example, from 2003-2005 the A’s averaged 38,647 for a game versus the Red Sox or Yankees. From 2006-2008 they averaged 31,446. All of these visits came early in the season, so the A’s didn’t even have the excuse of being disappointing - in all of these years the A’s were playing pretty decent baseball when the big fanbase teams arrived (and in 2006 they were good, period). In my myopia I forgot to calculate the Giants in this, but they have had a few sub-30,000 crowds versus the Giants in the last two years compared to the average of nearly 50,000 per game from 2003-2005.

As someone who has been to the vast majority of these games there has been a reduction in the away team’s fans which in my opinion is due to the belief that there will not be tickets for purchase at the gate. For some this might not be a problem but the A’s are on pace to draw about 1.4 million this year - an extra 120,000 fans through the gate a year makes a difference.

Furthermore comparing the Coliseum to the Kingdome is like saying Danny DeVito is tall because he’s taller than Verne Troyer. The tarps over the seats in the upper deck are dirty and torn, the scoreboard has broken lights all over it, the place stank of pee and the groundskeeping crew didn’t bother to erase the field markings from the Raiders game so the entire outfield was covered in hash marks. It’s a crappy place to go a game, particularly when you get the sense the people working there both on the field and off don’t care.

When the Ballpark in Arlington opened in 1994, I was there on openeing day, 16 rows from the field in the first section on the outfield side of the third base dugout.  Had it not been a rainy day, I’m sure I would have had the tase of dirt in my mouth whenever someone slid into third.  The face value of that ticket was $16.00.  That same seat today brings $80.00 at the box office, plus a whole lot of made up charges.  For the $16.00 that prime seat cost 15 years ago, you can now sit in the bleachers, or in the 3rd level NOT directly behind (or should I say above) home plate.  If baseball ticket prices were running along with inflation, the $40K I made back then would have me sitting pretty today.  If only…