There hasn’t been a run on Indians tickets in over 15 years, but that hasn’t stopped the Indians from trying to entice fans to come in droves with many promotional events throughout the year. Of 80 home games in 2015, the Indians had 39 promotional days featuring fire works, give-aways, dollar dogs and more. Since 2007, Tribe attendance has been more than 5,000 fans below their overall average on games without a giveaway while they averaged 3,060 more than normal in 2015 when having at least one promotion. With such a small daily attendance, that equates to a pretty significant 17% increase and even more when just looking at fireworks nights (39% increase).
It looks like much of the same is in store for 2016 as the Indians have 37 promotional days currently on their schedule. While some of these dates have multiple promotions, they work out to 16 fire works nights (including the fourth of July and two separate Rock N Blast nights), 11 Dollar Dog nights and 10 Kids’ Fun Days on Sundays throughout the Summer. Of the 22 planned giveaways, six will be jerseys, three shirts, three bobble heads with ten other varied giveaways.
Since this is about getting free stuff, we’ll start with these other giveaways, some of which are pretty cool. The first will be on April 4th, Opening Day, as they give away magnet schedules as they do every year. This year, they are including a car magnet with this as well, so there’s a little different. After this, the Indians are really covering all aspects of your attire as you can pick up sunglasses on June 3rd, a fedora on August 19th, an ugly Christmas shirt on July 29th and a Batting Practice pullover to cover it up on July 4th.
There are a couple fun kid based giveaways as well, the best of which may be the May 15th whiffle bat and ball set. If you need help carrying all your new stuff home, the Indians will by giving out a tote bag on May 5th and a duffle bag on May 30th.
Bobbleheads appear to be going out of style in Cleveland as there will only be three next year and only one of an active player, Yan Gomes on July 9th. The other two will be Bob Feller on August 13th (also Rock N Blast night) and Jim Thome on July 30th when he is inducted into the Indians Hall of Fame. This giveaway and induction ceremony will be complete with fireworks and a block party.
The most common giveaway this year will be the player jerseys including Carlos Carrasco on May 17th, Corey Kluber on May 28th, Jason Kipnis on June 18th and Francisco Lindor on August 20th. Going old school, they will give away a Carlos Baerga throw back jersey on September 3rd and jumping even further back in time, a 1976 navy jersey on June 4th. Each of these will likely be popular items, particularly Lindor’s, but given that the Indians averaged just over 18,000 fans last year, it shouldn’t be too hard to pick up one of the 12,500 given away each game.
An aspect of the giveaway and the strategy therein that has interested me in the past few years is that the Indians don’t try to make up the difference in generally poorly attended games by using a promotion, but instead try to sell even more tickets to those games that are already generally well attended. Since 2007, games in March and April have been attended by 21% less fans than the average game throughout the year while those from July though October have at least a 6% increase with the highest attended month being August. With this in mind, the month with the most promotional days will be May in 2016 with just two in the lightly attended April. There will be six in June, eight in July and six in August.
In addition, it’s obvious to even those who haven’t done the math that the highest attended days of the week are Friday, Saturday and Sunday with Monday being the least attended (that’s why all off days are on Monday and Thursday). Similarly with the promotions being mostly in the middle of the season, there are only six scheduled for non week-end dates. Of these, one is the fourth of July, one Memorial Day and another Opening Day, events that generally sell well no matter what. The others are a tumbler giveaway on Wednesday, July 27th and the Carrasco jersey on Tuesday, May 17th.
This is good for any collectors with children or jobs that make it difficult to head to the ballpark on some random Wednesday. From May 8th through September 16th, there is a promotion on every single Friday, Saturday and Sunday home game. Many of these Sunday promotions are just Kids’ Fun Day, but there are fireworks at least once each weekend from May 27th through September 15th with two shows each weekend when the weather is expected to be fair (from June through August). As if that wasn’t enough, there will be Dollar Dogs available every single Friday from May 13th through the end of the year and giveaways on many Friday and Saturday dates as well.
While there aren’t necessarily any can’t miss days like the Larry Doby statue in 2015, I for one would love to pick up that fedora to pick up my Indians fancy hat game and I know the kids will all be scrambling for their Lindor jerseys, which are safely scheduled for August in case the Indians want to manipulate his service time some more by keeping him in AAA until June again.
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