Ticket Sales & Attendence... by the numbers

Move over Bruce Sprinstean, Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews Band, and Justin Beiber... The Phillies are officially the hottest ticket in town. The combination of the great amenities offered at Citizens Bank Park and a culture of winning baseball in the Delaware Valley have made Phillies tickets harder to come by than a vaccine for swine flu.

Last Friday, the Phillies announced that they had already sold over 3,300,000 tickets. Those numbers include completely selling out the 28,500 full and partial season ticket packages, all the six packs, and all the newly introduced 3 packs of tickets. At least fifteen of the 81 home games are already completely sold out. All that remains otherwise are the special opportunities for Opening Day and the Red Sox series and individual tickets to select games. Hopefully you don't want to go to any games with a partner because my quick selection of 10 random weeknight games against opponents such as the Diamondbacks and Marlins yielded nothing but standing room only seats.

Follow me while I do a little math...

• The Phillies list their seating capacity as 43,651. Obviously, standing room only is extra.
• 81 home games would equal an attendance of 3,535,736... but with the G20 summit in Toronto last year, the Phillies had 84 home games (3,666,684 max)
• The Phillies sold 3,777,322 tickets in 2010 (most in the majors)
• The Phillies averaged 44,968 fans per game (2nd to the Yankees, whose capacity is 52,325)
• This means the Phillies sold out 103% of their capacity.
• The 3%... approx 1,300 fans per game willing to spend $18 just to stand and be part of the CBP atmosphere. 

The Phillies record of 123 sell outs in a row is impressive, but is nowhere near a chart topper. The Boston Red Sox own baseball's longest sellout streak at over 600 games. Though in the past year, their record has come into question as management may be intentionally keeping ticket prices down because there is more revenue to be gained through secondary markets like StubHub. As a matter of fact, the Phillies will have to sustain their current success a few more years just to reach the 332 consecutive sellout record for Philadelphia teams. The Flyers own that record with 8+ seasons of sellouts in the 70s/80s.

But looking at this year, as of Friday, the Phillies have already sold over 93% of their seating capacity for 2011. Bobblehead, fireworks, and fan appreciation nights are gone. The only dollar dogs you'll be getting are from your grocers freezer in packages of 12. If tickets stopped selling on Friday, it would already be the 4th largest crowd in the history of the franchise. The Phillies withhold 500 tickets to each game for day of standing room only sales, but I expect they will be gone by 9:05AM right after the box office opens.

One more round of numbers... (blow it up!)

If each fan in attendance paid $4.58 at the snack stand, the Phillies broke even on payroll last season. I know I did my part...

Sources: Baseball-Reference, FanGraphs, TeamMarketing.com