Post by TheShadow on Feb 15, 2006 19:55:21 GMT -5
www.contracostatimes.com
GARY PETERSON: TIMES COLUMNIST
ALAMEDA - The Raiders have no plans to double ticket prices for the 2006 season. Nor are they inclined to give the seats away.
Thus, the details of their ticket and marketing strategy, unveiled at their galactic headquarters on Tuesday, are of little consequence. Suffice to say they are typical of the industry, in some cases a savings bonanza compared to what Raiders fans have paid to watch their team over the past 11 seasons.
Of far more import is the process itself, the mere fact that the team is handling its own ticket sales for the first time since returning to Oakland in the summer of 1995. A new connection between the franchise and its community, that's the big deal here.
At the risk of generating nightmares and facial tics, let's review:
Part of the agreement that facilitated the Raiders' return to the Bay Area called for tickets to be sold by the Oakland Football Marketing Association. That agreement not only ceded control of marketing the team to a third party that proved itself as relentlessly incapable off the field as the Raiders were on it but also set up a poisonous extra-organizational schematic.
On one side, you had the Raiders playing before oceans of empty seats, giving OFMA the stank eye and telling the public, "Hey, the PSL wasn't our idea."
On the other side, you had OFMA, shrugging its collective shoulders and reminding folks, "Hey, Joe Bugel wasn't our idea."
In the middle, you had Oakland and Alameda County (official motto: "Solvency is Overrated").
People who had paid a Personal Seat License wound up sitting next to people who hadn't. People who bought 10 seats, thinking they would only be approved for five, wound up sitting next to people who had found tickets in their kids' trick-or-treat sack.
The only thing that arrangement was good for was fueling a never-ending episode of The Blame Game. Meanwhile, the only connection ticket-buying fans had with the team, assuming they didn't shop at the same BevMo as Sebastian Janikowski, was the product on the field.
Bad timing, there.
The Blame Game went off the air last Nov. 2, when the Raiders announced they had settled their differences with the city and county, and would assume their own marketing and ticket-selling responsibilities -- the same setup under which the rest of the NFL operates. They say they've been busy since -- constructing office space, hiring staff, installing a computer system, brainstorming.
On Monday, they sent a packet to all holders of the now-obsolete and mercifully extinct PSL, outlining pricing and ticket-buying options and giving these poor, fleeced souls a one-month window of ticket-buying, seat-changing exclusivity. On March 15, the operation will be open to any fan with an appetite to witness the coaching genius of Art Shell.
Said Raiders chief executive Amy Trask: "They'll be interacting with us now."
Which isn't, "When, in the course of human events ... " On the other hand, it has a nice ring to it.
Because it means that Raiders fans can now pick up a phone and speak to someone who is actually on the team payroll. And that Raiders employees can now answer the phone and speak to living, breathing ticket-buyers.
But it goes beyond that. For the past few months, actual Raiders employees have been putting together pricing plans (there are now eight price options; up from three). They've been re-inventing themselves as a service enterprise (the price has been reduced on 65 percent of the seats, according to Trask). They've been forging marketing alliances in order to offer season-ticket holders special deals with local merchants.
They've been asking themselves important questions, such as, "Who are our customers?" And, "What is it they want?" And, "Think anyone would go for a John Matuszak Lookalike Day?" They are bridging a disconnect that has existed for almost 10 years, establishing phone numbers, setting up Web sites, dreaming up enticements, concocting come-ons.
In this way, the Raiders, organizationally speaking, are finally and completely immersing themselves in the community with which they once enjoyed a singular bond. Only good can come of this. For example, if they keep repeating the phrase, "Third deck on the east side," as Trask did Tuesday, maybe someday people will forget it was ever called Raider Mountain, Mt. Davis, or The Al-ps.
Maybe people will remember how it used to be, how it should be when a proprietor cares enough about a paying customer to give that customer reason to care about the proprietor. When that happens, both sides have an emotional investment in the relationship.
For too many of the past 11 years, the signature emotion between the frustrated Raiders and exasperated fans has been ennui. Now the bond begins anew.
Operators, the Raiders assure us, are standing by.