Even Angels can’t manage queues

Selling baseball tickets should be easy — especially if it is before the start of the season and fancy revenue management schemes haven’t kicked in. But the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (hereafter, simply the Angels since they have the stupidest, most awkward name in the majors) managed to screw it up. Here is how the Orange [...]

Read Full Post »

Finally, something dynamic at Wrigley: The price of bleacher seats

It’s been almost three weeks since pitchers and catchers reported so it’s time to talk a little baseball. Specifically, it’s time for an update on how Major League teams are trying to separate fans from their dollars. The trend this year is dynamic pricing. This has been going on for a while. The Giants were [...]

Read Full Post »

What does “Made in America” look like?

We are nearly two months into the baseball season and we have yet to have a baseball related post. Now that the Red Sox have crept above 500, it is time to rectify the situation. Check out this video on making baseball gloves: The interesting part of this to my mind is what it says [...]

Read Full Post »

Managing Cubs ticket sales

So the day I posted on scalping and LCD Soundsystem tickets, I got an email from the Cubs (I am the proud holder of position 88,950 on the Cubs season ticket holder waiting list). It offered a chance to jump the queue for single game tickets: I posted about this program last year and I [...]

Read Full Post »

Cutting down the beer line

My colleague Kyle Cattani sent me a link to a Yahoo! Sports story about a proposed solution to a persistent operations problem at many sporting facilities: Long beer lines! (The Death Of The Beer Line, Jan 18). The trick is to pour beer faster — I mean a lot faster. Check out how quickly these [...]

Read Full Post »

Baseball and process control

We are well into the baseball playoffs and are thus running out of time for baseball posts. To the rescue is a story from Marketplace that relates to baseball and, in a way, statistical process control (The Yankees’ monopoly in baseball, Oct 14). The gist of the piece is that the Yankees of have dominated [...]

Read Full Post »

Time to talk a little baseball

We’re now about a third of the way into the baseball season so it is time to make good on our promise to talk a little baseball.  As an added plus, I get to mention that my team is finally ahead of Gady’s in the Kellogg Operations Fantasy Baseball League. So we have to two [...]

Read Full Post »

Top dollar for the Cubbies…

So how much of a premium would you pay to see the Cubs?  This week, you’ve got a chance jump the line on single game ticket if you are willing to pony up. Here is how the program works (as described in the New York Times, Feb 15, Cubs Open Ticket Line Early for Fans [...]

Read Full Post »

Pricing baseball tickets

It’s the middle of winter and wicked cold so it must be time to talk a little baseball.  The Wall Street Journal had a short article on pricing baseball tickets (When Did Buying Tickets Get So Complicated? Jan 4) that remarked on how many baseball teams now sell a wide product line of tickets: The [...]

Read Full Post »