2007 Blue Jays Schedule Run Down
For the Jays to be competitive in the AL East they must increase ticket sales in order to pay for the players that they have signed. One look at the Jays 2007 sched and a good fan will see what JP has arranged.
When a Jays fan sees the schedule there are four things they look for in this order, 1) When is Opening Day, 2) When to the Red Sox and Yankees come to town, 3) What NL teams come to TO and 4) Are they home for the Holiday games.
So, the Jays don’t open the season until they have played 7 games already. A Monday night opener against KC. They will probably have Chacin start. If this game was mid May the Jays are looking at 20,000. Since this is opening day they will probably have 45,000. Having a poor drawing team in the opening day slot will increase the expected attendance. Also, game 2 of the season is a Toonie Tuesday. Game 2 is typically the poorest drawing game for all teams. If the Jays play an exciting game on Monday they should expect not to be embarassed at the gate on Tuesday.
When do the Red Sox and Yankees come to town, this is an interesting one; not genius but at least clever on JPs part. For a typcial 9 game home set against each division rival the Jays should expect either 3 series one each of 2,3,4 games. One or two of those series are weekend series.  The Jays should expect 3 home weekend series against the Sox and Yanks combined.  In 2007 they will have none. JP has arranged for all Yanks and Red Sox games to be played during the week. The SkyDome or Rogers Centre fills up with American Fans from the Northeast and some fickle and bandwagon Yankee/Sox fans in Toronto. These are the Jays biggest drawing bills and they would expect to top 40,000 on a weekend afternoon day. Much of the same people would make the trek to Toronto to catch their beloved team during the week. So, JP has filled low drawing weekday games with more high drawing teams. Lots of weekend series against Tampa, Texas, Seattle etc, folks will come to these games in the summer weekends usually over 35,000.
The NL teams coming to Toronto are the Nationals, Dodgers and Rockies, yep contain yourself in your rush out to get those tickets to see the nobodies that play on these exciting teams, GAG.
The Jays don’t have many holiday games. They open on Easter Monday at night, which isn’t really a baseball holiday. They are home to the Yankees on US Memorial Day. They are on the road for Canada Day. They are home to the Yankees for Civic Day at 1pm. They are at the Red Sox on Labour Day, night game again(???). The AL should sync up these holidays a little better.
Some other notes. Jays are finished playing the AL Champ Tigers by April 15. They play the Indians and the Dodgers the same amount of times. Jays and Indians should do battle for an AL Wild Card spot. The Jays have reintroduced the Toonie Tuesday in April and May. After Labour Day they play every division team at home and on the road.Â
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Nice overview. However, JP has no control over any of the scheduling. Nor would JP care about how many fans show up, that would be Godfrey’s department. The Dodgers should be a good series I think, however it is a weekday series so it might not be that big a draw.
Interesting about the Toonie Tuesday for April and May only. These are historically the poorest drawing months I assume? I wonder if they will get any flack for not extending it the entire season…..probably not.
Yeah, JP has no say in the scheduling but I see where your going on most fronts.
I think having the Yankees and Sox on weekdays hurts the Jays, as we’re not going to be seeing as many people travel. I’ve heard a few complaints from the Jays camp on this. When the Indians were selling out Jacobs Field for 4+ years, many tribe fans would make the trek on a weekend. Yankee & Sox tickets are hard to come by, that’s why many will make the weekend trip up to the t-dot.
Now, on the other hand, Texas, Tampa, Seattle, etc are usually far from full, so the incentive to travel (not to mention the added distance) is diminished greatly. This should hurt the box office receipts.
But this is the Jays and not the Leafs, so I think the #1 factor is, as always, winning.
Just like when skydome would fill up, Toronto fans would go to Cleve or Det. I think what they are hoping for is that Boston/New York fans will take a holiday during the week to come to Toronto, which isn’t out of the question for all people. I took a holiday mid-week last year to drive from Halifax to NY to see terrible games. It would hurt the Yankee fans coming from Buffalo/Rochester area that are only 2 or 3 hrs away. Perhaps they are looking at levelling the attendance peaks. Blue Jays had 81,000 for a two game mid week series in Apr vs Yanks, a mid week July 3 game series vs Tex drew less than 50,000. A weekend in Aug vs KC drew 95,000. A weekend in July vs Yanks drew 132,000. So, Kman I really don’t understand what your argument is. Toronto fans are weekend fans. Crowds swell on the weekends throughout the season almost 50%. Crowds swell for Red Sox almost 65% and about 75% for yanks. I assume most parks swell for the Yanks (and they are not all travellers) but I would assume Toronto is overcompensated for the weekends. So how can spreading out prime games make box office recipts go down?
They can hope for people NY & Boston to take mid-week vacations but the probability of this happening is much lower.
The weekday games against the NY & Bo Sox in September drew rather poorly. If these were on a weekend set they would gain an extra 10,000 fans a game. And with the tiered ticket pricing of 2006, those 10,000 additional fans would equal a good 15,000+ over other non-tiered teams. Check out the game logs. Saturday is by far the best day in the season for the Jays. With no 50,000+ Yankee, Red Sox draws on these days the Jays will loss attendence revenue. August is their best month and they have the Orioles & Rangers coming in on the weekends. They know that this isn’t going to draw all that well, so they added in a Glaus figure vs the Rangers, and a Ryan bobblehead vs the Orioles. These cost money to make, making the attendence on these days have a lower yield per person than a regular weekend game against the big two. Also, with no big teams coming in on the weekends, the tiered pricing is gone, and with it increased $$$$. Other teams like the Devil Rays get the Bo Sox & Yankees on the weekends this season, and they are charging an extra $10+ (sometimes $40+ for prime seats) a head on tiered pricing for the weekend series. That’s the rub that will lower the overall $$$ revenue.
I agree with you in the case of teired pricing. I think it may have just angered up Jays fans. As for bobbleheads, they would give them away anyways when Tex or Balt come into town. I don’t agree with you when you say that the Sept games vs Bos and NY drew poorly. They drew better than the weekend games vs TB and Cleve. Red Sox were way back, Jays were way back and Yanks had a 10 game lead.
I heard a dirty rumour and was too lazy to check, but in September the Jays play their last 24 games against AL East teams? That should be intense.