Longtime Backers Keeping M’S Afloat Ticket, Ad Sales Remain Steady Despite Uncertainty Of Strike

As negotiators try to break a months-old labor stalemate, the Seattle Mariners are fighting for Northwest dollars the hard way - trying to sell major league baseball to people who wonder if it still exists.

The season opener arrives April 3, the Mariners’ home opener four days later, and no one knows for certain what kind of product baseball will be putting on the field for either of those days. It could be Ken Griffey Jr. and Co., it could be a 32-man roster of replacement players.

Try selling that in the Northwest.

“The job,” deadpans Bob Gobrecht, the team vice president of sales and marketing, “is more challenging this year.”

Surprisingly, though, the Mariners insist the job is getting done. Focusing their attention on longtime customers and existing season-ticket holders - not new businesses or first-time sales - the Mariners have talked businesses and families into keeping 7,500 season tickets for the 1995 season.

“We haven’t had a lot of hype and promotion; what we have tried to do is keep the existing family in place,” Gobrecht said. “Our lifetime customers are the most important, and we’ve been in touch a lot this off-season. Our season ticket renewals last year were 8,327 and we’re at 7,500 now. That exceeded our expectations.”

The good news, team sales executives said, is that many ticket holders - and those who sponsor event nights, buy Kingdome ads and advertise in the Mariners program - were rebated money last year that could be applied to 1995 if they wished.

“Baseball didn’t stop for us with the Aug. 12 strike,” Gobrecht said. “It stopped in Seattle when the Kingdome was shut down in July (because of falling ceiling tiles).”

A number of Kingdome ad accounts are multiyear, deals with major corporations such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Budweiser. The Mariners don’t have to resell those sponsors, merely reassure them.

“We’ve promised to be fair and we will be,” Gobrecht said. “If the team starts the year with replacement players, ticket prices will be cut 50 percent. We want to be fair with our sponsors and our fans. We haven’t raised the price on anything we do this year.”

When the Seattle front office staff was cut in October, the sales staff lost a third of its people.

Still, the Mariners have found sponsors for their traditional event nights in the Kingdome - bat night, cap night, glove night.

The areas the team has had the most difficulty are group sales and retail promotions featuring individual players.

Group sales have been tough, Gobrecht said, because groups can’t be sure whether they’ll be buying half-price tickets to see replacement players or full-price group rates to watch major leaguers.

“If you have a church group and want to bring a thousand people to a game, you want to know if you’ll be paying $7.50 for a seat or $15,” Gobrecht said. “We’re not sure what we’re selling yet.”

As for those personalappearance events, the Mariners are gridlocked.

“No one knows who to ask for, and we don’t know who’s available,” Gobrecht said.

“The challenge right now is dealing with the uncertainty and not just climbing in a hole and waiting until this is settled,” said Randy Adamack, Mariners vice president of communications. “We’re out there talking to people, trying to honestly address their concerns and ours.”

Gobrecht said the best sales pitch this off-season has been the simplest.

“Right now, everything looks different, but what we’ve been telling people is, `Fast forward 60 days, 90 days, and look at the possibilities,”’ Gobrecht said. “When this is resolved, and it will be, we’ll have the best player in baseball back, we’ll have an upand-coming team, maybe even the promise of a new stadium. Some people have stayed with this organization for 18 years - don’t jump off now!”

The response?

“Some people have said they want to wait and see what happens,” Gobrecht said, “but no one has said, `Give me my money from last year, I’m out of here.’ We’ve had some people increase their season tickets, maybe from two to four, from four to six. New business right now is minimal; what we’re focusing on is existing business.”