One of the pre-conference events was a talk at Fenway Park followed by a tour of the ballpark. Janet Marie Smith, VP of planning and development for the Sox, kicked things off with how the team (especially the new management) works really hard to preserve the essential character of Fenway while at the same time trying to upgrade the park (and keep it from getting torn down). She talked about the advertisements added to the Green Monster, which was actually not a purely commercial move but a throwback to a time when the Monster was actually covered with ads.
Lots of talk and awareness of experience design...the Red Sox folks in particular kept referring to the "experience" of the park. One of the speakers (can't recall who, might have been Jim Dow) talked about how other ballparks are becoming places where only people who can afford $100 tickets can go to the games and what that does to the team's fan base. With Fenway, they're trying to maintain a variety of ticket prices to keep the diversity level high...greater diversity makes for a better crowd and a better fan base and is quite appropriate for Boston (and New England in general), which has always been an area with vibrant blue collar and blue blood classes.
Janet also referred to the "accidental" design of the park. Like many other urban ballparks built in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the placement of the streets constrained the design of Fenway and made it rather an odd shape....these days larger plots are selected where those types of restraints are removed. And over time, the game has changed, the needs of the fans have changed, and the fire codes have changed and the park has changed with the times. In the dead ball era, the walls of the stadium weren't for hitting home runs over; their sole function was to keep people on the street for catching the game for free, so the Fenway outfield ran over 500 feet in right field -- practically all the way to the street -- where there's now 30 rows of seats. Jim Holt observed that American butts have gotten bigger so bigger seats are called for. Fire codes helped that change along as well...wooden seats, bleachers, and overcrowding are no longer a large part of the Fenway experience (save for the wooden seats under the canopy).
The design talk continued on the tour of the park. Our guide detailed how ballparks are built around specific ballplayers. Yankee Stadium was the house that Ruth built but it was also seemingly (but not literally) built for him with a short trip for his home run balls to the right field wall. Boston added a bullpen to make the right field shorter for Ted Williams. Barry Bonds does very well at PacBell/SBC/WhateverItsCalledTheseDays Park. And more than that, the design of Fenway also dictated for a long time the type of team that they could field, which had some bearing on how they did generally. Players who played well in Fenway (i.e. could hit fly balls off of the Monster in left) often didn't do so well in other parks and the team's away record suffered accordingly.
Fenway looks awesome.
It's truely a unique park, but I laughed at that comment about how "other ballparks are becoming places where only people who can afford $100 tickets can go to the games," at Turner Field here in Atlanta the most expensive tickets are $53 (for dugout level on premium games) and it's pretty easy to get a ticket, whereas Fenway is closer to $80 ($120 to sit on the first row of the Monster for "red games") and getting a ticket for a Red Sox game requires getting to the box office the very second the schedules are announced in winter otherwise it's sold out.
Having been lucky enough to watch some baseball games in Toronto and later in Chicago and L.A. (oop, I mean Anaheim), I was amazed at the diversity of the crowds and of course almost never selling out means for cheap tickets via scalpers. In Calgary, there are almost no children in the lower bowl while they were everywhere at Wrigley and other places.
Baseball is one of those sports that is good on television but is amazing live and it is all because of those great parks.
However, I must say that it's definitely a great experience to go to a game there if you have the opportunity.
For another perspective on Fenway, check out this article and accompanying photos on the worst seats at Fenway.
Living in Boston, one of the biggest laments you hear during baseball season is how it is not only impossible to afford tickets at their normal prices, but that (because literally every ticket for the entire season sells during the first day or two that they're on sale) it becomes that much *harder* to afford Red Sox tickets when your only option is the ticket brokers who double the price. One thing the Red Sox certainly could do is leave a percentage of tickets held until a week or two before each game, and put them on sale then -- that would enable real fans to at least have a chance to get tickets, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards.
However, as most longtime Red Sox fans would note, tickets to a game at Fenway were for the most part readily available until the last few years and were never subject to the frenzy (outside of Yankees series) that they are today.
I'm not so sure this is a bandwagon effect (the Red Sox have always been popular) as much as a new emphasis on physically attending games as opposed to watching them on television or listening to them on the radio.
Check here for Red Sox historical attendance figures.
When it comes right down to it though you will pay incredibly high prices for everything at Fenway. Tickets, hot dogs, beer, parking, water, etc.
Sox staff members didn't say this, at least at the talk I went to this morning...the comment was from someone other than a Sox employee (and now that I think about, was probably not talking about Fenway in general, but about ballpark experience design in general). Not sure what they're saying elsewhere.
There is nothing like Fenway Park. Every time I go to a game (about once a year), I just get chills when I walk up those steps and see a lush green field and that wall in left field. One of the few places where you can walk in and literally feel like a giddy little kid again.
Go Sox!
As for the bullpens being added to help Ted Williams, they are occasionally referred to as 'Williamsburg', as noted in the wikipedia article. Of course, right field is still pretty darn deep, except for the pole.
And even though they are making a ton of money, I do mostly drink the kool-aid as far as the 'experience' is concerned. One thing I really appreciate as a nice detail is the signage. They've been steadily improving it and adding more, but for the most part all the newest signage looks pleasantly of the same vintage as at least some part of the park. Having gone to a dank, quiet Fenway to watch bad Red Sox teams in the late 80's and early 90's, the way it is today is, for many, probably the best it's ever been, nostalgia be damned.
I grew up a 15 minute walk from Fenway and went there as a kid regularly. The experience of going to Fenway Park has always been amazing (and depending on who you talk to, trumped only by Wrigley in Chicago). The changes that have been made are great and its wonderful to know they are going to stay there for the forseeable future.
Go Sox!!
Apples and oranges. He stated that they kept a 'variety' of ticket prices. In other words you could have tickets for 10 bucks, 50 bucks, and a thousand bucks, and on average have the highest ticket prices, but also have tickets in all ranges.
and they need to pay major league salaries to stay competitive with the Yankees.
Actually, and it's been proven over and over again, ticket prices have very little to do with the ability to pay athlete's salaries.
This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.
