The Marlins Turn to Groupon (Again)

via Marlins.com

It has come to our attention that the Marlins are taking to Groupon to help sell tickets to Opening Day:

Watch the Marlins on Monday, March 31st as they open the season against the Colorado Rockies and receive complimentary tickets to a future home game in April or May.

Here's the full deal. We're sure this news will lead to plenty of hot takes ("I thought the Marlins only used Groupon to find free agents!"), but we'll just repost what we said when the Marlins used a Groupon offer last year:

If only Groupon was around ten years ago. In 2002, Ted and I went to the Marlins' home opener, along with 23,875 other fans (or roughly two-thirds of Joe Robbie Stadium's baseball capacity). The highlight of the night came when a Mike Lowell home run was overturned (called a foul ball instead) and fans responded by throwing their schedule magnets (that night's giveaway) onto the field. The Marlins lost 10-2. Had our tickets been bundled with a merchandise voucher (as well as a voucher for tickets to another game, as in the current Groupon deal), we could all have thrown souvenir bats onto the field as well.

Also, we suspect whoever wrote this offer knows nothing about the Marlins that cannot be found in their Wikipedia entry.

Today, after some light rebranding to go along with the new ballpark, the rechristened Miami Marlins aim to continue traditions new and old, expanding their list of Hall of Famers.

Don't they know Mike Piazza isn't in the Hall of Fame yet??

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No One Wants to See the Marlins: the Data

Via Deadspin comes some cool visualizations of MLB ticket prices from Quartz (a digital business publication). We recommend you read the full piece, but we'll call out a few data points that will be no surprise to Marlins fans. In 2012 (which was the third-best season in terms of attendance in team history), the Marlins played just one game in which tickets sold for over $100 on average (the first game at Marlins Park). Most games were below the median ticket price ($39.69).

(click to embiggen)

Also unsurprisingly, the Marlins had a generally negative effect on secondary market ticket prices last season (though tickets to away games were 15% more expensive than home tickets):

(click to embiggen)

The only road games where tickets were significantly more expensive than the average home Marlins game came against teams with strong attendance numbers (St. Louis, Philadelphia) and/or teams in pennant races at the time (Tampa, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh). In other words, people weren't going to see the Marlins.

And this was during a season when the Marlins received a ton of notoriety. Surely the numbers will be even worse in 2013...

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Pizza > Marlins Tickets?

On Tuesday some humorless bore accused us of being bad fans on Twitter, which is pretty funny in light of this:

We would have totally taken the tickets, for the record (even though we apparently hate the team?). Jeffrey Loria might not change his ways even though he has to know exactly how much South Floridians hate him at the moment. But at least he has to deal with the humiliation (and more importantly, the enormous expense) of being a sports owner whose city has abandoned him.

I bet someone at Little Caesar's is super pumped for the free publicity, though.

s/o to Big League Stew

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