Brewers celebrate 100M all-time fans with special ticket offer
MILWAUKEE -- Maybe it will be a mother and son, like Marie and Bud Selig in the early days of the franchise when Milwaukee was big league again. Maybe it will be a 12-year-old future Major Leaguer wandering the stadium trying to find the lucky spot to conjure a Brewers rally like Craig Counsell used to do. Maybe it will be one of the team’s longtime season seat holders hoping for that long-awaited return to the World Series.
Maybe it will be you.
Whomever it is, the Brewers will welcome the 100 millionth fan in franchise history when they play the Pirates on Tuesday night, continuing a march that began with the Seattle Pilots at Sick’s Stadium and continued with the Brewers in Milwaukee at County Stadium and Miller Park-turned-American Family Field.
To mark the milestone, the club is releasing a ticket offer for their 11 remaining Monday-Thursday home games this season: Terrace level or loge level bleacher tickets for $6 which include a $6 concessions voucher. Those tickets will be available from Wednesday at 10 a.m. CT through Thursday at midnight CT at brewers.com/100million.
The 100 million figure represents paid fans since the franchise’s inception in 1969, including Brewers postseason games. After 23,009 fans attended Monday’s series opener against the Pirates, the total stood at 99,981,656.
“We saw this milestone coming for some time and thought, ‘What could we do that would be impactful, would get attention, and would not just be for one or two games, but all of September and October?’” said Brewers president of business operations Rick Schlesinger. “We didn’t want people pigeonholed into one or two games. They can go to all 11 if they want.”
Schlesinger and the Brewers have done a lot of thinking lately about attendance. The Brewers expect to draw about 2.5 million fans this season, which represents a decrease from pre-pandemic levels when Christian Yelich was powering the team to the postseason in 2018 (2.85 million) and ’19 (2.92 million), and falls more in line with '17, when the team drew 2.56 million fans in the second full season of a rapid rebuild.
A recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis looked at the variety of reasons for the decline, and their conclusions, Schlesinger said, were right in line with what the club has learned from its own internal data and focus groups. They range from the late start of the season due to the lockout and the resulting late start to sales and hit on group sales, a major driver of business for the Brewers in their domed home, to pace-of-play fatigue, fans feeling detached because their television provider doesn’t carry games and concessions prices.
Some of those factors are within the club’s control, Schlesinger acknowledged, and he said the Brewers intend to address them. That is part of why the idea of tickets with an offsetting concessions voucher appealed to him for the “Thanks a Hundred Million” promotion when it was pitched.
“But also, we lost a lot of engagement. Because of the pandemic, our players have not been out with the fans as much. We did some things because of COVID like eliminating Brewers On Deck. I’m not saying we’re going to bring that back, but we’re looking for 2023 to re-engage.”
He’s encouraged about other pending developments, including the launch of Bally Sports Wisconsin’s streaming service and next year’s more balanced schedule, which will bring many more American League opponents to Milwaukee.
All-time Brewers attendance
Regular Season: 98,894,966
• Sick’s Stadium (Seattle) 677,944
• County Stadium 45,313,910
• American Family Field 52,903,112
Postseason: 1,086,690
• County Stadium 387,243
• American Family Field 699,447