Do Cubs fans think their season is over already?

I want to begin this post by saying that I am a Cubs fan, and living in the middle of Cardinals territory makes me live through daily jokes about the ineptitude of the Cubs.

For those who haven’t really studied the Cubs lengthy history, they have won two championships in their existence, the most recent one of those was in 1908, 104 years ago.  The Cubs have been dubbed many things, including the “Loveable losers”, yet attendance has been fairly strong for home games at Wrigley Field in Chicago.  The Cubs started their 2012 campaign with two homestands which have gone less than well.  They currently sit 1-5, and it seems fans are already getting ready to jump ship.  The attendance numbers tell an interesting tale.

04/05/2012 Opening Day Thursday vs Washington attendance = 41,176 (100% of capacity) 2-1 Loss

04/07/2012 Saturday vs Washington attendance = 40,102 (97.4% of capacity) 7-4 Loss

04/08/2012 Sunday vs Washington attendance = 31,973 (77.7% of capacity) 4-3 Win

04/09/2012 Monday vs Milwaukee attendance = 38,136 (92.7% of capacity) 7-5 Loss

04/10/2012 Tuesday vs Milwaukee attendance = 37,265 (90.5% of capacity) 7-4 Loss

04/11/2012 Wednesday vs Milwaukee attendance = 34,044 (82.7% of capacity) 2-1 Loss

Now it’s not too unusual to see such fluctuations, though the only time attendance has gone up was after the Cubs first win.  They have not won since.  One thing I was doing this season was paying attention to price of the cheapest ticket for Cubs games on the secondary ticket market using the website Stubhub.  Opening Day actually had someone selling a ticket in the nosebleed sections for around $20.  Since then, the secondary ticket market has started to be hit, as tickets dropped to $15 by the end of the series with Washington, and then to $10 and below as the Cubs lost one game after the next to the Brewers.

This morning my students alerted me during class that the Cubs cheapest ticket on stubhub was going for $0.49 for tomorrow’s (04/12/2012) game against Milwaukee.  This evening that price had dropped to $0.19.  In fact three different sellers now are offering two tickets at $0.19 each.  It costs me more to wash my clothes than it would to get four of these tickets to a Chicago Cubs game.

It is worth noting that there are tickets still going for $250 in row 2, right behind the on deck circle), however it seems that the secondary ticket market for the Cubs is really going down the drain.  The question is, are the Cubs fans giving up early this year and already dumping tickets off while they can actually get money for them?  I will keep looking at the Cubs ticket market this year, as I’m curious to see how fans will respond to the teams performance.

On a final note, I am watching the Cubs play the World Champion (of MLB at least) St. Louis Cardinals in St. Louis on Sunday in what are considered to be nosebleed seats.  I got the tickets “cheap” for $30.  Cubs fans may be giving up, but Cardinal fans look to be ready for another exciting year.

Did the fans get lost on the way to World Cup?

It’s 6:30 am here in the middle of the U.S., and South Korea is about to kick off against Greece.  Yesterday I noticed this report claiming that FIFA says they have sold 97 percent of the tickets for World Cup.  Now I’m looking at the stadium for this game and it seems to be half empty.  South Korea are a notably strong team when it comes to having their fans travel all around the world to support them.  I can actually hear their “Dae Han Min Guk” chant above the Vuvuzelas, yet it seems a lot of casual fans from the host nation haven’t decided to come to the game.  Even the ESPN commentators are saying that the stadium isn’t a sellout and that there will probably be a lot of “late arrivals”.  I think it may be that FIFA has priced tickets a bit too high for some of the matches that people are not as inclined to attend.  Brazil and England matches will always sell well, but Slovenia vs Algeria just doesn’t seem to be a big match.  Surveys conducted in 23 nations have shown that fans agree, ticket prices are too high.

I’m thinking FIFA might start opening up some of these tickets or selling them cheaper, this stadium is still pretty empty.  I’ll check the reported numbers versus the capacity later on.

My predictions for today:

Korea 2 – 1 Greece

Nigeria 0 – 3 Argentina

England 3 – 1 U.S.