Angels’ season-ticket renewal rate strong; overall sales lagging

The Angels’ renewal rate for season tickets this winter is about 95% despite an across-the-board average price increase of 1%-3%, according to Robert Alvarado, the team’s vice president of marketing and ticket sales.

The team sold 16,000 full-season equivalents -- a mix of 81-game packages, 41-game packages and mini-plans -- in 2014, when the Angels went a major league-best 98-64 and ended their four-year playoff drought. Alvarado expects that figure to approach or surpass 17,000 in 2015.

The Dodgers expect to sell 35,000 season tickets this season. The Angels sold a franchise-record 31,000 season tickets in 2006 while they were in the midst of a string of five playoff appearances in seven years.

That figure dropped to 24,000 in 2012, to 21,000 in 2013 and 16,000 in 2014, but the Angels have drawn 3 million or more fans for 12 straight seasons since 2003.

“We’ve probably had one of our best renewal off-seasons in several years,” Alvarado said. “It’s a correlation to how the team did last year. It was critical that we had the success we had. Our core fan, the season-ticket holder, has responded accordingly. We’ve seen that over the years.”

Prices actually dropped for some tickets. For instance, view-level MVP seats in the 20-game flex plan fell from $16 in 2014 to $15 in 2015, and right-field MVP seats fell from $18 to $16. Most seats in the 20-game plan, which range from $11 to $53, increased by $1, and prices remained the same in several sections.

“Prices bumped in some higher-demand locations, and some went down,” Alvarado said. “It was a corrective measure, more than anything else.”

Single-game tickets will not go on sale until late February, but the cost of those seats will fluctuate under the team’s dynamic pricing system, which it adopted in 2013.

The Angels, following an industry-wide trend, let supply and demand determine the price for each ticket and each game, with the price subject to change up to, and including, the day of the game.

There will be 12 price tiers of games for 2015, the top one featuring 10 games that include opening day, games against the Dodgers, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox and some key weekend games tied to promotional items.

As demand goes up for certain games, the price of tickets increases. As demand goes down, the price of tickets decreases, a strategy that Alvarado said led to a 30% increase in total revenues for single-game ticket sales in 2014.

“It worked fantastic last year,” Alvarado said. “Our revenues were up because we had much more sensitivity to the market demands or lack of demands. It’s very much like how the hotel and airline industries work. We adjust where we need to adjust.”

The cost of parking in Angel Stadium will remain $10, where it has stood for at least a decade.