Jordan Has Made Bulls Hot Ticket

The scene: the Chicago Stadium. The time: the dead of winter, 1983. The crowd: sparse.

The announced attendance was 2,000 for a game between the Chicago Bulls and the Golden State Warriors. Reporters in attendance said the actual number was closer to 800.

Switch to 1988. The scene: the Chicago Stadium. The time: dead of winter. The crowd: overflow.

In the span of less than five years, the Chicago Bulls have gone from one of the moribund NBA franchises to one where tickets are nearly impossible to obtain.

“Did we think it would happen this fast? To tell you the truth, no,” said Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who bought the NBA club in March, 1985. “But we’re glad to have the problem of not having tickets available.”

No mention of the Bulls’ resurgence can be made without adding the name Michael Jordan. He not only turned the club from being a perennial loser in the standings but into a box office champion.

According to the NBA, the Bulls’ average of more than 18,000 a game is second in the league. Five years ago, the club was averaging slightly more than 6,000 a game, in the bottom six of the league.

The Bulls have had a sellout every game but one and are guaranteed sellouts throughout the rest of the regular season. Playoff tickets can be had -- at scalper’s prices.

“Certainly we’ve done a good job marketing the product and have had an aggressive approach,” Reinsdorf admits, “but Michael Jordan and the fact this team is starting to win made the big difference.”

But even with Jordan, drafted in 1984, Chicagoans remained a skeptical bunch. Attendance increased in Jordan’s rookie season but the club still managed to win only 38 games.

“I truly believe things turned around after the next season. People were saying, and the media was saying, this club couldn’t win more than 25 games,” Reinsdorf recalls. “What this club did was go out and scrap and work hard. It was a good work ethic under Doug Collins. I think the fans took this team to their hearts. That’s when things began to really move.”

By then, the Bulls had already started to become one of the best road shows in the league.

“There was a curiosity about seeing Michael Jordan after the Olympics but then people started to come out because we were a competitive team,” says Bulls vice president-general manager Jerry Krause.

In addition to being No. 2 in the home attendance standings -- Detroit is first at more than 26,000 a game -- the Bulls are the No. 2 road attraction. Only the perennially tough Boston Celtics are a bigger road draw this year than Jordan and the Bulls.