Sports Teams Pitch Hard to Generate Ticket Sales : Marketing: Clubs can’t always rely on TV revenue. Oakland A’s send out salespeople to push season seats.

Rollie Fingers, the former Oakland Athletics relief pitcher with the whiplash mustache, was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in January because he knew how to finish a ballgame.

Ann M. Cooke, who works off the field for the A’s, is a closer of a different kind.

Her game is cold-calling, walking into downtown office buildings with an armful of season-ticket order blanks and no introduction.

The Athletics, perhaps best-known in baseball business circles for having the highest payroll in major-league history at just under $39 million last season, are also known as savvy marketers.

They’d better be this year, with the economy in a funk and the team coming off a fourth-place finish after three straight World Series appearances.

Some pro sports teams, awash in TV money, could practically lock up the stadium, play the game on a sound stage and still turn a profit.

But the smaller-market A’s need bodies in the seats, so they have created something unusual in big-league baseball: a force of full-time, commissioned salespeople who knock on doors in commercial buildings, industrial parks and even dentists’ offices on both sides of the bay.

It is a solution tailored to the A’s particular problems, but changes in the sports business may force other teams to consider it. Although player salaries continue to escalate, experts think the revenue from TV rights will dwindle because of big losses that CBS, ESPN and other networks have suffered in televising sports.

Falling TV revenues make ticket, parking and concession sales all the more important. In the Los Angeles market, the Dodgers, Lakers and Kings have consistently high attendance--not that they do not work at it.

The Clippers, however, have struggled to win games and fans. Last season’s average home attendance of 12,734 was a record for the team’s seven years in Los Angeles but still left the Clippers in the bottom third of the National Basketball Assn. in that category.

Carl Lahr, vice president for marketing, has established an aggressive telemarketing sales program for the Clippers, generating “anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 calls a week.” The calls are aimed mostly at business executives, a group considered best able to afford season tickets, which, even at the moderate $20-a-seat level, cost $860 apiece.

The Athletics--and most other teams--also use telemarketing, as well as broadcast, print and direct-mail advertising. But face-to-face selling is still the heart of the A’s system.

Andy Dolich, A’s vice president for business operations, reasons that it is easier to hang up a phone or toss a brochure in the wastebasket than it is to throw Ann Cooke out of your office.

On a recent morning, Cooke and her boss, A’s marketing representative Doris S. Messina, were together working hostile territory--the San Francisco financial district.

The first stop looked to be an easy one. It was an appointment instead of a cold call. George D. Niespolo, a partner in the law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, had responded favorably to Cooke’s initial pitch and told her he just needed a few days to persuade the other lawyers.

As it turned out, though, the idea of four full-season tickets didn’t fly. Eighty-two home games were too many for the ostensible purpose of entertaining clients. And the price--$3,532 to $3,854 for four tickets in the first deck or on the field level--was a tad steep for the firm’s experiment with baseball.

After a lengthy review of the other options, Niespolo was settling in on a package of four tickets to all 41 night games, for $1,772.

Susan M. Deming, another A’s marketing representative who trains salespeople, says some recruits wash out because they are “too nice to push for the order.”

Timidity is not Cooke’s affliction. She’s as crisp as a well-executed double play.

As she guided the deal toward a close, Cooke asked Niespolo whether he preferred the first-base or third-base side of the field.

There was a pause as the lawyer ruminated. A long pause.

“It’s not that tough, George,” Cooke finally snapped.

Everyone laughed, but the former federal prosecutor looked a bit sheepish as he chose the first-base side and went out to get a check.

“Well done,” Messina told Cooke after Niespolo left the room.

Cooke works on straight commission--10% of sales. That makes for a “pretty skinny living,” she said, considering that only one in 25 or 30 sales calls gets a nibble. Cooke hopes to parlay her performance as an independent saleswoman into a staff job like Messina’s.

Other A’s employees kid about the long hours and say they are married to the team. For Messina, an 11-year veteran, it’s no joke. She wears her diamond-studded 1989 World Series championship ring--awarded to front-office personnel as well as players--on the third finger, left hand.

When not out cold-calling or working from her office at the Oakland Coliseum, Messina often visits sports bars to talk baseball and pass out A’s brochures.

Thanks largely to success on the field but also to the efforts of such aggressive salespeople, the A’s have become one of the best teams in baseball at filling seats.

The A’s drew 2.7 million fans in 1991, averaging 71% capacity in the 47,313-seat Coliseum. Only the Toronto Blue Jays, the Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox had better attendance last year, and all three were in pennant races.

To get people in the door, the A’s keep ticket prices among the lowest in the big leagues, at an average of $8.50. To maximize per-fan revenues, they offer decent ballpark food and such attractions as baseball-oriented games of skill and photo booths.

“It’s the Las Vegas method: Invite your patrons in inexpensively and they buy their way out,” said Peter Bavasi, a former executive with the Blue Jays, the Cleveland Indians and the San Diego Padres who is now president of Dow Jones SportsTicker. He counts the A’s among baseball’s top marketers.

When the Haas family, owners of blue jeans giant Levi Strauss, bought the team in 1980 from the controversial Charles O. Finley, there were only 326 season tickets on the books. Since then, the number has been built to 16,000. Given the poor economy and the disappointing 1991 season, however, Dolich said the A’s will be hard-pressed to generate enough new season tickets this winter to cover off-season attrition.

The A’s are hoping that 1991 was an aberration rather than a turning point. Ace pitchers Dave Stewart and Bob Welch led a list of 1990 stars who had mediocre years. And on the business side, according to Dolich, the team lost money after three years of hard-earned profitability.

The Bay Area market that they share with the San Francisco Giants is the smallest two-team market in baseball. The A’s command only $6 million a year for their local television rights--barely enough to cover slugger Jose Canseco’s salary and dinky next to the New York Yankees’ local TV package of over $40 million.

Moreover, the A’s and every other team may face a sharp cut in the $14 million a year they get from the $1.5-billion national TV contracts with CBS and ESPN, which expire at the end of 1993. With CBS complaining of losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, there is consensus that the next TV deal will be far less generous.

Dolich does not claim to have seen that coming years ago, but he does say the A’s have long placed their emphasis on attendance.

Noted Bavasi: “The guys who have operated a long time and understand the business are quick to tell you that having people in the stands is always going to be your hedge against erosion in revenue from electronic sources.”

BASEBALL’S TOP 10 1991 attendance at home games. Toronto Blue Jays: 4,001,526 Los Angeles Dodgers: 3,348,170 Chicago White Sox: 2,934,154 Oakland Athletics: 2,713,493 Boston Red Sox: 2,562,435 Baltimore Orioles: 2,552,753 St. Louis Cardinals: 2,449,537 California Angels: 2,416,236 Cincinnati Reds: 2,372,377 Chicago Cubs: 2,314,250 * The figures are not strictly comparable due to differences in the way the leagues calculate attendance. American League includes no-shows; National League subtracts them. Source: Major League Baseball