The Giants didn’t have the greatest offseason. Sure, it’s technically possible that here, at the beginning of March, they’ll trade Anthony DeSclafani for Shohei Ohtani, but we can mostly close the book on the moves the team made. They didn’t get, you know, That Guy, and they really didn’t get That Other Guy, and sure, they got Some Dudes, but nothing on that level. In late December, the fanbase was almost in a revolt, and things are better now, but there’s still grumbling about the lack of big moves. An awful lot of grumbling.
So they needed something to get fans excited. They needed a selling point. They needed some way that this year’s fan experience would be clearly better than last year’s, even with fan favorite Brandon Belt leaving and the Hanigers and Confortos of the world replacing him. They needed a big move.
They got one.
The Giants announced last Friday that they will sell beers for as little as $9 at certain food stands throughout the park this year, a decrease from the $14 they cost last year. Specifically, because this is important information, they will sell these $9 beers (all domestic beers) at Doggie Diners on the first and third levels of the park. Suck it, club level people! No one likes you anyway.
This is huge for the Giants for several reasons. First, it puts the kibosh on the “Beer prices are too damn high!” jokes that we’ve all been making for years. This is important because now we’ll all just have to make fun of the crab sandwich costing $22 or whatever, and anyone reading that will think we’re fancypants assholes who want to eat a crab sandwich at a baseball game. If anything, the Giants should be ripping us off more.
Second, they can now tell people that baseball is more affordable. The prices on everything are shooting up all the time. We can blame inflation, but this has been happening at the ballpark for the last decade. Accountants saw a captive audience and raised prices accordingly so that the team could make more money, and it worked. But then people started to notice, and they also started to notice the team was bad, and they were paying a lot of money for not a great return, and hey, maybe that wasn’t the greatest deal. The team had to respond, and this is what they came up with.
The Giants will also be raising other food prices by 2-3%, but hey! $5 off beer! That you can drink and then get drunk off of! What a bargain! And that 2-3% is less than inflation, so actually you, the customer, are saving money! Who doesn’t like saving money?
So are the fans excited about this? You bet!
Ah, well it seems there are some complaints still. Weird that a less overpriced Bud Light didn’t answer those complaints, but some people are just picky, I guess.
When Larry Baer talked to the Mercury News, he was a little opaque about whether Giants fans could expect to pay more overall for a game. Sure, he couched it in vague terms, but season ticket holders either paid the same amount (if they renewed early) or somewhat more (if they did not renew early) and the dynamic pricing for single game tickets obscures those financial numbers, so it’s tough to tell whether or not overall ticket costs are higher.
To me, that means they probably will be higher. If you can only go on Tuesday nights against the Rockies of the world, then sure, you’ll be able to buy a cheap ticket and enjoy your sub-$10 Coors Light, which (I have it on good authority) will be as cold as the Rockies. If instead you would like to watch the Giants play the Padres on a Saturday afternoon and sip a Sierra Nevada while you’re doing it, then you’re going to pay more.
But that doesn’t get fun headlines and retweets. People get excited about beer prices decreasing from Ludicrous to Extravagant. Therefore, the Giants have an incentive to talk about it while still preserving or augmenting other sources of income. It works great for them. Maybe not for the rest of us, but who cares? We’re all just a bunch of uncultured Bud drinkers, happy that the price is finally coming down.
Señor Crabcakes,
When they reduce the price of Anchor Steam, I will drop my lockout boycott. I don't forget.
- señor crabby