Dodgers will not increase ticket prices on most seats for 2013

Last off-season, the Dodgers in bankruptcy and fans deserting the team like they were jumping off the Titanic, Frank McCourt’s attempted solution to lure back the throngs was to lower ticket prices.

After their attendance dropped 627,181 in 2011, the Dodgers announced a price reduction on what they said was 96% of their seats.

Hard to say how it worked, but attendance did rise by 13.3% this season. Whether it was because of new ownership, a better team or midseason trades, the Dodgers drew 3.3 million in 2012, an increase of 389,107.

So do the Dodgers anticipate raising prices for 2013?

“I do not,” said team CEO Stan Kasten. “We’re going to be tweaking, just for reasons of seat classifications.

“But in general prices aren’t going up. Some may, while others go down, but in general they will stay the same.”

Kasten said the increase in attendance this season was actually greater than announced.

“For reasons I don’t want to get into, it’s a brighter picture than you all realize, because of the way the arithmetic was done this year vs. how arithmetic was done in the past,” he said.

If that sounds deliberately vague, anyone who attended a game last year, knows the announced attendance figures were laughable. Even given the tremendous amounts of no-shows, it’s hard to fathom that tickets sold last year truly approached the 2,935,139 announced.

Season tickets in 2007 hit 27,000, but dropped in 2011 to 17,000. Kasten said buoyed by midseason sales, season tickets this year were more than 23,000.

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