Season Tickets

For $400 million, you could produce two Hollywood blockbusters. The Dodgers and Angels are betting they have. Los Angeles' two Major League Baseball teams have been on a buying spree, signing some of the game's most talented players. The Dodgers gave Zack Greinke a six-year contract for $147 million, a record for a right-handed pitcher. The Angels lured outfield Josh Hamilton from the Texas Rangers in a five-year, $125-million deal - a year after spending $240 million to secure slugger Albert Pujols' services for 10 years.

This weekend's series between the Dodgers and the Miami Marlins matches last-place teams that took wildly divergent routes to the cellar. New Dodgers ownership splurged for a star-studded roster and the highest payroll in baseball - a $230-million collection of talent that has produced the worst record in the National League West. And yet the Dodgers, despite a 13-20 record before Friday, lead the major leagues in attendance. Meanwhile, after loading up on high-priced free agents to attract fans to his team's new ballpark in 2012, Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria gutted his roster by season's end. The starless Marlins arrived at Dodger Stadium with a 10-25 record, the worst in the National League.

In the wake of a season in which the Dodgers played to a half-empty stadium, the team announced Monday that the price of almost every season ticket would be reduced next season, some by as much as 60%. The Dodgers will cut prices for mini-plans and single-game tickets as well, said David Siegel, senior director of ticket sales. Those prices will be announced at a later date, he said. The Dodgers sold 2.9 million tickets last season, their smallest total in a non-strike year since 1992.

For $400 million, you could produce two Hollywood blockbusters. The Dodgers and Angels are betting they have. Los Angeles' two Major League Baseball teams have been on a buying spree, signing some of the game's most talented players. The Dodgers gave Zack Greinke a six-year contract for $147 million, a record for a right-handed pitcher. The Angels lured outfield Josh Hamilton from the Texas Rangers in a five-year, $125-million deal - a year after spending $240 million to secure slugger Albert Pujols' services for 10 years.

Did Frank McCourt's decision to sell the Dodgers spur fans to sign up for season tickets? That's debatable. But the team says reduced prices did the trick. The Dodgers' season-ticket sales are up 30% from this time last year, according to a person familiar with the team's business but not authorized to discuss it publicly. David Siegel, the Dodgers' senior director of ticket sales, said there had been "no discernible bump" in sales in the days after last week's announcement that McCourt would sell the team.

Your browser does not support iframes. It appears Dodgers fans are a forgiving bunch, or at least are all in on the team's new ownership. Team President Stan Kasten said in a Dodgers video that season-ticket sales continue into uncharted territory, are already at 27,000 and are going north of that figure. He said last year season tickets at the beginning of the season were about 17,000. “In my experience, I've never seen a jump like this,” Kasten said. Under Peter O'Malley, season tickets were capped at 26,000.

The Dodgers' opening-day payroll in 2013 could be double what it was last season, but the pricing structure for season tickets at Dodger Stadium doesn't appear to be changing significantly. Season-ticket prices for about 8,000 seats in the 56,000-seat ballpark will increase, but prices for more than 10,000 of them will go down. About 38,000 will remain the same. The price changes that occurred were largely the result of the reclassification of seats, according to David Siegel, the senior director of ticket sales.

The Cincinnati Reds say they have sold 15,167 season tickets for 1988, breaking the record of 15,166 set in 1980. The total is nearly 2,000 more than the number of season tickets sold during all of the 1987 season, Reds spokesman Jon Braude said. Sales of season tickets will continue into the early part of the season, which starts with an April 4 home opener against the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Anaheim Arena is not scheduled to open for two years and no teams have committed to play there, but its operators say they will soon begin selling luxury suites and season tickets to whatever events are held there. Ogden Entertainment Services, hired by the city to build and operate the $103-million arena, recently opened a marketing office, and its sales and marketing director says a strategy for selling the suites and tickets is being developed.

In the first three weeks after signing free-agent first baseman Mo Vaughn to a six-year, $80-million contract, the Angels sold 654 season tickets, about half for the full season and half for 21-game packages. All this without benefit of a marketing campaign, which isn't scheduled to start until next month. On the day after Thanksgiving, the first business day after Vaughn signed and a day on which the Angels traditionally sell no tickets, they sold 25 season tickets.

A month after the defending Stanley Cup champion Kings raised their ticket prices next season by an average of 5.8%, the Pacific Division-leading Ducks announced Monday their season tickets will rise by a 4.1% average. The Ducks worked to soften their news by noting that season tickets will start for as low as $13 per game and that the increase was the team's first since the 2010-11 season. “As we evaluate our pricing each season, we will continue to do everything possible to maintain reasonable pricing for our fans,” Tim Ryan, the team's executive vice president and chief operating offier, said in a statement.

Ben Howland, who led UCLA to three Final Fours, was fired Sunday, the school announced, ending the longest tenure for a Bruins coach since John Wooden retired in 1975. Howland spent 10 seasons in Westwood, finishing with a 233-107 record. He is coming off one of his best coaching performances, with the Bruins winning the Pac-12 Conference regular-season championship. Yet his star had fallen considerably since he took UCLA to consecutive Final Fours in 2006, '07 and '08. He was informed Sunday that he was fired.

There are basketball issues that UCLA officials feel must be addressed, but economics will play a large part in the expected firing of Bruins Coach Ben Howland. For starters, UCLA officials will have to act quickly or it will cost them an additional $2 million in Howland's buyout. Howland's contract runs through 2017 after he received extensions in 2009 and 2010. He would receive a $3.2-million buyout if terminated by April 2 and a $5.2 million if terminated after that date. Pauley Pavilion was renovated at the cost of $138 million, and Athletic Director Dan Guerrero and Associate Athletic Director Mark Harlan need the arena to make money.

PHOENIX - The majority of the renovations at Dodger Stadium will be completed by Friday for the Freeway Series exhibition against the Angels, team President Stan Kasten said. The Dodgers will have a new clubhouse and there will be new amenities on every level of the stadium. The team wants to provide improved mobile phone service in the ballpark, but that probably won't be available until the second homestand of the regular season. Wi-Fi will be upgraded throughout the stadium, but in June.

PHOENIX - Zack Greinke made it through five innings of his first spring with the Dodgers before they sent him for an MRI examination. That is a red flag for any pitcher, let alone the one with the $147-million contract that makes him the highest-paid right-hander in baseball history. The Dodgers exhaled on Monday, after Greinke was diagnosed with inflammation in his right elbow. Manager Don Mattingly said he expects Greinke to be available for his first regular-season start April 2, although the Dodgers could grant him extra rest since they do not need five starters until April 13. Greinke complained of elbow discomfort last week, and an MRI did not show any structural damage.

Your browser does not support iframes. It appears Dodgers fans are a forgiving bunch, or at least are all in on the team's new ownership. Team President Stan Kasten said in a Dodgers video that season-ticket sales continue into uncharted territory, are already at 27,000 and are going north of that figure. He said last year season tickets at the beginning of the season were about 17,000. “In my experience, I've never seen a jump like this,” Kasten said. Under Peter O'Malley, season tickets were capped at 26,000.

The Mission Viejo Vigilantes minor league baseball team, which moved from Long Beach in January, has sold about 500 season seats, General Manager Paula Pyers said Wednesday. Single-game seats won't go on sale until season-ticket sales reach 2,000, said Pyers, adding, "We'll let the demand continue." As part of the deal to move to Mission Viejo, the Western Baseball League team will play at Saddleback College's refurbished field, which has a seating capacity of 3,400.

MILLVILLE, N.J. - Norman Rockwell never visited this small south New Jersey town, but he rendered its likeness in hundreds of paintings, from the low-slung brick storefronts along Main Street to the snow-covered banks of the Maurice River. He painted the people, too, all square jaws and determination. Hard working. Humble. "Salt of the earth," Mayor Tim Shannon says. Shannon should know. In addition to being mayor he's fifth-generation Millvillian, part of a family that first settled here just after the Civil War. "There is a core of Millville people that have been here for generations," he says.

The Angels will put single-game tickets on sale Feb. 23. They won't tell you the prices in advance, so you could go to the Angel Stadium ticket office that day without knowing whether you can afford tickets to the game you really want to see. That is one result of the Angels' dynamic pricing system, part of an industry-wide trend in which teams try to adjust prices to supply and demand rather than let scalpers do it for them. The concept of selling the same seat for the same price for every game appears increasingly dated.