Cubs chairman updates sale status, new platinum ticket plan
Cubs chairman Crane Kenney said Friday he hopes the drawn-out sale of the team can be completed by spring training.
In other news, Kenney announced that ticket prices for 2009 would be frozen for 33 percent of Wrigley Field but that the Cubs also were creating a new high-end category of games called the "platinum" level, which encompasses 14 popular dates and opponents.
Kenney said the platinum dates and price increases in the highest-quality seats would help to underwrite a player payroll that easily could top the $140 million mark, or about a 10 percent increase.
In the past, the Cubs had based their ticket prices on "regular," "prime" and "value" days. Now, the Cubs will term their dates "bronze," "silver," "gold" and "platinum," with the bronze, silver and gold representing 83 percent of dates.
Kenney said the Cubs will still offer a $9 ticket to selected games and that the overall price increase for the non-platinum dates is 6 percent. He said the new level of seats was created after the Cubs studied StubHub, which deals in the secondary ticket market.
"StubHub has become like UPS," Kenney said. "People are just using it, and MLB has done a global deal with StubHub. We learned a lot about how are tickets are treated. And what we learned is, quite appropriately, a lot of our season-ticket holders use those marquee games (to sell) and underwrite their whole season. If they move those seats, they basically can offset the cost of the rest of the season."
As far as the sale of the club is concerned, Kenney said that Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell has no timetable for selling the team to prospective bidders, which numbers "at least three," Kenney said without getting more specific. He also said Zell would not keep a majority interest in the team.
"Sam doesn't operate under any deadline for this," Kenney said. "It could take as long as he wants it to, but for all of our benefit, we hope by spring training we're finished. And that will be good because there's a lot of planning we want to do that has some long-term implications. Not just the player contract stuff. Having an owner at the seat of the table would help."
No slam dunk: General manager Jim Hendry leaves for Las Vegas and the winter meetings today. Most teams will get settled in Sunday, with events officially kicking off Monday.
The Cubs have until Dec. 12 to tender contracts to their players. Players eligible for salary arbitration are pitchers Chad Gaudin, Neal Cotts and Michael Wuertz, infielder Ronny Cedeno and center fielder Reed Johnson.
Hendry will talk to each player's agent to see where they stand on money before publicly saying whether he'd offer each a contract. He did say "you win ballgames with Reed. (Johnson)." Hendry didn't seem overly concerned with how much money Gaudin would be seeking. Gaudin was hobbled down the stretch by a mysterious back ailment and missed the playoffs. Wuertz, who made $860,000 this year and spent time in the minor leagues, could become a candidate to be non-tendered.
Drop the puck: The National Hockey League will begin taking over Wrigley Field after Dec. 15 for the Jan. 1 Winter Classic between the Blackhawks and the Detroit Red Wings.
The NHL will use two large video screens, placed toward left-center and right-center fields for fans who may not be able to see all of the action from their seats. The Cubs will be watching to see how that works in case they ever plan to use video screens beyond the outfield walls. Crane Kenney said Wrigley Field will be adorned in NHL logos for the game.
Recession-proof? Crane Kenney was asked if the Cubs and Major League Baseball are recession proof.
"I think we're in unchartered waters here," Kenney said. "It makes it very difficult to plan. How do you look ahead nine to 12 months when the economy and the market is moving overnight in ranges that are unprecedented? We decided to be conservative, but we also have a commitment to get the job done and we haven't."