'Year One' a downer on the field, but Ricketts says Cubs making money

The Chicago Cubs, who haven't won a World Series championship for 102 years, will likely lower player payroll next year, team chairman Thomas S. Ricketts said in an interview at Wrigley Field today.

The club's opening-day payroll was the third-highest in Major League Baseball after the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. While a final decision hasn't been made for spending in 2011, "my gut tells me it'll be off some," said Ricketts, the Incapital LLC chairman who led an ownership group that acquired the team and ballpark last year from Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell for about $900 million.

The Cubs claimed back-to-back World Series titles in 1907 and 1908 and haven't won the championship since. While the team began the 2010 season with an optimistic slogan -- Year 1 -- Chicago's north-side franchise was mathematically eliminated from a playoff berth on Sept. 13.

"Fans are disappointed. The family's disappointed. The players are disappointed," Ricketts said. "For any fan, this season is just not what you wanted to happen."

Building an effective organization is needed to end the longest drought in baseball, not spending unlimited dollars, said Ricketts, a Cubs admirer since childhood who became a full- fledged follower after moving to the city in 1983 to attend the University of Chicago.

"As a fan, if there was one dollar amount that guaranteed you a World Series, I would spend that dollar amount," said Ricketts, 45. "Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. What you want to do is make sure you're building an organization that wins."

Meeting ExpectationsThe Cubs met Ricketts's financial expectations in his first year of ownership, he said, declining to disclose specific revenue numbers."The Cubs are a positive cash flow sports team," he said. "If we'd had a better season on the field, we probably would have done a little better on the business side."The team's 96-year-old ballpark, which Chicago gave landmark status in 2004, is the oldest in the major leagues after Boston's Fenway Park. Wrigley Field will remain the franchise's home, Ricketts said."One of the most important things to the Ricketts family ownership is doing everything we can to save the experience at Wrigley Field for the next generation and maybe the generation after that," Ricketts said. "We're very, very committed to Wrigley."While naming rights are a "very profitable" way for some sports teams to partner with sponsors, changing the name at the Friendly Confines is not something Ricketts is considering.Wrigley Field"I don't think it's really a practical option for us to rename Wrigley Field," Ricketts said. "We have no intention of doing that."The new ownership has brought in new sponsors, including BP Plc, Toyota Motor Corp. and Kraft Foods Inc., said Dennis Culloton, a spokesman for the Ricketts family.While Ricketts wouldn't specify how he hopes to increase revenue, he cited the Boston Red Sox as a good "model" for the Cubs to study. Increasing amenities and seating options for Red Sox fans while "reinforcing the structure of the park" also make sense for the Cubs, he said.The Ricketts family, the eighth ownership group in the 133- year history of the Cubs, acquired a 95 percent controlling interest in the team, Wrigley Field and 25 percent of Comcast Sportsnet Chicago last year. Family members Pete, Tom, Laura and Todd Ricketts are on the team's board, with Tom serving as chairman.Night ClassesTom grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and met his wife in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. He worked as a trader at the Chicago Board Options Exchange and attended classes at night to earn a graduate business degree in 1993 from the University of Chicago.One measure of his team's continued struggles is the price of tickets on the resale market.The Sept. 7 home game against the Houston Astros sold for as low as $1.99 a ticket on StubHub, a unit of EBay Inc., the online reseller. The paid attendance was 31,596, 23 percent below the field's official capacity of 41,210, Jason Carr, a Cubs spokesman, said in an e-mail this month."Baseball prices do tend to fluctuate a lot, and it's not unusual to see ticket prices that run the gamut," Glenn Lehrman, a spokesman for StubHub, said in an e-mail.Through yesterday's game, average Cubs home-game attendance this season is 37,852, down 4.7 percent from 39,698 at this time last year, according to MLB data. The Cubs weren't eliminated from a playoff berth last year until Sept. 29.'Team's No Good'"We have difficulty giving them away at this point in the season," Stephen Skardon, 37, an attorney in Chicago who has a share of season tickets, said in an interview outside Wrigley on Sept. 7. "The team's no good."At Vivid Seats, a Chicago-based secondary ticket marketplace, average Cubs ticket orders in September were about $37 this year, down about 20 percent from last season, said Brittney Thomas, a spokeswoman."It's a sign of the times," said Danny Matta, 48, owner of GreatSeats.com, a national ticket broker based in Beltsville, Maryland. "The internet has made it so you can see what the true value of a ticket is at the end of a day."