Rays pitch Catchers Club seats

For about $8,000, you can get a seat behind home plate and a hot meal all season.

By LOUIS HAU
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 2, 2002

Businesses that can't afford a luxury suite at Tropicana Field now can spend $8,019 a season for a choice seat and a catered meal.

[Times photo: James Borchuck] Bruce Kauffman, account executive for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, puts company nameplates on seats in the Catchers Club section of Tropicana Field.

To attract small- and midsize businesses looking to entertain clients, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are opening a new Catchers Club for the season that begins today.

"This fits a niche in the business community," said John Browne, the Devil Rays' vice president of sales and marketing. "There's definitely a desire to entertain and to entertain at a higher level."

The Catchers Club's 96 seats will occupy four rows directly behind home plate. Unlike the corporate suites that look down on the field, the club will serve its members a buffet in a windowless room that used to be a changing room for umpires.

Several high-top tables will be available in the buffet room, where members munching on roast beef, Caesar salad and other items on the revolving menu can watch the action on the field via two 27-inch TV sets.

"The idea for the dining room is to get your food and bring it back to your seat," Browne said. By contrast, the Tampa Bay Lightning offer a view of the ice from the similarly priced XO Club that the hockey franchise opened at the Ice Palace in 2000.

Rays managing general partner Vince Naimoli touted his team's new club Monday as a way for members to enjoy "a special place behind the scenes." Naimoli said the inspiration for the Catchers Club came from similar facilities offered by the Oakland Athletics, the Cleveland Indians and the St. Louis Cardinals. The Rays have sold 66 of the seats to local businesses and individuals who received mailings about the club, Naimoli said.

Four seats will be retained as sampler seats for prospective members during the first month of the baseball season.

If the Catchers Club doesn't sell out, individual seats will be sold on a per-game basis for $125 in April and May and for $195 thereafter.

The $8,019 season price amounts to $99 for each of the Ray's 81 scheduled home games. That's less than the $125-per-game price that season ticket holders paid last year for the seats behind home plate. The choice seats originally were dedicated to the Rays' now-abandoned Home Plate Box program, which provided specially outfitted computer screens to access statistics and replays.

The Catchers Club won't be crucial in terms of shoring up attendance at Rays games, Browne said, but it will be important "from a revenue standpoint." Browne noted that season tickets last year accounted for slightly less than half of the seats that now comprise the Catchers Club section, which he said the Rays hope will be fully occupied by season ticket holders.

To build on the Rays' total 2001 attendance of about 1.3-million, the team plans to boost advertising that highlights the affordability of going out to the ballpark. An advertising insert in Sunday's St. Petersburg Times boasted that a family of four can buy Rays tickets and a hot dog dinner for less than $35.

"We feel we have a very affordable product here," Browne said. "We want to make sure that people are aware of the options available to them."

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