Nine nights of fireworks display skies over Salt Lake City

Display location:Salt Lake
City:Salt Lake
State:Utah.
Date:Sept.6.

Details: Salt Lake Bees general manager Marc Amicone has been heard to good-naturedly grumble about not being able to count the 15,000-plus spectators who filled Spring Mobile Ballpark on July 24 against the team's growing attendance numbers for 2009.

The Reno Aces, caught up in a wave of flu, were unable to make the trip. Instead, a pair of high school club teams played five innings. Why did thousands remain inside Spring Mobile Ballpark to watch teenagers play an inferior brand of baseball?

Fireworks.

In a crazy twist, the postponement proved correct the Larry H. Miller Sports & Entertainment Group's marketing research about the typical minor league baseball fan. Baseball is secondary.

"We discovered that fans come to Bees games once, twice, three times during the season," said vice president of marketing Eric Schulz. "They come for the experience. We also found, thanks to research done by minor league baseball, that 70 percent of the people who come to games go home not knowing what the score was."

So, it gets back to fireworks. Nine nights of fireworks, the Famous Chicken, an Elvis impersonator and a single-engine airplane lugging a Bees banner in the skies over Salt Lake City did more to attract people to the ballpark than a three-time PCL division winner.

Classic Baseball, the driving theme for four seasons, works.

"It's the total package," Amicone said. "Obviously we want to win a championship and be in the playoffs, but we want the fans to have an exciting experience from parking to food to their seat being clean. The experience is part of the whole thing."

So, despite not being able to add 15,000 to their attendance numbers and fielding an inconsistent team that will most likely finish third, the Bees drew more fans to Spring Mobile than anytime since 2000.

When the Bees complete their final homestand of the season, which begins today against Sacramento, nearly 500,000 people will have walked through the gates at 1300 South and West Temple, an average of more than 7,100 a game.

In 2008, Salt Lake averaged 7,053 in 71 dates.

Salt Lake got off to a rough start this season. First came the death of pitcher Nick Adenhart, which pushed back opening day. Poor weather and the sinking economy chipped in to cause a 30 percent drop in attendance.

The Bees discounted tickets throughout June.

Schulz said that the banner-toting airplane, a throwback to the "classic" days, accounts for 20 percent of the daily attendance.

"It's one of the benefits to having a stadium so accessible," he said. "We saw a lot of a later arriving crowd."

As for merchandising -- T-shirts, caps and jackets -- Schulz calls those impulse buys and says the numbers stay the same from year to year.

"Historically, baseball, especially minor league baseball, does well in tough economic times," Amicone said. "We're inexpensive entertainment. We had a great year."

martyr@sltrib.com