This is the second in a series of posts on Holiday Ticket Packs. Click to read previous entries.
Time to continue the debate on which I-94 holiday pack reigns supreme. Last time we looked at price, with the Chicago Cubs beating out the Milwaukee Brewers despite some unfortunate hidden fees. Today’s category is based on the content of the packs offered.
Category II: Content
First, let’s get the facts out of the way. The Brewers are offering five different packages, each with a different “theme.” For example, the one that appeals most to me is their Marquee Plus Plan: Tue, Jun 25 against the Cubs, Fri Jul 19 against the Miami Marlins, Fri Aug 16 against the Cincinnati Reds, and Wed, Sep 18 against the Cubs again. Or the Double Bobble Plan, with games against the Cubs, Atlanta Braves, San Diego Padres, and Reds, with bobbleheads given away on Apr 21 and Sep 15.
Each of the five Brewers packs has at least one bobblehead giveaway, except Marquee Plus. They have a package for pretty much everything you could want. Marquee Plus and Double Bobble have already been mentioned. The Weekend Plus plan has games on two Saturdays, Sunday, and a Monday. The Matinee plan is all games that start at 1:10pm. Finally, there’s Interleague Plus, with games against the Texas Rangers, Oakland Athletics, and Los Angeles Angels.
What do the Cubs have? Disappointingly there are no clever, descriptive names. You can choose from Holiday Bowl Pack A, B, C, or D, or Holiday Budweiser Bleacher Pack A, B, C, D, depending on if you want to sit in the bleachers or in the rest of the stadium.
The dates are a mix for the Cubs, however, the month of June and July are omitted from all the plans. These tickets are only for April, May, August, or September. (All but one of the Brewers’ packs feature two games in the heart of summer.) The Cubs do boast more variety; there are 20 unique games to see at Miller Park, with 23 to see at Wrigley.
For me, the day of the week is a big factor in determining the quality of the tickets. The same size for the two teams is roughly the same – about 20 possibilities – but the spread of the day of the week is not. Here’s a breakdown.
Miller Park
Sunday: 25%
Monday: 5%
Tuesday: 20%
Wednesday: 15%
Thursday: 5%
Friday: 15%
Saturday: 15%
Wrigley Field
Sunday: 13.1%
Monday: 13.1%
Tuesday: 26.1%
Wednesday: 8.7%
Thursday: 17.4%
Friday: 8.7%
Saturday: 17.4%
The exact numbers may be a bit off with rounding and such. Everyone has their preference, but I like seeing ballgames on the weekend, my favorite being a lazy Sunday afternoon. Most people don’t have time to travel to the stadium during the middle of the week. The Brewers’ packs feature 55% weekend games, while packs for the Cubs are just under 40%. There are lots of Sundays in the Brewer packs and lots of Tuesdays in the Cub packs.
The final aspect of content is the opponents fans get to see by buying the holiday packs. The bitter rivalries, the stellar-performing teams, the superstar players, the teams from far away. The visiter highlights, in my opinion, organized by stadium, as follows:
Miller Park
The I-94 rival Chicago Cubs (Jun 27, June 25, Sep 18, Apr 21)
The 2011 NLCS winning St. Louis Cardinals (May 5, Aug 21)
Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg and the Washington Nationals (Aug 3)
The World Series losing Texas Rangers (May 7)
The surprising AL West defending champion Oakland Athletics (Jun 4)
Albert Pujols and the Los Angeles Angels (Sep 1)
Wrigley Field
The I-94 rival Milwaukee Brewers (Apr 10, Apr 9, Sep 7, Sep 8)
Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg and the Washington Nationals (Aug 22, Aug 19, Aug 20)
The World Series losing Texas Rangers (Apr 18)
The defending Champion San Francisco Giants (Apr 11)
There are many more matchups that excite in that Miller Park group. There’s some overlap between the two with the I-94 series and games agains the Rangers and Nationals. Wrigley Field has a leg up by hosting the defending World Champions, but other than that, it’s more of the same: Padres, Braves, etc.
Verdict: Advantage Brewers
I have to side with Milwaukee on this one. The tickets being offered by the Cubs are inferior in day of the week, time of the year, and opponents faced. Excluding June and July and loading up on Tuesdays doesn’t make for exciting packages. The Cubs’ packages could pull ahead if we had a clearer idea of their giveaway schedule, like the Brewers supplied, but that is unlikely to happen while these early tickets are still on sale. And even at that, I doubt there would be any bobbleheads on these days.
