Smoke & Mirrors
How Did Tim Schuldt Do It?
By Tony DeFazio

The summer of 2005 was not kind to the Pittsburgh Pirates. So unkind, in fact, that their manager paid for it with his job. The Bucs lost 95 games - the 13th consecutive season in which they failed to win more than they lost. No National League team was worse; only one team in all of baseball lost more than the hapless Buccos. You'd expect the long-suffering Pirates' fans to stay away from PNC Park in droves.

But that didn't happen - quite the opposite, actually. The 119-year old franchise saw fans fill the ballpark like almost never before. The Bucs drew 1,817,245 fans this past year - sixth best in team history. In fact, no team in Major League Baseball had a higher percentage increase in attendance than the Pirates, who drew 14% more fans than the year before. Season ticket sales increased a whopping 22 percent. Okay, so what's up?

"A lot of things," says Tim Schuldt, VP of Marketing and Sales for the team. "There were simply some fundamentals that had to be changed. Our sales structure was not aligned properly for the market. We changed the way we motivated our people and got them to excel. Really, just a little bit of the old "kick in the pants" motivational techniques."

Under Schuldt's direction, the Pirates implemented or will be implementing several changes in sales strategy:
¥ Heavier advertising: they'll have 4,000 radio ads playing outside of Allegheny County; compared to zero the year before.
¥ Additional promotional items: the first ever dual bobblehead night in MLB featured a Steve Blass/Manny Sanguillen doll.
¥ A much larger percentage of their sales force was dedicated to areas outside of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, and saw huge increases in fan interest; the weakest of which increased 25%.
¥ Group sales became a priority.
¥ More attention to young fans: Little League programs, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, even maternity wings of local hospitals. New births across the county will be greeted by Pirates' gift baskets proclaiming - rather than "It's a girl or boy" - "It's a Pirate!"
¥ And, to some criticism, they leveraged the 2006 All-Star Game, to be played at PNC Park, with season ticket sales. Schuldt, however, says that the All-Star Game is not responsible for most of the attendance increase: "Only 26 percent of the growth had any tie-in to the All-Star Game."

The fact that 1.8 million fans paid to see a team lose 95 games certainly makes one wonder what will happen if the team starts winning. The organization previously felt only 1.6 million fans were possible without a winning team. Schuldt now says that number is somewhere between 1.8 and 2 million, although he allows that he "needs a little help on the field" to get past 1.9 million.

"We're just getting started," says Schuldt. "We need to keep fans excited beyond 2006. It certainly isn't a trend yet, but we've established a benchmark. This is a good baseball market."

Ray Mernagh is the publisher of Hoopfactor.com and is authoring a book on the Mid-American Conference.