That's Entertainment!

Patrick Hruby

Sideshows, including suggestive dancers, booming sound systems and corporate giveaways, are becoming the main attraction at sporting events, overshadowing the games.

Sidney Lowe has seen it all: laser lights humming, acrobats tumbling, fireworks sizzling, dancing girls jiggling. Night after night, venue after venue, he's privy to the best seat in the house, an up-close, front-and-center view that money just can't buy.

Lowe's secret? He's the head coach of the National Basketball Association's (NBA's) Vancouver Grizzlies. And as anyone who's been to a professional sporting event recently can attest, that's as good as being in the band.

"They have everything going on, from motorcycles coming in to guys coming down from the rafters on a rope," Lowe says. "It goes so long when you're sitting and waiting for the smoke to clear. Hey, let's just play basketball."

Too much? More like not enough. When it comes to the burgeoning field of "in-game entertainment" -- the gimmicks, pyrotechnics and promotions that drape the sports world like a red leather trench coat -- bread has long since given way to circus. From the National Football League (NFL) to the NBA to the solvent-for-the-time-being XFL, the shows are getting bigger, louder and cheesier all the time.

"What's happening is the blurring between sport and entertainment," explains Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon. "Teams pay more attention to the food, shoot free T-shirts into the crowd out of hydro-pneumonic guns or whatever, have blimps dropping things, have the exotic laser-light shows, do exotic things at halftime and between the periods. It's all to make games an event, an experience."

It wasn't always this way. As recently as a decade ago, audiovisual "experiences" -- big speakers, bigger dance troupes, enough laser power to re-enact the climactic battle for the Death Star -- were largely the province of rock concerts and Super Bowl halftime shows. Sports were confined to smelly, rat-infested, decidedly unglamorous venues such as the old Boston Garden -- places that seemed to exist mostly so that corpulent men could drink beer and take off their shirts in public.

Somewhere along the line, possibly when Disney bought a hockey team, that tradition went out the window. Sports took on a showbiz sheen, one that owes more to Siegfried and Roy than Lombardi and Auerbach. "You don't just go to black and have dead air," says Mark Tamar, director of game operations for the Washington Capitals pro hockey team. "Something's gotta happen. The fans expect it. We've got all this stuff built, ready to go, so there's never a dead, dull moment."

Games somehow are squeezed in between bombastic sound effects and goofy video snippets. In Los Angeles, the Lakers celebrate Shaquille O'Neal baskets with the theme from Superman. Their opponent in last year's NBA Finals, the Indiana Pacers, favor the subtle, charming roar of an Indy-car engine. Even the mascots are cranking it up: Most NBA teams now feature a pair of costumed clowns, one for laughs and one for high-flying slam dunks. In Chicago, the roly-poly ox "Tuffy" gives way to a ferocious, steroidal Minotaur known simply as "Da Bull."

The extra attractions don't come cheap: Pregame shows can cost $25,000 to produce, and computer-generated sequences can run as much as $1,000 per second.

Given the effort and expense of in-game entertainment, why do teams bother? According to Bob Williams, president of Burns Sports, a Chicago-based sports marketing firm, sideshows simply are a way of justifying spiraling ticket prices to an increasingly blase audience. "Teams have to return some kind of value," says Williams. "So they've gone to the gimmicks, the laser-light shows, the sponsor giveaways. A lot of the corporate fan base is not really interested in the game."

There's a dark side to in-game gimmicks: Done wrong, they can be distracting, even detrimental, to the very games they're meant to enhance. Take, for example, the game-ending fracas between the NBP& Dallas Mavericks and Cleveland Cavaliers on Feb. 15. Thanks to a promotional deal with Taco Bell, fans at Reunion Arena were to receive a coupon good for a free chalupa whenever the Mavericks scored 100 points or more in a home win. With Dallas ahead of Cleveland 98-81 in the waning moments of the contest, Mavericks forward Gary Trent scored an unnecessary basket. As the crowd chanted "cha-lu-pa," Cavs forward Wesley Person decked Trent -- presumably for running up the score -- triggering a melee that included Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

Rasslin' over chalupas? "A purist will say that the game will always be the game, that athletes will always give great performances, and the average person will always appreciate it" Burton says. "But the truth is that some of the moments of the game are being made secondary to the collateral entertainment."

Still, the razzle-dazzle seems to have gained a life of its own. "Once you start doing some of this stuff, you've got to do more of it, and you've got to do it differently," Burton admits. "So it becomes a lot like a spiraling heroin addiction. I'm inclined to believe that you'll see crazier and crazier stuff."

Eric Fisher contributed to this report.

RELATED ARTICLE: Baseball Ticket Prices Go Through the Dome

Baseball's average ticket price has risen another 12.9 percent this season to $18.99, more than twice the cost just nine years ago. The game's highest one-year increase in average costs was fueled by new stadiums and massive free-agent contracts.

Two new parks, PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Miller Park in Milwaukee, open this year at a collective cost of $628 million, representing the 14th and 15th new parks to open in baseball since 1989. Since the New York Yankees wrapped up their 26th title in October, baseball owners have tendered more than $1.1 billion in long-term guaranteed contracts.

Such costs typically are passed on to the fans, and the result is the fourth double-digit increase in ticket costs in five years. The current average, compiled by Team Marketing Report, an industry newsletter, beats the 1992 mark of $9.30 by 104 percent -- far above any local or national measure of inflation.

"This is definitely a big jump, even from last year," says Kurt Hunzeker, editor of the report. "But not only do we have the two new stadiums and the signings, but several stadium renovations. The [Cincinnati] Reds have dropped out more than 12,000 seats at Cinergy Field to make room for the construction of their new ballpark. They lost more than a fifth of their capacity and didn't cut payroll. The [Chicago] White Sox are working on Comiskey Park. We ultimately see those costs."

Boston topped Team Marketing Report's list for the sixth consecutive season with an average ticket cost of $36.08. The Red Sox raised prices a whopping 27.4 percent just before signing slugger Manny Ramirez to an eight-year, $160 million contract in December. Red Sox fans, however, were undeterred at the increase; the team is projecting record ticket sales for 2001.

The Pittsburgh Pirates posted the largest percentage increase, hoisting prices a mammoth 82 percent to an average of $21.48 as the team moves into its new waterfront stadium. Seven other teams also boosted prices by at least 20 percent. The Texas Rangers, who made the biggest free-agent splash ever with the 10-year, $252 million contract for shortstop Alex Rodriguez, increased prices by an average of just 0.7 percent to $19.81.

The Minnesota Twins sell the cheapest ticket in the big leagues with an average cost of just $9.55. Only one team, the Detroit Tigers, actually lowered ticket prices this season. After the Tigers opened Comerica Park last year with ticket prices 103 percent higher than the final year in Tiger Stadium, the team responded with a season record of 79-83. The Tigers, likely facing another lackluster season, reduced ticket costs an average of 3.7 percent to $23.90 in hopes of boosting attendance.

The Red Sox also topped Team Marketing Report's Fan Cost Index (FCI), which tallies the total cost of two adult tickets, two children's tickets, four small sodas, two small beers, four hot dogs, parking, two programs and two caps. The total bill for all that at Fenway Park came to $214.32.

The Montreal Expos offer the cheapest day at the ballpark for the third straight year, at least for American fans. Thanks to near-record exchange rates between the American and Canadian dollars, the FCI for an Expos game totaled just $80.08, or about $8 more than two Red Sox tickets alone.

The league FCI average is $144.98, 9.5 percent higher than a year ago.

By Eric Fisher

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