A’s Refuse to Remove Tarps, Bees

This San Francisco Chronicle article discusses the A’s refusing to remove the tarps from the upper deck stadium seats, even for the playoffs, leaving 20,878 of O.co Coliseum’s 55,945 seats covered and unable to be sold.

From the article:

Longtime sports marketer Paul Siri of Redwood City, a former executive with IMG, said he’d never seen an owner say “no” to the chance to sell more tickets, hot dogs, beer, T-shirts and other merchandise at a high-profile game that’s sure to sell out.

The move makes sense only if Wolff is trying to convince Major League Baseball he can’t build a successful team in Oakland, Siri said.

“Looking at this from his point of view, this is the worst thing that could happen,” Siri said. “His team wins, media exposure increases, the stadium sells out, and suddenly he loses his leverage to move. It kills his argument. … I don’t blame the fans for being upset.”

Not from the article:

In further attempts to keep fans away, and convince MLB that the A’s must move, Wolff has refused to make any attempts to capture the thousands of bees that have found a home in O.co Coliseum. Wolff denies releasing the bees into the stadium in the first place, and emphatically denies spending a long September night covering all stadium armrests with honey, produced locally (in San Jose).

Or it may just be that the two people they found to quote in the article are the only two people who think anyone will buy the extra tickets. This thread at Baseball Think Factory makes the point that there likely is no demand for the seats anyway.

(But how much could they get for the tarps on eBay?)