I've always been amazed that the Bulls sell so many tickets, compared to say, the Atlanta Hawks, or even the New Jersey Nets. Had to be a marketing success story.
ESPN.com - NBA - Rovell: Bulls succeed despite failure
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The Chicago Bulls have been the greatest success story in basketball over the past six seasons. Not on the court, of course -- there they've lost more games than any other team in the NBA, by far. But since Michael Jordan's departure, the Bulls have enjoyed the highest attendance in the league and, with low team payrolls, have secured a place among the league's most profitable franchises.Their amazing success off the court has been the result of groundwork laid by several key people, and has affected the earning ability of many others. But they may not be able to keep it going.
Max Waisvisz remembers the glory days, when he'd be making calls and picking up tickets right before the opening tip, easily turning them over before game time and raking in thousands of dollars in profit in only a couple hours' time. He and his partners made so much money off the Bulls -- who sold out 610 consecutive games from 1987 to 2000 -- that they used some of it to buy a $2.5 million apartment complete with a rooftop to overlook Wrigley Field. ... the Bulls have averaged nearly 20,800 fans per game, a league high that is somewhat misleading because the team plays in one of the largest venues in the league, the United Center. Still, it's an accomplishment considering that the team has outdrawn the San Antonio Spurs, who have won two championships over that span and, until recently, played in the larger Alamodome. ... Steve Schanwald, the team's executive vice president for business operations, says that current attendance is a combination of many factors, including the success of the previous decade, the importance of sports in the city's culture and the work of the Bulls' front office staff, which prepared for the leaner times during the team's championship run. "We understood the cyclical nature of team sports," Schanwald said. "Glory is fleeting in the sports business. During the 1990s, when we were winning all those championships, we worked really hard to prepare for the inevitable downturn as our players aged and buy our basketball department the time it needed to retool the product." While No. 23 was still suiting up, the Bulls started a season-ticket waiting list that grew to 25,000 names. The team devoted resources to creating one of the largest fan databases in the league -- that list now has about 800,000 names.
Bulls and revenue
Proving that D. Sterling is a genius, not as a basketball owner, but as a business man. Sterling's model of the L.A. Clippers (keep team salary down, and market the hell out of the team) has obviously inspired Reisendorf.
