Royals have seen spike in season-ticket sales on heels of World Series appearance

Four months later after the Royals’ run to the World Series, Steve Shiffman’s life remains hectic.

Not that he minds.

As the Royals’ director of sales and service, Shiffman is happy to keep busy with the demand for new season tickets.

“The dang World Series thing set us back,” Shiffman quipped. “Things are good. My sales staff is busy and I’m trying to catch up.”

While Royals officials won’t disclose numbers, they do say that their season-ticket base is nearing the level it reached in 2012, when the club played host to the All-Star Game.

The Royals’ season-ticket base was 14,000 in 1993, but then it slowly declined, hitting 7,400 in 2003.

Is the 1993 level reachable?

“We hope to get there,” Shiffman said. “That’s a long stretch to go from last year. … Who knows, maybe we’ll reach that 14,000. That’d be real optimistic and hopeful.”

The team sees encouraging signs. The Royals’ premium seating options — the Crown Club, Diamond Club box and Diamond Club seats — are sold out.

But Shiffman was quick to note that the Royals still have season-ticket options available for the field plaza level, including the Dugout Boxes.

“We’re having to put some new season-ticket holders farther up or out,” Toby Cook, the Royals’ vice president of community affairs and publicity, said via email.

Cook also said the number of pre-sold tickets for FanFest, which is Jan. 30-31 at Bartle Hall, has surpassed actual attendance at any previous FanFest. The Royals have sold about 10,000 tickets for the event.

The increased interest isn’t surprising, given that the Royals are coming off their first postseason appearance since 1985.

October is normally a time when the team focuses on season-ticket renewals. Instead, that period was focused on sales of playoff tickets.

“We were completely drained,” Shiffman said. “I think when it was all over, a bunch of us took a week off to rest. Then came Thanksgiving and Christmas. We were a little backlogged, but our fans are great. They’ve really responded to us.”

But don’t pity Shiffman. The Royals beefed up his department because of the team’s success.

“We added a couple more service people because we wanted to take care of our season-ticket holders,” he said, “and our base is growing.”

This story was originally published January 22, 2015 at 1:54 PM with the headline "Royals have seen spike in season-ticket sales on heels of World Series appearance."