Tickets Sold

The long-awaited exhibition game between the Orioles and members of the Cuban National Team on May 3 will not be an "invitation only" affair. Tickets -- perhaps as many as 10,000 -- will be put on sale to the general public at noon on Saturday.The Orioles expect to sell more than 35,000 seats to season-ticket holders and also will set aside a large block of tickets for youth groups in the Baltimore and Washington areas, but that still should leave 4,000 to 10,000 for a public sale, which will be conducted by telephone through Ticketmaster.

Squeezed by poor play and high ticket prices, attendance at Orioles games is off to its worst start since the team moved to Camden Yards, except for the strike-scarred spring of 1995.The team remains one of the best sellers in baseball, but its average home attendance has fallen to third, behind the Cleveland Indians, who are red hot, and the Colorado Rockies, who play in a bigger stadium.The obvious culprit: a .385 win percentage (20-32) that has landed the Orioles with a thud in the basement of the American League East.

If the masses of swooning young girls who cry hysterically at the dreamy ballads and hip dance moves of the the Backstreet Boys scare you, you certainly don't want to see them deprived of tickets to see the slick, super-successful popsters on their upcoming tour."

Angels: Cecil Fielder ended an 0-for-14 drought and got his first RBI of the season in 22 at-bats.Devil Rays: Wade Boggs broke out of a 1-for-13 slump with his 3-for-3 effort. Fred McGriff had his season-opening six-game hitting streak broken. Manager Larry Rothschild said he was giving his players today off. The team had stopped in North Carolina for an exhibition with the Durham Bulls on Monday. Quinton McCracken has hit safely in all seven games.Tigers: The teams was calling the home opener its first sellout since April 11, 1994.

Tickets to Orioles games cost more. Nevertheless, the team apparently is selling more of them.According to Joe Foss, the club's chief financial officer, overall ticket sales have jumped more than 10 percent. What the increased sales demonstrate, Foss said, is that "fans respect the position we took on raising prices."The bickering over baseball's new labor agreement and the subsequent delay in finalizing the interleague schedule delayed the sale of Orioles' 1997 tickets by about two months, Foss said.

It's understandable that Jim Speros is elated over how Baltimore has responded to his Canadian Football League venture, discovering it's an exciting game, played by well-coordinated athletes and presented with colorful wrappings -- including the proper sound effects during the national anthem when the singer comes to the part about "bombs bursting in air" and Memorial Stadium rocks with exploding fireworks.That's only the beginning of the excitement. Then there's the matter of home attendance.

Hollywood closed the books on the 1992 box office year Sunday with an impressive New Year's weekend that capped a year in which moviegoers bought almost $5 billion worth of tickets.If estimates for the year -- calculated by various sources to be hovering above $4.9 billion -- hold, it would be the film industry's third best year in U.S. and Canadian box office grosses. According to figures issued by the Motion Picture Association of America, the strongest box- office year was 1989 with $5.03 billion in tickets sold, followed by 1990 with $5.02 billion.

Hollywood is plenty nervous. And it's not just because the movie studios have a couple of billion dollars on the line with this summer's movies. Or because the first two weekends of the summer season at the box office didn't exactly create fireworks.Underneath any immediate optimism about the box-office boost that "Jurassic Park" and "Last Action Hero" could lend to the summer is a real anxiety about the continuing decline in the moviegoing audience -- specifically the all-important 13- to 25-year-old segment:* Year after year, the film industry sees a steady erosion in the number of movie tickets sold.

The yet unidentified $10 million winner in the el Gordo lottery drawing bought the winning ticket in Queen Anne's County -- within 20 minutes of the cutoff time for sales Saturday night."

Organizers of the Aug. 28 pro football game in Baltimore hope yesterday's rapid sellout accomplished two things: reaffirming the city's status as a football town and generating a profit.Fans responded enthusiastically to the return, even if temporarily, of pro football to Baltimore after an almost nine-year absence.About 33,000 tickets to the Miami Dolphins-New Orleans Saints preseason game at Memorial Stadium were sold within 2 1/2 hours of the opening of ticket windows at 9 a.m. yesterday.

Marylanders who got stiffed on Bruce Springsteen tickets by Ticketmaster are but one reason to be skeptical of a proposed merger between the behemoth of ticket sellers and the powerhouse promoter Live Nation. Justice Department lawyers who are scrutinizing this deal should recognize that competition in the marketplace now is virtually nonexistent and consumers deserve more choices - not fewer - in buying tickets to concerts and other shows. Live Nation owns more than 140 venues and has multiyear comprehensive deals covering the tours of Madonna, Jay-Z, U2, Nickelback and Shakira.

Scoring last-minute tickets to an Orioles or Ravens game would be as easy as a stroll downtown under a bill introduced in the City Council yesterday that would lift a prohibition against reselling tickets within a mile of the Camden Yards sports complex. Supporters said they hope the measure would boost the Orioles' lagging attendance by making it easier for ticket holders to unload their extra tickets among the throngs of fans outside the park, rather than throwing them out and leaving seats empty.

The countdown took a little longer than expected. After a delay of one day, the Maryland Lottery held its drawing last night for Countdown to Millions new game featuring the Maryland Lottery's best odds ever at winning $1 million - and at $20 apiece, its most expensive tickets ever. The game, which the lottery marketed as a 1-in-105,000 chance to win $1 million and a 1-in-517 chance to win at least $500, was originally scheduled for a New Year's Eve drawing. But with sales short of the lottery's 420,000- ticket goal, the drawing was pushed back 24 hours.

The NCAA men's lacrosse championships could produce record-breaking attendance figures this weekend at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. The Division I semifinals will take place tomorrow, followed by the Division II and III title games on Sunday and the Division I championship game on Monday. As of last night, 43,707 all-session tickets had been sold, according to tournament director Lee Stevens. Before this year, the most all-session tickets sold before championship weekend was 38,939 in 2004, the last year the event was held at M&T Bank Stadium.

For the New York Mets, the value of signing a couple of high-profile free agents this winter hasn't been an extraordinary number of new season tickets sold - at least not yet. It's been the buzz created by the $119 million deal for Carlos Beltran and the $53 million contract signed by Pedro Martinez. "They have gotten people talking about us again," Mets spokesman Jay Horwitz said yesterday. "We're on the talk shows, we're on TV. That really hasn't been there for a couple of years." After a frustrating offseason in the free-agent market, the Orioles are on the verge of acquiring aging superstar Sammy Sosa from the Chicago Cubs.

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band will be crowned 2003's top concert attraction by Pollstar in the magazine's annual ranking of the top 100 North American tours, a list that will be finalized this week. The New Jersey rocker grossed $115.9 million from 47 performances in 30 cities, according to Pollstar editor Gary Bongiovanni, placing him No. 2 on the list of the highest-grossing tours ever. The Rolling Stones' 1994 tour remains the all-time champion with $121.2 million in tickets sold.

The 16th Columbia Festival of the Arts sold 7,100 tickets to 14 performances this year, far surpassing previous years' sales, organizers said yesterday. Last year, the festival reported nearly 4,000 tickets sold. Tickets sold out for two performances by dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, a concert by Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and one of two nights with comedy group The Second City, said Stewart Seal, the festival's executive director. Other dance, drama and musical performances drew respectable crowds also.

If the masses of swooning young girls who cry hysterically at the dreamy ballads and hip dance moves of the the Backstreet Boys scare you, you certainly don't want to see them deprived of tickets to see the slick, super-successful popsters on their upcoming tour."

Squeezed by poor play and high ticket prices, attendance at Orioles games is off to its worst start since the team moved to Camden Yards, except for the strike-scarred spring of 1995.The team remains one of the best sellers in baseball, but its average home attendance has fallen to third, behind the Cleveland Indians, who are red hot, and the Colorado Rockies, who play in a bigger stadium.The obvious culprit: a .385 win percentage (20-32) that has landed the Orioles with a thud in the basement of the American League East.

The long-awaited exhibition game between the Orioles and members of the Cuban National Team on May 3 will not be an "invitation only" affair. Tickets -- perhaps as many as 10,000 -- will be put on sale to the general public at noon on Saturday.The Orioles expect to sell more than 35,000 seats to season-ticket holders and also will set aside a large block of tickets for youth groups in the Baltimore and Washington areas, but that still should leave 4,000 to 10,000 for a public sale, which will be conducted by telephone through Ticketmaster.