Last year, the Royals had a very generous ticket-exchange program for season ticket holders. This year, not so much. Three big changes have taken place which may cause an overall drop in attendance.

The first change involves what tickets can be exchanged. Last year, ANY ticket (either for a future game or a past game that you did not attend - aka "dead" ticket) could be exchanged for ANY future game. There were a couple of exceptions: 1. Dead tickets could only be exchanged for Monday-Thursday games. 2. Premium opponents like STL, NYY, and BOS were excluded. 3. To exchange for a Friday/Saturday game, you had to exchange Friday/Saturday tickets. This year, only dead tickets can be exchanged.

The second change involves the actual games that tickets can be exchanged for. The Royals have picked 16 games that season ticket holders can exchange for. You can see the list here, but they are mostly less-desirable opponents. On the plus side, they did throw in several weekend dates.

The final change involves the number of tickets that can be exchanged. You can only redeem 16 tickets per seat this year, versus unlimited last year.

I am disappointed with these changes, and I think the overall effect will be that I attend fewer games this year, since I frequently exchanged tickets last year for dates that were more convenient for me (I have 2 seats on a 41-game plan). Seeing how low the home attendance totals were for the first few games, I think I am not alone.

It will be interesting to see how these changes play out during the season.