Dodgers could lose thousands of season-tickets accounts this season

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The Dodgers could lose thousands of season-ticket accounts this year, even after back-to-back appearances in the National League championship series.

The Dodgers sold 23,900 season tickets last year, club president Dennis Mannion said today. They have sold 20,700 so far this year, he said, with customers facing a Friday renewal deadline.

‘My concern is the number of unpaid accounts that haven’t canceled,’ Mannion said at baseball’s quarterly owners’ meetings in Phoenix.

He noted that fans are holding onto their money as long as possible, given the tenuous economy. He cannot yet say how many fans are giving up their seats, because of the economy or otherwise.

The Dodgers have yet to sign a major free agent this winter -- and they let Orlando Hudson and Randy Wolf go without offering them salary arbitration -- but Mannion said the Dodgers have not been flooded with complaints about the team’s offseason inactivity.

‘I can honestly tell you we’re not seeing any density of phone calls about the composition of the team,’ he said. ‘We’ve got largely the same ballclub we had coming back.

‘It’s the economy. We have a very interesting baseball team. We have plenty of star power. We have star power on the rise.’

Mannion also said the Dodgers would impose a premium on single-game ticket prices for 28 popular games, including those against the Angels and New York Yankees. The Dodgers have frozen prices on season tickets but have yet to announce prices for single-game tickets.

-- Bill Shaikin in Phoenix