What is one thing synonymous with a day spent at a baseball park? A hot dog. The Phillies had seemingly cracked the code on making that perfect partnership happen while maximizing its value for fans with their “Dollar Dog” night, where every hot dog sold was – you guessed it – a dollar.
But those days are long gone, as Philly has placed it’s fans in the dog house for their unruliness during games detracting from the positive experience of going to Citizens Bank Park, and thus the dollar dog promotion has been euthanized, 27 years after the tradition started.
The problem it seems is some fans would load up on hot dogs and then throw them onto the field. Fans would clog up the concourse either in line waiting for their dogs or trying to maneuver through the crowd holding too many, without spilling a drop of their beer or toppings either. There were food fights, too, which led to ejections.
“It wasn’t just the throwing,” John Weber, senior vice president, Phillies ticket operations and projects, said to ESPN. “It’s the concourse, the crowds of everybody being at the same X amount of stands. But obviously, you know, the throwing was a little bit of a tipping point.”
The deal night started as a promotion to try to pack the stadium, but they don’t really need to do that anymore, as the Phillies recent success is enough to bring fans out to show their support.
As a solution to the devastating loss of dollar dogs, the Phillies will run a BOGO promotion on April 2 and April 16, where two hotdogs will be $5. Or, if the loss of the dollar dog has soured your loyalty to the Phillies, there are several other teams that you can convert to, including in-state Pittsburgh Pirates.
