Lousy Ticket Sales Real Reason Why Slammers Fest Left Joliet

JOLIET, IL - Less than two weeks before the Joliet Slammers planned to sponsor a daylong music concert featuring bands Everclear, Bowling For Soup, Alien Ant Farm, Lights Over Bridgeport, the Slammers Fest concert at the city of Joliet-owned stadium was abruptly moved to the Tinley Park Exposition Center. The Slammers vice president of marketing and sales indicated the concert got moved "due to field concerns with staging."

The statement from the Slammers gave the community the impression that Joliet's multi-million dollar investment after the 2017 season on state-of-the-art FieldTurf was not up to par and apparently a major legal liability. A Joliet Patch article in April 2018 reported the city of had already spent in excess of $2 million on the FieldTurf and other stadium enhancements.

On Thursday, sources told Patch the real reason the music concert got moved to Tinley Park's Convention Center was because of dismal ticket sales; it had nothing to do with the condition of the FieldTurf or fears the FieldTurf would be torn up by beer-swilling Bowling For Soup fans.

Apparently the concert promoters had sold less than 700 tickets for the upcoming concert. To put that number in perspective, the Bowling For Soup's "1985" YouTube video has nearly 38 million views and Everclear's "Father of Mine" video has 8 million YouTube views.

And yet practically none of their fans around Joliet and the Chicago area wanted to travel to downtown Joliet on the second Saturday in August to pay money to watch both bands play.

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The Joliet Slammers had partnered with 350 Brewing Company in Tinley Park to sponsor Slammers Fest.

Now, the concert being moved to the Tinley Park Convention Center will be a free event.

To reiterate, there are no problems with hosting large concert venues on the FieldTurf at the Joliet Slammers ballpark. A source told Patch there was a large Hispanic festival on the field during the 2018 season and that large crowd caused no problems to the turf.