Nobody thought it would be easy, selling the Jazz during the offseason.

Not only did the team endure a disappointing first-round exit from the NBA playoffs last season just about the time the economy was finishing its debilitating nose dive, but it seemed as if every fan from Smithfield to Santaquin was infuriated with forward Carlos Boozer -- one of the team's best players and, in the past, at least, one of the faces of franchise.

Who's gonna buy that?

Lots of people, it turns out.

The Jazz say ticket sales for the upcoming season are down only slightly -- a couple of percentage points, perhaps -- something that feels like a solid victory considering the bleak environment.

And while that came as something of a pleasant surprise to senior vice president of sales and marketing Jim Olson, so did the reaction to all of the melodramatic Boozer news that dominated the headlines over the summer.

"We thought there probably would be a little more ups and downs as things would come out" in the news media, Olson said. "And it never happened. I think that just speaks to our fans. They're very educated fans who love their basketball team and want to support their basketball team regardless of one player or another. We're very fortunate that way."

Of course, the Jazz took care to leave Boozer out of their preseason advertising campaigns, uncertain whether he would actually still be playing for the team by the time the season

Advertisement
opened.

At the same time, the team embarked on some new ticket-selling approaches, designed to entice both the season-ticket holder and the casual fan.

The "You Pick 'Em" plan, for instance, again allows fans to design their own ticket packages while purchasing as few as five games -- at a discount to single-game prices -- and the new "Ticket Buddy" system helps match fans who want to split season tickets rather than buy the whole season.

"We did find that some of our season-ticket holders were wanting to keep their season tickets and didn't want to give them up, but were in a position that they needed to find a partner," Olson said. "We just decided to be a middle-man for that process."

Olson said the Jazz also are trying to find more ways to interact with their fans through social media networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter -- the team's Web site is awash in links to blogs, text-message updates and video highlights -- and with "touch points" such as luncheons at which a coach or team executive speaks.

Taken together, it seems to have worked.

"I'd like to think we're creative every year," Olson said. "But maybe it was a little more this year. ... All things considered, we're very pleased with where we are going into the season."

mcl@sltrib.com