Congratulations to the Nationals!

[TonySoprano]

12 hours ago, ReclaimTheCrown said:

To your first point, we would still have a big TV deal, because everyone does now. But sure, because we’re taking a bunch of their money, yea we make more. Still, you’re going with the rising tide raises all ships argument?

On attendance, of course it’s a SWAG, but respectfully, don’t be obtuse dude. Let me ask you directly, again: do you not think a team moving 40 miles down the road, to a bigger metropolis from which we have traditionally pulled significant attendance, did not have a substantial impact on O’s attendance? Question is simple. I never, ever, ever said our atrocious W/L record didn’t have a huge role, but please. Use common sense.

Finally, on your last point, I do.... 13 times a year, from Shaw in DC.

MASN was started with $75 million from MLB as part of the agreement with Angelos.

Obtuse?  I already said I couldn't put a number to it and admit it, you can't either.  You call it substantial. What % of fans came up from DC back in 2003?   You, know, that's the year I twice put to you directly to explain.  2003 was the 6th straight year of declining attendance.   1.2 MILLION were gone, and one could assume that a part of that was DC area fans gone before there was a team called the Nationals.   Do you want to say the number of those DC fans gone before 2005 was significant?   How many Baltimore fans decided instead to put their money into a Ravens team with a new stadium?  Significant?

Congrats on your loyalty.  I guess you consider yourself representative of a much larger group that would still be making that commute to see a 50-win team.   That's the real point isn't it?  Whatever impact the Nats had initially, they wouldn't be having today.   You've already conceded the bigger issue is the W/L record.  The 2015-18 Orioles spent more than at any time in team history.  So today, where exactly is this impact from the Nats?  If you still want to make the Nats the bogeyman, well, we'll disagree.

[Ohfan67]

Camden Yards, Cal Ripken, and winning teams associated with one of and sometimes the biggest payroll in baseball were unique to the ‘90s Orioles. The stadium effect was huge. There are posts In This and similar threads about Nats “fans” at their stadium not paying attention to the game, etc, but people seem to have forgotten the big blocks of corporate season tickets at Camden yards and jokes in the newspaper about non baseball fans filling the stadium. Attending a game at Camden yards was a thing. Comparing today’s attendance to the Ripken era Camden Yards experience is definitely comparing apples and oranges.The late 90s were also peak attendance for many teams as the new stadium boom exploded.  3,000,000 a year was peak oil for the Orioles with or without the Nats. 

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, TonySoprano said:

I already said I couldn't put a number to it and admit it, you can't either.  You call it substantial. What % of fans came up from DC back in 2003?   You, know, that's the year I twice put to you directly to explain.  2003 was the 6th straight year of declining attendance.   1.2 MILLION were gone, and one could assume that a part of that was DC area fans gone before there was a team called the nationals

While he was opposing moving a team to DC, Angelos once had a study commissioned that said 25% of attendance came from the DC metro area.   I think that’s about as reasonable a guess as any.    
 

I think it’s pretty clear that the O’s drastically hurt their own attendance by being terrible for 17 of the last 22 years.     I think it’s equally clear that the Nats’ move to DC has boxed the O’s in so that they’ll never fully recover their former fanbase, even if the O’s have a stretch where they are a very good team for a sustained period of time.    But, I do think they have enough of a fanbase to do reasonably well economically and put together a winning team.   Hopefully we’ll find out within a few years.    

[TonySoprano]

3 hours ago, Frobby said:

While he was opposing moving a team to DC, Angelos once had a study commissioned that said 25% of attendance came from the DC metro area.   I think that’s about as reasonable a guess as any.    
 

I think it’s pretty clear that the O’s drastically hurt their own attendance by being terrible for 17 of the last 22 years.     I think it’s equally clear that the Nats’ move to DC has boxed the O’s in so that they’ll never fully recover their former fanbase fully, even if the O’s have a stretch where they are a very good team for a sustained period of time.    But, I do think they have enough of a fanbase to do reasonably well economically and put together a winning team.   Hopefully we’ll find out within a few years.    

Maybe when Ripken was having numbers tumble down on the warehouse.  Do you think that number was 25% in 2004?  I don't because I am assuming the local fan base was much more loyal than what people here called the "wine and cheese" crowd.   My assumption is DC bailed before Baltimore.  If I'm wrong, and I could be, then what does that say about Baltimore as a market?

In 2005, over 5.3M tickets were sold in those 2 markets or 43% more than in the best year ever in Camden Yards.  Over 5M tickets were sold in 2014.   There is a very large percentage of the gate in DC that never bought tickets for the Orioles.

Remind me, what percentage of revenues come from the gate?

[Frobby]

4 minutes ago, TonySoprano said:

Maybe when Ripken was having numbers tumble down on the warehouse.  Do you think that number was 25% in 2004?  I don't because I am assuming the local fan base was much more loyal than what people here called the "wine and cheese" crowd.   My assumption is DC bailed before Baltimore.  If I'm wrong, and I could be, then what does that say about Baltimore as a market?

I think it is reasonable to assume that the number of fans who abandoned the O’s in the ‘99-‘03 period included a disproportionate number of fans from the DC area and other faraway places.   But, in the end, it’s an assumption.   
 

Its somewhat interesting to note that the O’s got no immediate bump to attendance when the Senators moved away in 1972.    

[Redskins Rick]

14 minutes ago, TonySoprano said:

Maybe when Ripken was having numbers tumble down on the warehouse.  Do you think that number was 25% in 2004?  I don't because I am assuming the local fan base was much more loyal than what people here called the "wine and cheese" crowd.   My assumption is DC bailed before Baltimore.  If I'm wrong, and I could be, then what does that say about Baltimore as a market?
 

Remind me, what percentage of revenues come from the gate?

I thought it was close to 30% of the ticket sales was thrown into the pot and then allotted to the teams.

[Redskins Rick]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I think it is reasonable to assume that the number of fans who abandoned the O’s in the ‘99-‘03 period included a disproportionate number of fans from the DC area and other faraway places.   But, in the end, it’s an assumption.   
 

Its somewhat interesting to note that the O’s got no immediate bump to attendance when the Senators moved away in 1972.    

I guess I was in that block of fans who abandoned the team., left around the time frame of Davey and Mussina leaving. I still watched on TV and followed online and in the news. I refused to spend money on ticket sales, when Peter was clearly clueless on running the team, I didnt come back until Andy was brought in and started bailing water out of the sinking ship.

 

[TonySoprano]

7 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I think it is reasonable to assume that the number of fans who abandoned the O’s in the ‘99-‘03 period included a disproportionate number of fans from the DC area and other faraway places.   But, in the end, it’s an assumption.   
 

Its somewhat interesting to note that the O’s got no immediate bump to attendance when the Senators moved away in 1972.    

That's my assumption as well, but I have nothing to back it up.  As I mentioned before, the Senators were gone, George Allen had the Redskins in the Super Bowl.  In DC, we adapted.   When the Colts loaded up the Mayflower trucks, their fanbase largely did not switch to the Redskins.  Baltimore was isolated which is why EBW wanted to get DC$ by moving the team downtown to Camden Yards.

[Redskins Rick]

55 minutes ago, TonySoprano said:

That's my assumption as well, but I have nothing to back it up.  As I mentioned before, the Senators were gone, George Allen had the Redskins in the Super Bowl.  In DC, we adapted.   When the Colts loaded up the Mayflower trucks, their fanbase largely did not switch to the Redskins.  Baltimore was isolated which is why EBW wanted to get DC$ by moving the team downtown to Camden Yards.

EBW might have wanted the team in DC. There was lots of RUMINT surrounding that, most of it helped get OPACY built.

But, I think I remember reading, that EBW never publically said he wanted to move the team.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

While he was opposing moving a team to DC, Angelos once had a study commissioned that said 25% of attendance came from the DC metro area.   I think that’s about as reasonable a guess as any.    

I assume any study commissioned by an organization that has a huge stake in the outcome will exaggerate its findings.

It's like the studies that always show a new stadium will bring $billions of new business to the city, while ignoring how difficult it is to find those revenues after the fact, and failing to point out that the stadium will be hugely profitable for the owner who commissioned the study.

Maybe 25% is right, it seems plausible.  But I'd guess it's more like 15% because the Orioles had every incentive to exaggerate.

[Frobby]

14 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I assume any study commissioned by an organization that has a huge stake in the outcome will exaggerate its findings.

It's like the studies that always show a new stadium will bring $billions of new business to the city, while ignoring how difficult it is to find those revenues after the fact, and failing to point out that the stadium will be hugely profitable for the owner who commissioned the study.

Maybe 25% is right, it seems plausible.  But I'd guess it's more like 15% because the Orioles had every incentive to exaggerate.

I agree with the gist of your comment.    At a minimum, there’s no reason to think 25% was an underestimate, under the circumstances.    

[Redskins Rick]

13 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I assume any study commissioned by an organization that has a huge stake in the outcome will exaggerate its findings.

It's like the studies that always show a new stadium will bring $billions of new business to the city, while ignoring how difficult it is to find those revenues after the fact, and failing to point out that the stadium will be hugely profitable for the owner who commissioned the study.

Maybe 25% is right, it seems plausible.  But I'd guess it's more like 15% because the Orioles had every incentive to exaggerate.

Do they consider Beltsville and Laurel, DC Metro area?

[TonySoprano]

33 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I agree with the gist of your comment.    At a minimum, there’s no reason to think 25% was an underestimate, under the circumstances.    

I agree with Drungo's skepticism about Team Angelos' number particularly in the middle of a protracted negotiation/ fight with MLB to get the best deal possible.   The MASN situation tells us that.

For grins and giggles, if there were 25% in 1997, that means around 900,000 sold to the DC market.  Would anybody like to throw out a dartboard number as to what it was in 2003?  1.2M fans were gone.  Is 500K out of that 1.2M number from DC an overreach?  That SWAG cuts the remaining DC number to 400K pre-Nats.  The Nats move cut that already drastically slashed number down further.    1.3.M sold in 2019.  What would that be with no Nats?  1.5M?

Pick your own set of numbers.  There's no way to know for sure, as I have insisted previously, it's all guesswork.  In the past 5 years, the Orioles lost way more than that 25%.   

My argument is the days of 3M were long gone years before the Nats arrived.  By far, the W/L record is the biggest factor.  By. Far.  
 

[Frobby]

16 minutes ago, TonySoprano said:

I agree with Drungo's skepticism about Team Angelos' number particularly in the middle of a protracted negotiation/ fight with MLB to get the best deal possible.   The MASN situation tells us that.

For grins and giggles, if there were 25% in 1997, that means around 900,000 sold to the DC market.  Would anybody like to throw out a dartboard number as to what it was in 2003?  1.2M fans were gone.  Is 500K out of that 1.2M number from DC an overreach?  That SWAG cuts the remaining DC number to 400K pre-Nats.  The Nats move cut that already drastically slashed number down further.    1.3.M sold in 2019.  What would that be with no Nats?  1.5M?

Pick your own set of numbers.  There's no way to know for sure, as I have insisted previously, it's all guesswork.  In the past 5 years, the Orioles lost way more than that 25%.   

My argument is the days of 3M were long gone years before the Nats arrived.  By far, the W/L record is the biggest factor.  By. Far.  
 

But, could they ever get back to 3 mm again?   I don’t know.    I was pretty surprised we didn’t do better in 2014-16.    

[Redskins Rick]

16 minutes ago, TonySoprano said:

I agree with Drungo's skepticism about Team Angelos' number particularly in the middle of a protracted negotiation/ fight with MLB to get the best deal possible.   The MASN situation tells us that.

For grins and giggles, if there were 25% in 1997, that means around 900,000 sold to the DC market.  Would anybody like to throw out a dartboard number as to what it was in 2003?  1.2M fans were gone.  Is 500K out of that 1.2M number from DC an overreach?  That SWAG cuts the remaining DC number to 400K pre-Nats.  The Nats move cut that already drastically slashed number down further.    1.3.M sold in 2019.  What would that be with no Nats?  1.5M?

Pick your own set of numbers.  There's no way to know for sure, as I have insisted previously, it's all guesswork.  In the past 5 years, the Orioles lost way more than that 25%.   

My argument is the days of 3M were long gone years before the Nats arrived.  By far, the W/L record is the biggest factor.  By. Far.  
 

1. Attendance for the most part is down all across MLB.

2. Even playoff teams have seen a decline in ticket sales. So I agree that W/L is a factor in the equation, its not the only factor.

Quote

Total attendance across 2,429 major league games during the regular season dropped by about 1 million fans this season to about 68.5 million, about 14 percent lower than a high of 79.5 million tickets sold in 2007. The drop for 2019 followed a 2018 season in which total attendance dipped below 70 million for the first time since 2003.

No Baseball isnt dying tomorrow.

But, Baseball has issues that need to be address if they want to survive another 100+ years.