MASN refuses to pay for travel costs

[Orioles1954]

Regarding MASN and cable packages. I have FIOS in Columbia, Howard County. I have the lowest level package at $50/month and you get all the basic channels and get to pick 5 premium channels. I dumped MASN last year as one of my 5 and have zero interest in adding it this year. As others have said, if they don't care then why should I?

[Frobby]

33 minutes ago, Orioles1954 said:

Regarding MASN and cable packages. I have FIOS in Columbia, Howard County. I have the lowest level package at $50/month and you get all the basic channels and get to pick 5 premium channels. I dumped MASN last year as one of my 5 and have zero interest in adding it this year. As others have said, if they don't care then why should I?

I have no problem with anyone who would rather do something else besides watch a team that is likely to lose and isn’t doing anything significant to improve its short term chances of winning.  But I’m not wired that way.   I’ll watch and look for the nuggets that may have value in the future, and enjoy those wins that do come our way.  Admittedly, there will be more games I’ll skip or turn off than there would be during a competitive season.  

[Moose Milligan]

4 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I have no problem with anyone who would rather do something else besides watch a team that is likely to lose and isn’t doing anything significant to improve its short term chances of winning.  But I’m not wired that way.   I’ll watch and look for the nuggets that may have value in the future, and enjoy those wins that do come our way.  Admittedly, there will be more games I’ll skip or turn off than there would be during a competitive season.  

I agree.  I'm really just here for Mullins, Means, Mancini and the rookies.  

 

EDIT:  And Wells.  I figure he's a guy worth watching, too.

[osfan83]

I will continue to follow my 10 under rule, watch with regularity until they fall below 10 under .500. That could happen late April this year. 

[spiritof66]

49 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I have no problem with anyone who would rather do something else besides watch a team that is likely to lose and isn’t doing anything significant to improve its short term chances of winning.  But I’m not wired that way.   I’ll watch and look for the nuggets that may have value in the future, and enjoy those wins that do come our way.  Admittedly, there will be more games I’ll skip or turn off than there would be during a competitive season.  

Last year, I tuned into as many, or almost as many, games on mlb.tv as in preceding years. Some of that was Covid-related, I guess. But there were lots of games where I was gone by the fourth or fifth inning the game seemed over and I was gone, or was doing something else but came back to check the score once in a while. Sometimes, the game threads, and even ScOtt's dinner plans, were more interesting than the game itself and kept me around for a while. 

I knew when I first signed up for mlb.tv around 2009 or 2010 that I'd be watching a bad Orioles team. I didn't imagine that the situation would get so bad that I'd stop watching them when I had the time. That will change if and when the team gets better, but I worry about all the casual Oriole fans who have, justifiably, lost interest in team, and maybe in baseball. My hope is that a new owner who actually talks to the fans once in a while, has extensive financial resources, and spends real money to improve the team that the Orioles are fielding (as opposed to having a general manager who promises that ownership will do that some day) will rebuild the fan base as well as the team.

[Three Run Homer]

As bad as I expect the O's to be, I will still watch them regularly to start the season, especially once Rutschman is in the lineup.  In recent years I have been a much less faithful fan in the second half of the season, but I will definitely tune in to see Gray Rod and DL Hall's starts down the stretch if they get promoted.  

[DrungoHazewood]

22 hours ago, NCRaven said:

Just saw this.  So, all we need to do is get some dictator that poisons or beheads his political opponents to buy the Orioles and we'll be set.  You've actually given me another reason to not like Euro soccer.

You could just get into German soccer.  The Germans have the 50+1 rule, where the club, basically the sum of all the supporters or season ticket holders or however they pay to support the local sports club (no matter if they've transformed over a century-plus into a multi-multi-million dollar soccer enterprise), have to have 50% plus one of the votes on the board.  You will sometimes have a rich guy come in and buy a controlling share of a team, but he can't have more than 50% minus one votes on the board.  So the locals always control the team.  Wouldn't it be lovely if the controlling interest in the Orioles was kind of like the Green Bay Packers, just the sum total of the season ticket holders?

Although there's a strange sort of exemption or looking-the-other-way for Bayern Munich, who seem to have more money than all the other German teams combined. And even with the other teams it's not unheard of for the rich guy to feud with the supporters on the board and the team devolves into chaos as they veto everything the rich guy wants.

The English Premier League is the one league that appears to have zero vetting process for owners besides do you have enough money to buy the team.  Although I'm not that familiar with the ownership situations in France, Belgium, Italy, etc.

[DrungoHazewood]

19 hours ago, Pushmonkey said:

Who’s going to buy it??? It’s great for them to sell it but who wants this dumpster fire?

Angelos bought the team for $174M in 1993.  Forbes now values the team at 1.375B after almost 30 years of mostly being horribly mismanaged, with zero championships and only a handful of playoff appearances.

Major League franchises are one of the few investments that have been almost guaranteed to appreciate in value even if they're run by a group of chimpanzees on LSD. Who wouldn't want to buy that?  This is probably the 26th-most successful franchise of the past three decades and it still appreciated in value faster than stocks.  And on top of that you get to be one of 30 MLB owners in the world.

[camdencrush]

7 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

You could just get into German soccer.  The Germans have the 50+1 rule, where the club, basically the sum of all the supporters or season ticket holders or however they pay to support the local sports club (no matter if they've transformed over a century-plus into a multi-multi-million dollar soccer enterprise), have to have 50% plus one of the votes on the board.  You will sometimes have a rich guy come in and buy a controlling share of a team, but he can't have more than 50% minus one votes on the board.  So the locals always control the team.  Wouldn't it be lovely if the controlling interest in the Orioles was kind of like the Green Bay Packers, just the sum total of the season ticket holders?

Although there's a strange sort of exemption or looking-the-other-way for Bayern Munich, who seem to have more money than all the other German teams combined. And even with the other teams it's not unheard of for the rich guy to feud with the supporters on the board and the team devolves into chaos as they veto everything the rich guy wants.

The English Premier League is the one league that appears to have zero vetting process for owners besides do you have enough money to buy the team.  Although I'm not that familiar with the ownership situations in France, Belgium, Italy, etc.

I don't think your last statement is true. There is a long vetting process in England, many owners have dropped out or been removed due to issues raised by supporters/government.  It's just not for the reasons we'd all expect (human rights abuses) and tends to be just bad tweets, etc.  I know there was a lot of backlash to teams essentially being bought by countries (Newcastle, Man City).

Also Bayern still adheres to the 50+1 rule.  They just have more money because they have amazing sponsorships and have been historically been THE team that Germans want to play for (or even players playing in the German league).  I know they adhere to it because that's the reason why they didn't break off into the Super League drama from last year.

[Pushmonkey]

9 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Angelos bought the team for $174M in 1993.  Forbes now values the team at 1.375B after almost 30 years of mostly being horribly mismanaged, with zero championships and only a handful of playoff appearances.

Major League franchises are one of the few investments that have been almost guaranteed to appreciate in value even if they're run by a group of chimpanzees on LSD. Who wouldn't want to buy that?  This is probably the 26th-most successful franchise of the past three decades and it still appreciated in value faster than stocks.  And on top of that you get to be one of 30 MLB owners in the world.

Sorry let me be clearer.  What wealthy business person in the Baltimore area buy it?

[DrungoHazewood]

4 minutes ago, camdencrush said:

I don't think your last statement is true. There is a long vetting process in England, many owners have dropped out or been removed due to issues raised by supporters/government.  It's just not for the reasons we'd all expect (human rights abuses) and tends to be just bad tweets, etc.  I know there was a lot of backlash to teams essentially being bought by countries (Newcastle, Man City).

I'd like to know about how this long vetting process seamlessly approved Newcastle being bought, more-or-less, by the Saudi royal family.  Like six months ago.  And Putin's buddy Abramovich was/is Chelsea's owner despite clear and obvious connections to a repressive tyrant, and his money came from shady dealings after the breakup of the Soviet Union.  I don't think either of these would have gotten to step one in the MLB approval process.  People like Mark Cuban, who is squeaky clean by comparison, were basically told to just not try to buy the Cubs because he wasn't MLB ownership material.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 minutes ago, Pushmonkey said:

Sorry let me be clearer.  What wealthy business person in the Baltimore area buy it?

I have no idea, but I'm sure people will line up unless they see MLB falling off a cliff shortly.

[Roll Tide]

20 hours ago, Pushmonkey said:

Who’s going to buy it??? It’s great for them to sell it but who wants this dumpster fire?

A rich person that wants a toy…if the team was for sale there would definitely be interest

[camdencrush]

21 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I'd like to know about how this long vetting process seamlessly approved Newcastle being bought, more-or-less, by the Saudi royal family.  Like six months ago.  And Putin's buddy Abramovich was/is Chelsea's owner despite clear and obvious connections to a repressive tyrant, and his money came from shady dealings after the breakup of the Soviet Union.  I don't think either of these would have gotten to step one in the MLB approval process.  People like Mark Cuban, who is squeaky clean by comparison, were basically told to just not try to buy the Cubs because he wasn't MLB ownership material.

Yeah I just said above what it is.   They don't care about that sort of stuff (countries owning clubs, as I referenced in my post), but they care about if you wrote some mean tweets 10 years ago.  Trust me, tons of people have dropped out, I've seen these purchases go through about 20 potential buyers before.  When clubs start to fail and are taken over by the government, they have to go through a long vetting process to sell the club to a new owner and those new owners often have their own funds restricted. Just look at what is going on right now with Derby County and Reading.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

28 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I have no idea, but I'm sure people will line up unless they see MLB falling off a cliff shortly.

Unless television and radio broadcast revenue starts to decrease there shouldn't be any problem finding a buyer even if OPACY attendance never returns to what it was in the 90's. 

Long term though I see problems as the older generation fans start to die off and aren't replaced in greater numbers by younger baseball watching fans.