THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Well, isn’t money a pretty good measure of how much the fans are getting out of it?  Advertisers only play to get the eyes and ears of fans.  Corporations only pay to get the eyes and ears of fans.  If the product gets worse, that means fewer fans, and less money.

Of course, it could be that MLB was undergouging its customers previously.  By not trying to squeeze in an extra commercial between innings, they were not making as much money as they could, thus giving the fans a free gift.  But if the extra commercial was pissing off the fans too much, ratings would drop to the point where the extra commercial would no longer be profitable.

What I’m saying is: economically speaking, there should be no difference between what’s best for the profit-makers and what’s best of the fans—you only make money by pleasing your customers. 

That argument doesn’t apply to squeezing money out of governments, of course.  And you could argue, perhaps, that MLB’s strategy seems to be pleasing fans in the short run but not the long run.

Talk to U2 fans.

Sorry, I don’t get it.

Tom,

I do believe you have to look at financial success in determining the state of the game. The teams are businesses first and foremost, and only rarely pretend to be anything else (usually when Congress calls).

But there’s another dynamic in play that should be discussed, way before game-quality. To paraphrase Leonard Koppett, spectator sports are successful as businesses because fans believe the results of the games matter. I would say there is a pretty strong correlation between this perceived significance and how much money the sport makes.

In fact, I would also guess that game quality is pretty far down the list, when it comes to drawing fans to your sport. Gambling, fantasy games, and media accessibility are all likely ahead in that pecking order.

Compare this year’s Stanley Cup finals to last year’s World Series. For those of us that are interested in both, is there any doubt which was more enjoyable to watch? And yet, the NHL could never pull higher ratings than MLB, regardless of which teams were playing or how exciting the games were. The outcome simply doesn’t matter to many Americans.

I don’t think Titanic is a better movie than Shawshank Redemption.  I don’t think American Idol is the best show on TV.  I don’t think putting the Millionaire show on TV 3 times a week was a smart move long-term.

I don’t think fans care about how much *other* people contribute, be it for missing out on Pride (U2), or the Cup playoffs. 

The core fan, not the fairweather fans, is what determines the success.  Does it really matter (to us as baseball fans) that MLB creates an entertainment package that brings my wife into the park, even though she really doesn’t care about the game?  Blaring music, firing t-shirt cannons, dancing, etc.... big deal.  If that’s success, then that’s the same as the core U2 fans (and half of the groups out there) thinking they sold out to become mainstream.

I just picked up on The Wire this year, and have been catching up on past seasons.  (It is showing only on BET… imagine that… a fantastic show is showing only on black television… no other network would touch it, likely because it’s too black or too street.) Just because white middle america is not into the show doesn’t make it less of a success.  And just because it takes an artist to become dead to become popular, doesn’t mean he’s less successful when he’s alive.

As a fan, the less I know about how much revenues a league, a band, or a movie generates, the better.

A 4-hour Sox/Yanks game is about as close as it gets to baseball heaven for me.  Then again I’m a Yankee fan, and can understand if fans of the other 28 teams feel differently.

Really, the only games that matter to me are Yankee games.  I don’t watch much TV at all, so if there’s another game on I’ll have it on, but I’m not really intently watching it.

I’d estimate that I spend at least 10 times as much time reading blogs like yours than watching non-Yankee games (but maybe because I’m rarely home).

Like you said, I don’t care about any of the crap at stadiums that is turning MLB into the NBA.  I care about a tight game where I actually care about the outcome.  This can only happen in a Yankee game when there’s something on the line.  The times that I’ve been excited about a non-playoff game I can count on one finger - when I had 2nd row seats behind the dugout for Yanks/Sox.

I get more pleasure from reading about BABIP than I do from watching the Tigers play - maybe that’s sad, but it’s me.

I realize everything I’ve said was off-topic, but I’m actually having a little trouble following your argument…

My argument?  Let me quote Johnny Carson, on hosting the Oscars:

We’ve got a great show for you people tonight.  It’ll be a fantastic 2-hour show… spread over 4 hours.

The TV networks consider this a success, because they’ve managed to create so much dead and wasted time, by stretching out a show that should last 2 hours, into a 4 hour extravaganza, and still keeping an audience.  American Idol does the same thing with its “results show”.

Pretty soon, the Mets network will create a two-hour show to announce who the new non-interim manager of the team is.  “Come back after the commercial break as we highlight the seven candidates we interviewed for the job, all culminating, 110 minutes from now, on who we actually hired.”

See where I’m going here?  Instead of selling the game of baseball, MLB is selling the entertainment of baseball.

Just because they happen to get more people (those passively-interested in baseball, unlike us) doesn’t mean it’s a “success”.  Well, for them it is, and for me it’s not.

What’s happening, I think, is that MLB is raising the price of their product.  Instead of having to watch three hours worth of commercials, you now have to sit through four. 

And it’s their product, so I guess they can charge whatever they want.  If it turns out that people like Tangotiger and I get disgusted, ratings will drop, MLB will see that they’d make more money going back to three hours, and changes will happen.

We all have to be careful, too, to make sure that we understand that our preferences aren’t everyone’s.  I hate the “entertainment” stuff at the ball park—dot races, loud rock music, and so on.  But other people do like it, and I’m in the minority.  We may bitch and moan, but we shouldn’t be so selfish to think that our desires are more important than anyone else’s.