Winning Isn’t Everything
By
Amanda
Posted at 7:29 pm
Everyone seems to have advice for the new Reds' ownership. And if there's one thing we pride ourselves on here at Red Hot Mama, it's following along with the crowd, so I guess it's about time I threw my $0.02 in as well. Everyone's got a potential trade, a managerial candidate, a new statistical philosophy that's sure to make the Reds win. I need one, too.
And winning is what's important, right? After all, a baseball team is a business. Because of Major League Baseball's exemption from monopoly laws, each team might not be the kind of streamlined business machine that is forged in the inferno of free enterprise, but inefficient as it may be, a baseball team's goal is to make money. It makes money by:
- Ticket sales and revenues associated with game attendance (concessions, souvenirs, etc.)
- Merchandise sales
- Endorsements, naming rights, and other advertisements
As you would expect for an entertainment-oriented business, a baseball team needs fans in order to satisfy its goal of making money. Without fans, no tickets are sold. Without fans, no one wears team ballcaps. Without fans, endorsements are irrelevant. And fielding a winning team is a sure-fire way to get fans.
We can demonstrate the truth of this statement in several different ways. Certainly we can look at a few of them now.
First of all, great post RHM! Here are my thoughts. Most real fans are unable to stay away from the ballpark. They have a devotion to the team and a love for its players that cannot be clinched. If I could, I would figure out a way to protest the Reds when they are making all around mistakes. (when Aurilia is in the starting lineup over Freel night in and night out). I am talking about getting every Reds fan together to form a revolution. Have not one person buy a ticket to the game and for those who have season tickets, they will not take their seats that day. It would be historic and would strike the team into one that will do anything to get the fans back. Hold a teams decisions for ransom. I have always said that baseball is a great business because it figures out a way to make money no matter how well the team is doing. It is able to pay A-Rod his millions. It still has us interested. But with the Reds, haven’t we been more depressed than interested lately? Its a distasteful reaction for people who are paying money to see bad decisions made that inevitably keeps their favorite team from winning.
HaHa, here we go!
[url=http://j.luckhaupt.home.comcast.net/PIT.gif]http://j.luckhaupt.home.comcast.net/PIT.gif[/url]
OK, RRB, I’ve been thinking about it, but I still don’t get it. Why did you link to the Pirates poster here?
Its the message that makes it all worth seeing. It is the reality. If the Reds don’t put up the right product, then people shouldn’t show.
The Reds aren’t selling poop-on-a-stick. They found that by removing the stick, they saved a couple million dollars.
And does RRB know your involvement in the posters, RHM? Just wonderin’.
RRB, did you know that I helped create those posters? I had a hand in pretty much all of them except the poop-on-a-stick ones. I didn’t really want my hands in that.
[url=http://www.red-hot-mama.com/comments.php?id=204_0_1_0_C]Posters for the Unmotivated[/url]
nah, didn’t know that! Great job on those then!
That makes the fact that you linked to one of them make more sense, then.
The entry with the posters has been viewed 10 times as many times as the second-most popular entry on Red Hot Mama (about 6900 versus 690 for [url=http://www.red-hot-mama.com/comments.php?id=134_0_1_0_C]this one[/url]). So it’s actually kind of refreshing to talk to someone who doesn’t just think of me as the girl who said Dunn’s biggest impact on the world was…well, you know.