The point about competition is a really interesting one I hadn't considered. Even if it doesn't result in the Pirates spending more on free agents, might they be quicker to call up big name prospects when the big league club slumps so it could boost viewership as they fall out of competition?
--Diamond managed the seemingly impossible achievement of making MLB look like the good guys.
--The Pirates chose a very bad time to completely blow off four straight seasons. Moving out of the traditional, guaranteed-cable-money model at a time when you've been a complete clown show for four years is inevitably going to limit their options, and finally looking like a major league team for a few weeks lately isn't going to change that.
The idea of jumping into a network with a real major league franchise like the Penguins in the hope that fans will buy monthly packages to see the Pens and the Pirates can ride along isn't a good one. The many, many streaming services out there are finding that out. Your typical streaming service has one good series or movie and hundreds of pieces of crap. I'm sure lots of people do what my wife and I do, which is use the free trial to watch the one good show, or subscribe for one month, and then cancel. Long term, it won't work unless the Pirates have a product people want to see. Their owner has zero history of any commitment to producing such a product and the fans know it. And the current GM has made things worse.
Which why, as was covered in both pieces, the silver lining here (or an unintended consequence, however you want to look at it) is that it can be a boon to competition.
If your revenue is directly tied to people caring about your product, that's great! If teams are forced to get people to watch instead of falling back on the cable bundle and guaranteed deals, that would (one would think) force teams to actually try.
I'm not sure if the timing has much to do with anything, given I'm not sure what other options would have been available if they had just been good. The Padres have been good--or at least better than the Pirates--and I don't think they had a ton of options.
I think your point on streaming services is a good one, and as I wrote, one that the league and teams must be cognizant of. Right now, my brother and I are in the middle of trying to game out what is our cheapest option streaming wise, as Disney+ prices are skyrocketing and it's actually cheaper to go month-to-month with the Hulu/Disney+ bundle, both services we were paying yearly for.
That doesn't make a ton of sense, really. You want to get viewers to commit, so you can bank on the revenue. Whatever that takes is what they have to figure out, but I think you're right. Month-to-month isn't going to be the answer.
Yep. Ideally, these changes would undermine the existing system, where deadbeat owners like Boba Nutt can rake in the cable, central broadcast and internet money, and putting fans in the seats becomes increasingly unimportant. Hence, no motivation to field a good team.
It's encouraging that MLB seems to want to move to a system where it's all centralized, which of course is what they should have had starting over half a century ago. How they get the Yankees and Dodgers into it, I don't know. But if you need to sell individual subscriptions to the Pirates and Royals, you can't afford to have them be Cherington-style clown shows.
Agree with your first paragraph, with "Ideally" being the driver.
It was obvious that BC knew enough about the game to attempt to make tanking look like a competitive exercise. MLB and the City of Pittsburgh deserve better. The Pirates now have enough talent in place to be competitive - how well the franchise continues to develop the product will determine whether this will last or whether it is simply another blip on the screen of historical futility. 1979 was 44 years ago
I am not sure that it will be a boon to competition, though it will prevent teams from deliberately tanking for 4 straight years. Teams will make more of an effort to be competitive, but the highest revenue teams will accrue a greater advantage than they have currently. I say this based upon some knowledge of the economics of another sport, very similar to baseball in its global economic structure: futbal (soccer in the U.S.).
Here in South America, there are incorporated league entities (AFA, for example), but these do not have much power other than to set up the tournaments and schedules, employee and assign the referees, and so forth. Every club (and they are clubs, an important distinction from team) is pretty much on its own for how to generate revenue. Media revenues are not great for most teams except for 3 or 4 biggest clubs in Brazil and the big 2 in Argentina: Boca and River.
What most teams rely on is "socios" or membership dues. Members of the clubs have all sorts of privileges: in some cases passwords for livestreams of games, first purchasing rights on tickets (for some clubs only members can buy tickets to the live games), discounts on team merchandise, enrollment for their children in the club's junior leagues and instructional and coaching workshops, and access to all other club facilities, which can include restaraunts, outdoor parks, indoor swimming pools, gymnasiums and so forth. Being a member of a good athletic club is really worth it, IMO, not just to see the games, but for all the other perks: especially if you want your kids to play sports.
To my mind, this is how baseball and the Pirates should proceed. Become clubs, with little league programs, coaching and instructional sessions for kids, a nice restaurant or barbecue area (open year-round) at the stadium, a public gymnasium, pool, an exercise area, maybe even a park. This would force these owners to be actual entrepreneurs rather than beneficiaries of a monopoly. The other great advantage is that it also creates a fiercely loyal fanbase who have a vested interest in the teams: not just the MLB team but all the teams, including the little league teams. Here in South America, the members of a club feel like we are a community (and we are). We see each other at games at the pool and so forth. The kids play together and are coached together. It really is nice. I have to say.
Appreciate all the hard work put into this article Ethan.
MLB screwed up long ago allowing individual organizations to negotiate their own deals, or in some cases, own their own networks. Now they are paying the price trying to unravel the mess they helped create.
Hopefully the best thing to come out of all this is a change in policy on “tanking.” If teams actually have a big enough financial incentive to put out a competitive product each season, us fans won’t have to endure a 2021 or 2022 season on a semi-regular occurrence.
Revenue uncertainty will be the latest excuse for Nutting refusing to raise the payroll to be competitive with even the Brewers and Reds. Forget about the Cubs and Cardinals.
The point about competition is a really interesting one I hadn't considered. Even if it doesn't result in the Pirates spending more on free agents, might they be quicker to call up big name prospects when the big league club slumps so it could boost viewership as they fall out of competition?
Amazing stuff.
Two interesting points come across:
--Diamond managed the seemingly impossible achievement of making MLB look like the good guys.
--The Pirates chose a very bad time to completely blow off four straight seasons. Moving out of the traditional, guaranteed-cable-money model at a time when you've been a complete clown show for four years is inevitably going to limit their options, and finally looking like a major league team for a few weeks lately isn't going to change that.
The idea of jumping into a network with a real major league franchise like the Penguins in the hope that fans will buy monthly packages to see the Pens and the Pirates can ride along isn't a good one. The many, many streaming services out there are finding that out. Your typical streaming service has one good series or movie and hundreds of pieces of crap. I'm sure lots of people do what my wife and I do, which is use the free trial to watch the one good show, or subscribe for one month, and then cancel. Long term, it won't work unless the Pirates have a product people want to see. Their owner has zero history of any commitment to producing such a product and the fans know it. And the current GM has made things worse.
Which why, as was covered in both pieces, the silver lining here (or an unintended consequence, however you want to look at it) is that it can be a boon to competition.
If your revenue is directly tied to people caring about your product, that's great! If teams are forced to get people to watch instead of falling back on the cable bundle and guaranteed deals, that would (one would think) force teams to actually try.
I'm not sure if the timing has much to do with anything, given I'm not sure what other options would have been available if they had just been good. The Padres have been good--or at least better than the Pirates--and I don't think they had a ton of options.
I think your point on streaming services is a good one, and as I wrote, one that the league and teams must be cognizant of. Right now, my brother and I are in the middle of trying to game out what is our cheapest option streaming wise, as Disney+ prices are skyrocketing and it's actually cheaper to go month-to-month with the Hulu/Disney+ bundle, both services we were paying yearly for.
That doesn't make a ton of sense, really. You want to get viewers to commit, so you can bank on the revenue. Whatever that takes is what they have to figure out, but I think you're right. Month-to-month isn't going to be the answer.
Yep. Ideally, these changes would undermine the existing system, where deadbeat owners like Boba Nutt can rake in the cable, central broadcast and internet money, and putting fans in the seats becomes increasingly unimportant. Hence, no motivation to field a good team.
It's encouraging that MLB seems to want to move to a system where it's all centralized, which of course is what they should have had starting over half a century ago. How they get the Yankees and Dodgers into it, I don't know. But if you need to sell individual subscriptions to the Pirates and Royals, you can't afford to have them be Cherington-style clown shows.
Agree with your first paragraph, with "Ideally" being the driver.
It was obvious that BC knew enough about the game to attempt to make tanking look like a competitive exercise. MLB and the City of Pittsburgh deserve better. The Pirates now have enough talent in place to be competitive - how well the franchise continues to develop the product will determine whether this will last or whether it is simply another blip on the screen of historical futility. 1979 was 44 years ago
I am not sure that it will be a boon to competition, though it will prevent teams from deliberately tanking for 4 straight years. Teams will make more of an effort to be competitive, but the highest revenue teams will accrue a greater advantage than they have currently. I say this based upon some knowledge of the economics of another sport, very similar to baseball in its global economic structure: futbal (soccer in the U.S.).
Here in South America, there are incorporated league entities (AFA, for example), but these do not have much power other than to set up the tournaments and schedules, employee and assign the referees, and so forth. Every club (and they are clubs, an important distinction from team) is pretty much on its own for how to generate revenue. Media revenues are not great for most teams except for 3 or 4 biggest clubs in Brazil and the big 2 in Argentina: Boca and River.
What most teams rely on is "socios" or membership dues. Members of the clubs have all sorts of privileges: in some cases passwords for livestreams of games, first purchasing rights on tickets (for some clubs only members can buy tickets to the live games), discounts on team merchandise, enrollment for their children in the club's junior leagues and instructional and coaching workshops, and access to all other club facilities, which can include restaraunts, outdoor parks, indoor swimming pools, gymnasiums and so forth. Being a member of a good athletic club is really worth it, IMO, not just to see the games, but for all the other perks: especially if you want your kids to play sports.
To my mind, this is how baseball and the Pirates should proceed. Become clubs, with little league programs, coaching and instructional sessions for kids, a nice restaurant or barbecue area (open year-round) at the stadium, a public gymnasium, pool, an exercise area, maybe even a park. This would force these owners to be actual entrepreneurs rather than beneficiaries of a monopoly. The other great advantage is that it also creates a fiercely loyal fanbase who have a vested interest in the teams: not just the MLB team but all the teams, including the little league teams. Here in South America, the members of a club feel like we are a community (and we are). We see each other at games at the pool and so forth. The kids play together and are coached together. It really is nice. I have to say.
Appreciate all the hard work put into this article Ethan.
MLB screwed up long ago allowing individual organizations to negotiate their own deals, or in some cases, own their own networks. Now they are paying the price trying to unravel the mess they helped create.
Hopefully the best thing to come out of all this is a change in policy on “tanking.” If teams actually have a big enough financial incentive to put out a competitive product each season, us fans won’t have to endure a 2021 or 2022 season on a semi-regular occurrence.
We can only hope.
Excellent detailed review.
I will translate for Pirate fans.
Revenue uncertainty will be the latest excuse for Nutting refusing to raise the payroll to be competitive with even the Brewers and Reds. Forget about the Cubs and Cardinals.