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Applied to baseball, lowering payroll to account for the loss of RSN money just creates a vicious cycle. Teams need to get fans excited in the offseason so that they’ll buy tickets, Teams need to win games in the season to keep them buying tickets. The constant is “buying tickets,” and for a third of the league -- and maybe two-thirds soon enough -- buying subscriptions. We’re about to learn whether these teams understand that paying good baseball players is an investment in the business that returns revenue, rather than merely a cost. To make money, they’re going to have to earn it by being good and getting people to buy the product, just like the Giants had to in 1911 and the Cardinals had to in 1936 and the Braves had to in 1961. It’s the return of competition, of re-connecting winning to profits, of making these teams eat what they kill. It’s the end of baseball as programming, the return of baseball as product.
If we’re lucky, it will mean the death of “markets” and a return to “cities,” where what matters isn’t getting a cable distributor two states away to buy the rights to air FanDuel Whatever, but getting the family two blocks away to come to the yard on Sunday, and have enough fun to do it again next Sunday.
If we’re lucky, it will mean the death of “markets” and a return to “cities,” where what matters isn’t getting a cable distributor two states away to buy the rights to air FanDuel Whatever, but getting the family two blocks away to come to the yard on Sunday, and have enough fun to do it again next Sunday.
