Good News/Bad News

[jokin]

Amid the weekend's Twinsfest and frivolities, a grim truth about collapsing fan support was revealed:

 

 

 

For the fourth straight year, the Twins are projecting another significant drop in their season-ticket base.

 

Twins president Dave St. Peter said Friday that figure could settle in between 13,000 and 14,000 full-season equivalents. That's down as much as 23.5 percent from last season and, at its low end, represents a decline of almost 50 percent from the 25,000 FSEs the Twins sold in 2010-11, their first two seasons at Target Field.

 

 

"Look, nobody here is celebrating a reduction of 4,000 full-season equivalents," St. Peter said on the opening day of TwinsFest. "We live that reality every day, and it's painful. But I think we've worked hard. Getting to 75 percent renewal was not easy. Getting to, hopefully, near 14,000 FSEs will not be easy."

Not even a manager change could stop that trend line in the short term; only a return to sustained winning can make that happen.

 

 

 

 

Do the owner and management deserve kudos for finally changing up the on-field coaching staff and releasing the purse strings, or did they hit the panic button one or two years too late? 

 

Discuss.

[jokin]

FWIW, I thought that replacing the manager with a hometown HOFer, and signing two big FA names, one of whom was another hometown hero, would have been huge steps to staunch at least some of the bleeding at the ticket gate and TV screen.  But it appears that much more PR repair-work and on-field performance is going to be needed if the Twins ever expect Target Field to once-again resemble the halcyon days of 2010.

[jokin]

More not so good news from Rhett Nollinger:

 

 

 

St. Peter also announced that TwinsFest has not sold out any of the three days at Target Field, but that the club expects an estimated 15,000 fans to attend. It's the second straight year the event has been held at Target Field, and the Twins drew roughly 25,000 fans last year.

 

That's around a 40% drop from (presumably) the most hardcore Twins fans who are the most hungry for the 2015 season to get here.

[jokin]

Things I learned while looking up something else:

 

 

 

Fox Sports North will televise 12 Spring Training games, while Go 96.3, the rebranded radio home of the Twins, will broadcast 14 Spring Training games.

 

It's good to see that 12 ST games will be televised, but now, apparently the Twins owner has determined that the KTWN call sign for his very own radio station was hurting his bottom line?

[bird]

There are likely several causes of the decline in sales, although the poor and uninteresting product is the biggest. Is it possible that fewer fans are going to be willing to shell out $50 per head for a night of baseball? I personally know several people who still follow the team but don't go to the park, at least with their former regularity, simply because "it's too expensive." 

 

Baseball has priced the middle class out of the stadium experience in my opinion. I've predicted it for a long time and been wrong, so I guess I'll stick with my prediction that we will soon reach a clearing price where demand will fall more precipitously based on economic factors alone. The whole economic structure of the game sickens me, frankly, which is why I have avoided the stadium (for the most part) and will until or unless it becomes affordable for more people once again. Wretched excesses.

[stringer bell]

On attendance, certainly the Twins were due for a dip since they didn't have the "hook" of the All-Star game.  Add to it that they have had four straight losing records and it makes sense that every portion of Twins fandom is down. 

 

MLB is easily the most affordable major sport to watch.  Almost all the games are on TV and going to a game doesn't cost a week's pay.  Every sport seems to target what I consider the wealthy, unfortunately.

[TheLeviathan]

Baseball has priced the middle class out of the stadium experience in my opinion. I've predicted it for a long time and been wrong, so I guess I'll stick with my prediction that we will soon reach a clearing price where demand will fall more precipitously based on economic factors alone. The whole economic structure of the game sickens me, frankly, which is why I have avoided the stadium (for the most part) and will until or unless it becomes affordable for more people once again. Wretched excesses.

 

I couldn't agree more, I think baseball is going to see some blowback in the not too distant future.  I used to be a 25 game package guy and now I can't justify more than a once a year family tradition game.

[Thegrin]

Perhaps firing Gardy has turned off many fans. :People like the reliable anticipation of their favorites.

 

:}

[Old Twins Cap]

The Twins and MLB can resolve the issue of ticket expense, and have, by "tiering' pricing so that there are always cheap seats available for walk-up customers.  With 40K seats, that's simply a business model pricing policy in which appealing to a middle-class customer is a priority. 

 

When you've got a lousy product, and the Twins qualify on that score, you need to sell tickets in any and every way conceivable.  But, that only helps sales at the margin, and does not have a major impact on revenues.  Like any other business, you want to not only sell but to capitalize on sales by selling to a high end consumer who will spend money in other ways.

 

Unfortunately, when you have a lousy product, most avenues to more revenues are blocked by the quality of the product.  If the Twins had been pro-active, back in 2011 and realized the importance of the quality of their product, they would not have slid as far as they did. But, now, it's too late, and they have to spend to rebrand, and recapture market segments that have moved on to other entertainment venues.

 

It sucks to be bad, but the Twins have no one to blame but themselves.  It was their own complacency with the quality of their product that led them to paralysis as their performance slid downhill from the top to one of the 5 worst teams in MLB over just 12 months.  Now, rebuilding is a huge expense from a low base of revenue, and there is no sure way forward, other to spend and try to put a better team on the field.

[bird]

Aren't quite a few teams, even some with winning records and a better product, having trouble drawing? Wasn't Cleveland drawing poorly this season? I saw a quick blurb on SoxFest, going on right now, in which Hahn and Ventura looked like they were presenting in front of about 15 people. How are the numbers for TwinsFest?

[Ben B]

I was at Twins Fest on Friday. It was definitely way down from last year. Hunter's autograph line was huge, but everyone else I saw had pretty low interest. I probably waited 20 minutes in Hughes' line and the line with Vargas and Kohl Stewart. The lines for guys like Ervin Santana, Nick Gordon, and Danny Santana were almost non-existent. In past years, even when the team was struggling, that was almost unheard of. 

 

They're also not helping Twins Fest attendance with across the board price increases, even compared to last year's event. 

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Things I learned while looking up something else:

 

 

 

It's good to see that 12 ST games will be televised, but now, apparently the Twins owner has determined that the KTWN call sign for his very own radio station was hurting his bottom line?

 

If KTWN isn't even going to broadcast Twins baseball games………

 

I've got to believe that the old fashioned radio signal is a simple, and stable, and under appreciated way to effectively deliver baseball programming. Although so much depends on the personality and warmth of the announcers. At least the Twins don't employ football announcers like many teams do.

 

Anyway, maybe the Pohlads would consider letting CCO or KSTP carry their games again. The Cardinals did go back to KMOX, not that the Twins would ever emulate the Cardinals in anything baseball-related.

[jokin]

Aren't quite a few teams, even some with winning records and a better product, having trouble drawing? Wasn't Cleveland drawing poorly this season? I saw a quick blurb on SoxFest, going on right now, in which Hahn and Ventura looked like they were presenting in front of about 15 people. How are the numbers for TwinsFest?

 

From Post #3 above, down about 40%:

 

 

St. Peter also announced that TwinsFest has not sold out any of the three days at Target Field, but that the club expects an estimated 15,000 fans to attend. It's the second straight year the event has been held at Target Field, and the Twins drew roughly 25,000 fans last year.

[kab21]

I couldn't agree more, I think baseball is going to see some blowback in the not too distant future.  I used to be a 25 game package guy and now I can't justify more than a once a year family tradition game.

Yes, tickets are expensive but the reason that fewer people are going is that the Twins have given the fans no hope that the team will get better.  This is what happens when a team is bad for a long time.  And this is one of reasons that I gave for blowing a bunch of money on a name FA this year or last year. 

 

Contrary to the OP I can't even give credit to the FO for spending a bunch of money since payroll will barely top 100M this year.  5 years ago they could afford that with Target Field and revenues have been exploding due to various league wide new revenue sources.  There's no reason that the Twins had to have the 23rd ranked payroll last season.  This year they will barely crack the top 20 in overall payroll.  I'm giving them zero credit for loosening the purse strings.  They might have justifiable baseball reasons for having a low payroll but they haven't loosened the purse strings unless you compare them to the Marlins.

[TheLeviathan]

Yes, tickets are expensive but the reason that fewer people are going is that the Twins have given the fans no hope that the team will get better.  This is what happens when a team is bad for a long time.  And this is one of reasons that I gave for blowing a bunch of money on a name FA this year or last year. 

 

Contrary to the OP I can't even give credit to the FO for spending a bunch of money since payroll will barely top 100M this year.  5 years ago they could afford that with Target Field and revenues have been exploding due to various league wide new revenue sources.  There's no reason that the Twins had to have the 23rd ranked payroll last season.  This year they will barely crack the top 20 in overall payroll.  I'm giving them zero credit for loosening the purse strings.  They might have justifiable baseball reasons for having a low payroll but they haven't loosened the purse strings unless you compare them to the Marlins.

 

I agree, I was speaking generally about baseball.  In the Twins' case this has been coming for awhile.  Over and over again this organization has sent the wrong message publicly, even when they were being successful and those chickens are coming home to roost.

 

I will give them some credit for not following their typical pattern of shutting down even tighter when they don't see profits ahead, but as you say it's still only a fraction of what they are capable of spending.

[Rigby]

Many thoughts on this, first and foremost after decades of pleading poverty the masses have been convinced and accepted the professed inability to financially compete. The key to successful organizations in any business is the desire to compete - in my estimation a quality severely lacking in the Twins' organization from ownership down. Inexcusable to have completely ignored the Cuban market - a market that helped propel the Sens/Twins in the 50s/60s. Invest in your product, show what's left of your base you have a competitive gene. Sign Moncada.

[diehardtwinsfan]

That's what happens when you lose.  I think that problem will start to rectify itself in the near future, but they had to know when doing a rebuild that this would happen.  If they didn't, well, I don't know what to say. 

 

That said, I echo what others have said.  When it costs $200 or so for a family of four to attend a game, it's not something that's going to happen often.  Period.  That's a reality in this economy.  Baseball has 81 games to fill each year, there aren't enough diehards to do that.   Lower ticket prices, and people will come, even to see a bad product. 

[JB_Iowa]

Re:  TwinsFest

 

Was last year the first time at TF?  That would help explain part of the huge drop.  Novelty is worn off,

 

It's too bad because I think they have a higher percentage of players there thab ever before,

[ashbury]

I like and admire Terry Ryan, but if he ever were to get fired it would be over declining revenue and not W/L record.  The situation now is bad, and (as suggested in the original post) it comes from recognizing and aggressively addressing the problem two years too late.  The rebuild was and is sound, the bridge from 2011 to the future has not been.

[Thrylos]

99 + 96 + 96 + 92 is actually breaking the camel's back.

 

Good to see that the locals are actually demanding baseball and not food or concert quality.  And I hope that it goes lower and lower, until they either get a winning team or they sell it to someone who will get one.

 

Nothing new here.  Really.  Look at the 1986 vs 1987 and 1988 attendance (and season ticket sales from 1987 to 1988) if you don't believe me.