As MLB Touts Attendance Surge, Twins Are Left Out of the Fun

[theBOMisthebomb]

16 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

That's a great question as to why Milwaukee has been so successful. It's a worst market and a decent but not great winning club. But so many fans. Would love to learn more. 

I've thought of posting these thoughts twice earlier and deleted... 

I've been to nine MLB stadiums the past four years and Target Field ranks somewhere between 7th and 9th as far as fan engagement and passion. They might be ahead of 2022 Angels fans and 2023 Royals fans. Might. 

Heck, Tigers fans at the 2024 trade deadline when they were in sell mode crushed the passion of Twins fans. It is painful to acknowledge. 

Maybe Twins and Angels fans are so disinterested because they know in their heart of hearts their club has zero chance at a championship. The 2023 postseason success for the Twins was supposed to erase those 30 year old feelings, it seems that chance slipped away unless they win these last 5 games and sneak into the playoffs. 

Twins fans (and Minnesota sports fans of men's major professional teams) are front runner bandwagon fans. It is difficult to admit, yet reality. 

[jorgenswest]

11 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

That's a great question as to why Milwaukee has been so successful. It's a worst market and a decent but not great winning club. But so many fans. Would love to learn more. 

Reasonable to wonder.

Including 2024 Milwaukee has four first place finishes since Falvey has taken over. The Twins have three. Neither has been to the World Series in that span. Each has won one playoff series. Prior to 2018 Milwaukee had a run of 35 years prior with just one first place finish in the division. You would think it would be hard to build a fan base that way. Maybe such a long stretch of poor baseball left the fans more hungry. The Twins have had many more division titles in the 2000s only to be followed by playoff disappointment. Maybe that frequent disappointment has curbed the Minnesota appetite for baseball.

 

[TheLeviathan]

1 hour ago, Minderbinder said:

https://www.baseball-reference.com//teams/MIL/attend.shtml

 

You bring up a good counterpoint in that the markets are similar and there does appear to be a sustained attendance disparity.  

It may be that the Brewers just have a better fan base, but could there be more to it?  Perhaps the Brewers do a better job promoting their team.  (Perhaps they have better group sales for example)  Maybe their gameday experience is more enjoyable.  Maybe their public messaging is more upbeat and embracing towards the fans.

Maybe they just never lost the trust of their fans for whatever reason.  A lot of things could explain this, it's hard to know without having more specific data on their success/Twins failure.

If I worked for the Twins I'd be trying to answer that question.  What I can say with certainty is that Twins' fans feel beat down by their club.  If I'm wondering why less money is heading their way, that would seem to be a good place to start.

[Original_JB]

Re: Milwaukee. It sure ain't the stadium (other than being all-weather), but it sure might be the top flight tailgating experience.

[Vanimal46]

2 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

It's also just possible that MN isn't really a baseball area at all....and the only way they draw fans is by winning and excitement, something mostly lacking in teh last 20 years.

I would say MN is a front runner town. NFL is king in every city they’re in so that’s a given. Then it’s whoever is doing well to earn fan support. For 20 years no one cared about the Timberwolves and now they’re the hottest selling tickets in town because they’re winning. 

[mikelink45]

12 hours ago, ashbury said:

The customer wants flying cars for zero dollars.  I learned early in the marketing phase of my career to treat customers with respect but not to take them too seriously, and keep decisions grounded in actual reality rather than what customers will tell you.  You go by actions, not words, where customers are concerned.

I think their actions are speaking quite loudly

[Whitey333]

Twins attendance has been pretty consistent over the last several years.  1.8 to 2.0 million per year is pretty normal here.  I think for all the negative aspects of the Twins I'm surprised it isn't lower.  The Twins brought this on themselves and then blame the fans.  Not very professional or classy.  I can only follow them on radio.  It gets old and stale listening to Kris Atteberry gush over Correa and Buxton making routine plays .  I still love my Twins but admit not as much as I used to.  To me they play lifeless, listless, undisciplined and very boring baseball and have for quite some time.

[Guest]

Usually and historically the customer IS always right.  And perhaps the Twins and their customers just have fallen out of love and the breakup will become Charlotte's issue.

But, when I look at downtown from an investment viewpoint, I see problems the Pohlads can't fix.  See, for example, https://www.yahoo.com/news/st-paul-hard-look-struggling-103800423.html , from the SPP earlier this month.

Snelling and University are just two of the most important commercial corridors in the Cities, but these issues are no longer uncommon.  I stopped by for a game in August, took the light rail to and from, and was uncomfortable the whole time.

The Green Line light rail, which launched after Target Field became operational, "was supposed to reactivate economic development in an area that had seen more than its share of commercial departures,” says the article. “Instead, much of the commercial energy at the intersection is long gone.”

“The light rail was the start of it going downhill,” says a local bookstore owner who has had to keep doors locked and buzz in customers on a case-by-case basis due to vandalism and violence. Another business owner, who originally favored the light rail, now says “it’s become one of the city’s biggest safety concerns.”

Measured in crimes per passenger-mile, the Twin Cities’ light rail generates more crime than any other light-rail system in the country. Perhaps an honor system for fare collection is the problem. If it's easy for people to evade fares that enables potential for crime.  Should businesses conclude there's no more honor in the Cities today?

Why is Minnesota’s light-rail system so crime-ridden? It’s not just a little more crime-ridden: between 2014 and 2021, it generated nearly 600 crimes per billion passenger-miles, which was almost twice the number in the next-highest city and more than six times the national average for light-rail systems.

Many (not satire) claim that crime rates are falling, but transit crime rates are increasing. Twin Cities light-rail suffered about 30 crimes a year from 2014 through 2018, for an average of about 300 per billion passenger-miles. Then in 2019 the number shot up to 118, or almost 1,200 per billion passenger-miles. Only 66 per in 2020, but since far fewer people rode transit that year, the rate per passenger-mile in that year was greater than in 2019. The rate remained around 1,400 in 2021. In any case, something happened in 2019 that made the Cities light rail the most dangerous in the country by far.

If the arteries of your downtown are crime-ridden, why would a business continue to invest in that downtown?  Yeah, Twins fans are great; yeah, yeah, the Pohlads are crap.  But, building a beautiful new stadium downtown to revitalize downtown, a wonderful concept, isn't going to pan out unless the Cities becomes a safe, productive meeting place for both business and fans.  And all of it is heading in the wrong direction.

[DJL44]

17 hours ago, Devereaux said:

I'm starting to come down on ashbury's side. Do the people who stay at home and blame everything except their inertia truly care about the team? You can buy a $20 ticket and bring in food if you can't afford more. Are the locals just not fans of top-tier baseball?

I'm becoming less of a fan of the Twins and more of a fan of watching MLB in general. I haven't attended a Twins game at all this year. There were a couple times I thought about going but they actually put the Twins on TV that weekend and I watched at home instead. The only baseball game I attended in person was seeing a Cubs game at Wrigley Field on vacation.

[SAL]

Last time I went to a game at Target Field was 2023. After the game, I was robbed

Why didn't you even mention the state of the city? That's the real culprit 

[Woof Bronzer]

21 hours ago, Minderbinder said:

.  Yet every armchair "expert" and vapid media outlet blame the Pohlads, who bear free-market risks in a socialist, anti-capitalist community.  No one should blame them for taking a conservative, let's-pause attitude about the team's future. 

 

I think you're a bit confused.  The Pohlads spent more than a decade begging for a half billion dollar government handout for something they could have easily pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and done themselves.  They were so adamant in having government subsidize their operations, rather than rely on their own hard work and self-sufficiency, that they invented a buyer out of whole cloth, and when that didn’t work, they threatened to just fold the team.  Now THAT is dedicated anti-capitalism! 

[Mike Sixel]

15 hours ago, Vanimal46 said:

I would say MN is a front runner town. NFL is king in every city they’re in so that’s a given. Then it’s whoever is doing well to earn fan support. For 20 years no one cared about the Timberwolves and now they’re the hottest selling tickets in town because they’re winning. 

I mean, that's only rational, free market decision making...

[Woof Bronzer]

17 hours ago, Minderbinder said:

Neither is the reputation of Twins fans.  Again, one word:  Milwaukee.

Milwaukee didn't crack 2mil in attendance for the first 31 years of the franchise's existence.  Why? The team was bad.  2 playoff appearances in 31 years.  Their recent attendance has been much better; that's because the team has been better.  6 playoffs in 7 years.  Their attendance has followed accordingly. I'll let you make the correlation between winning and attendance.  

Last year their attendance was 100k above 2022. Fans did their part, they turned out and spent cash.  So for 2024 the owner reinvested all that additional 2023 revenue into the team.  Right?  That's how you are saying this should work?  Fans spend, ownership spends, it's a reinforcing circle and everyone wins.  Right?  

Nope.  They pocketed the extra revenue and cut payroll by $20mil.

Fans aren't the problem.  Greedy owners are.  

[Guest]

23 hours ago, Woof Bronzer said:

I think you're a bit confused.  The Pohlads spent more than a decade begging for a half billion dollar government handout for something they could have easily pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and done themselves.  They were so adamant in having government subsidize their operations, rather than rely on their own hard work and self-sufficiency, that they invented a buyer out of whole cloth, and when that didn’t work, they threatened to just fold the team.  Now THAT is dedicated anti-capitalism! 

Target Field was a two-way street.  The idea was a public-private project funded with public funds to revitalize downtown using the Twins as the catalyst.  That's classic capitalism.  And it worked well until the public neglected downtown.  Absent Target Field the team likely would've been sold.  And you'd be wrong if you think the Twins couldn't find an out-of-town buyer today.

[Guest]

23 hours ago, Woof Bronzer said:

 

Fans aren't the problem.  Greedy owners are.  

Owners do what owners do.  Without owners, there's no MLB.  Turn management of the Twins over to the Minneapolis City Council and we'll sit back and watch what happens.

[Craig Arko]

3 minutes ago, Minderbinder said:

Owners do what owners do.  Without owners, there's no MLB.  Turn management of the Twins over to the Minneapolis City Council and we'll sit back and watch what happens.

Continuous road construction makes the park inaccessible, solving a great many problems. 

[NYCTK]

On 9/25/2024 at 2:50 PM, JD-TWINS said:

Not sure where your numbers come from?

To me, worst case they are under 35,000 from ‘23. ……..most likely, with the weather expected and fan giveaways this weekend they match last year. If they budgeted 2% up tick (had to adjust any aggressiveness with TV so uncertain over winter) that’s about another 38,000 above last year. 73,000,000 x your $75 revenue per body is maximum of $5.5M

Wanted to follow up on this. According to Aaron Gleeman, the Twins were projecting 2.2-2.3 million this season. This would put this about 300,000 below their projected attendance, and let's be a it kinder and say the average marginal revenue on each head is quite a bit lower, maybe $50. 

That's $15 million in revenue.