Tom Pohlad is Saying a Lot, and None of It Lines Up

[NYCTK]

1 minute ago, old nurse said:

The proof of a million empty seats is undebatable and is also called off topic when talking of fans coming back. You are done 

Wow. So, with one year of success they failed to completely gain unfettered fan loyalty by selling out every seat for every game. 

You sure showed me. 

****ing ridiculous argument my guy. 

[TheLeviathan]

5 hours ago, old nurse said:

When the person complained that the Twins got 350m for the stadium and thus owed the fans, my point was the Twins did pay it back.  The poor math was the Twins accountants who didn’t say to quit spending once the debt reached 350m.  Sorry everything has to spelled out for you 

Well let me spell it out for you....if they lost 350M in 4 years on merely baseball that would be an impressive feat.  One they can easily prove to the public if they'd like to.  (And which would defy the limits you claim baseball puts on teams)

Except...we know MLB doesn't actually enforce those limits.  And the odds of losing that much money per year on baseball alone is basically impossible. 

Which leaves any rational person to a simple conclusion: they lost money on their other ventures, despite a taxpayer gift to their baseball operation, AND they want to blame fans for lowering their revenue on baseball.  They're silver spooned dopes.

The only real mystery is why you feel the need to fall on the sword for them.

[The Great Hambino]

It's worth noting that, based on things I've heard multiple times but can't seem to find in print, attendance reactions to team performance generally operate on a one-year lag - apparently, most tickets are sold before the season begins.  That's why they set their attendance record in 1988 and not in 1987.  So where were those one-year-lag bounces recently?  In 2020, they got COVID-ed, while in 2024, they right-sized themselves out of that bounce.  Tom basically admits it with this quote from this very article:

On 2/9/2026 at 10:54 AM, Cody Christie said:

“We made what we thought at the time was a responsible financial decision, and we obviously failed to consider the long-term impact of that decision, and the short-term impact of that decision, frankly,” he said. “We sucked the air right out of our fan base, and it did significant damage to our brand and to our family from a confidence standpoint. Plain and simple, we got it wrong.”

I think it's safe to blame ownership when ownership blames ownership

[Major League Ready]

4 hours ago, old nurse said:

What one player signable for thirteen million would have turned the 24 Twins into a hundred win team? The Twins had to have that kind of team to increase the attendance. The twins had a division leading team for almost all of the 23 season the Twins had  2 Cy Young caliber pitchers. They had only a slight increase in attendance. So division leading in and of itself was not bringing in fans.  

I completely agree and I was trying to establish an accurate value for drawing 350,000 fans.  A $13M free agent averages about 1.5 WAR.  They don't put fans in the seats and such a player probably would not have made a difference on the 24 Twins.  You may recall, the two free agents that had the most support here were Jordan Montgomery and Rhys Hoskins.  There is a common conclusion in this forum that decreased spending wrecked the 24 Twins.  We would have been worse had we signed Montgomery and Hoskins.  I guess the point is that there is no certainty that spending would have saved the 24 Twins and the theory that spending will be recouped at the gate is also far from certain.

[Charleo]

7 hours ago, old nurse said:

In all of your posting you still have not shown that 350000 more fans would significantly change the payroll.   You can post 100 different things, it still doesn’t change the fact the fans did not come back in significant numbers when they won. 

Yes, he has, several times.  He's made the point that if you don't tear down the team by slashing payroll, those increased fan numbers can compound over time.  What if we didn't slash payroll, were still good, and increased attendance for a 2nd year, then a 3rd year, and so on?  Do you see how this works?  A good product over time builds trust that the product will be continuously good, thus creating and maintaining 'fans' of said product.  And how many lifelong fans did they possibly miss out on creating over these years?  It all builds, man.  No one said that 350,000 extra fans would pay for Player X.  It doesn't even work that way.  I'm not sure how anyone else can explain this to you.  Seems you either just want to argue or you're Tom Pohlad's kid.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

On 2/10/2026 at 8:54 AM, old nurse said:

Once again, Forbes figures it out for each club. For Minnnesota it is easy because they can look at sales tax receipts. $50 a fan. Now remember that revenue per fan is shared so the Twins see 52% of it, thus 9 million 

From the article I found, $51 is the average fan spend inside the park after buying tickets. The average ticket is $37, that would be $88 x 350,000 =$30.8m. Plus of course there’s tv revenue per subscriber and advertising revenue.

[old nurse]

2 hours ago, Charleo said:

Yes, he has, several times.  He's made the point that if you don't tear down the team by slashing payroll, those increased fan numbers can compound over time.  What if we didn't slash payroll, were still good, and increased attendance for a 2nd year, then a 3rd year, and so on?  Do you see how this works?  A good product over time builds trust that the product will be continuously good, thus creating and maintaining 'fans' of said product.  And how many lifelong fans did they possibly miss out on creating over these years?  It all builds, man.  No one said that 350,000 extra fans would pay for Player X.  It doesn't even work that way.  I'm not sure how anyone else can explain this to you.  Seems you either just want to argue or you're Tom Pohlad's kid.

That compounding of fans has not happed in the last 50 years 

[old nurse]

54 minutes ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

From the article I found, $51 is the average fan spend inside the park after buying tickets. The average ticket is $37, that would be $88 x 350,000 =$30.8m. Plus of course there’s tv revenue per subscriber and advertising revenue.

If the subscriber numbers were decent they wouldn’t have made a deal with ESPN. The numbers were so low it was reported that MLB gave the teams $10m that had streaming.