Ripple Effects: Cities Disconnect

This is the second in a series of articles about the factors that contributed to the Twins' devastating collapse at the end of this season, and how they interact with and influence each other.

With fan interest comes attendance. With attendance comes added payroll flexibility. Both are the responsibility of the business side of the Twins organization. Dave St. Peter's organization failed the team, and fans. Let’s dig into some factors that illustrate the cause for this blame, starting with the TV situation.

What to Do When the Bubble Pops
Baseball broadcast rights have been a slow-moving trainwreck over the past few seasons. With Diamond Sports Group defaulting on their contracts with multiple teams (including the Twins) and then beginning bankruptcy proceedings, the writing has been on the wall for some time: owners' broadcast revenue was unavoidably shrinking. For many organizations, this has been a hang-up, but only a minor one. For the Twins, it's been a huge deal. Their business team seemed to be caught flat-footed, and made a series of questionable decisions that showed a lack of situational awareness or general savvy.

Headed into the 2023-2024 offseason, the business group signaled an understanding that no broadcast partner would pay anywhere near the $60 million in annual fees that Diamond Sports Group had been paying. That factored into their offseason comments around “right-sizing” the payroll. For a moment, it seemed as though the Twins would prioritize the fan experience, while making the best of a bad situation. They telegraphed this to the point that new TV play-by-play announcer Cory Provus said the following in an interview:

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“I’m confident that, if indeed the Twins are back on Bally for the 2024 season, the most significant change will be blackouts. If you wanted to watch the Twins and you did not have cable in, say, Iowa, trying to stream MLB TV without having cable, you were blacked out from viewing the Twins. That is going away.”

Of course, fans know how that played out. Rather than following through with this promise, the team took the cynical approach of re-upping the same basic deal they had, but with a lower payout--and more importantly, without securing streaming rights that would actually allow more fans to watch the games regardless of location or cable subscription status. And, despite what amounted to a bailout reengagement, the team didn't reevaluate their payroll. Following the deal, St. Peter said:

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“It’s a one-year deal for us. Some of it was in our control, much of it was out of our control. Some of it is a product of the bankruptcy system. And as we think about it from our perspective, it’s a balancing act. You balance economics, distribution and production quality, and local priorities versus national priorities.”

An uncharitable (but perhaps accurate) read of this would be that the team chose the highest bidder, regardless of the implications for fans. St. Peter followed up by saying:

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“The biggest thing is, we get it, we’re not tone-deaf. We understand the gap and feel horribly that we have, at least in the short term, been unable to address it.”

Sure. Then, there was the carriage dispute preventing cable subscribers paying for Bally Sports North from watching games. Starting on May 1, Bally Sports North went dark for Comcast and Midco customers, and subscribers were unable to watch games for three full months.

The Twins' statement on the matter?

These factors combined to wither fan interest, right as the team was heating up after a rough start to the season.

Fan Attendance
The business side of the organization is also responsible for strategies to put butts in seats. The Twins hit their highwater mark in attendance in 2010, the year that Target Field opened, with 3.2 million fans visiting the ballpark. In 2023, attendance did not crack 2 million. Attendance typically lags behind performance, though. On the heels of breaking the playoff curse and the window of contention being wide-open, it would be reasonable to assume that attendance would increase, perhaps substantially. However, on the heels of the team's payroll reduction, apathy set in.

With declining attendance, savvy business units might try creative strategies to entice fans to spend their time and money going to games. Knowing that many fans were unable to watch games, a deft team may have leaned into non-traditional media or giveaways to drive attendance. That didn’t happen. Instead, they featured such giveaways as the Twins Rubik’s Cube. Perhaps they wanted fans to puzzle out just why they went to the ballpark that day? The Twins did jump on the “Bark at the Park” bandwagon and held a fair number of typical promotions, but they didn’t get creative with flash sales, bundle discounts, actually intriguing giveaways, or attempts to draw in North Loop residents.

Other Decisions
Beyond broadcast rights and ticket sales issues, you have questionable decisions such as raising the price of playoff ticket strips and including a non-refundable $60 fee. Yes, fans who bought strips for the chance to see playoff baseball are out $60, even though the Twins missed the playoffs. That is another business decision that is penny-wise and pound-foolish.

On the penultimate game of the 2024 season, a fan brought an anti-Pohlad sign to the game. Yes, it was hostile and inflammatory. However, the reaction was perhaps disproportionate: that fan is allegedly banned from Target Field for a year.

Finally, the Twins were one of just seven teams who chose not to sell advertising in the form of uniform patches. Don’t get me wrong; these patches can be perceived as tacky. I would personally prefer they didn’t exist. But, they are a source of revenue. The value of this advertising is not publicly available and varies pretty widely, but for a team crying poor, the decision to not take advantage of every possible stream doesn’t make much sense--especially when the team “didn’t have the money” for even a legitimate reliever at the trade deadline (sorry, Trevor Richards).

Takeaways
Because team revenues (driven by broadcast rights, advertising, and fan attendance) directly factor into team payroll allocations, it’s fair to say that the business side of the Twins is responsible for the quality of the product fans watched, listened to, or ignored down the stretch.

At the end of the day, the result of all of this is that the team missed the playoffs (and the $10 million or more they would have gotten from the playoff bonus pool), and will likely lose untold additional revenue through an angry and apathetic fan base that will go to fewer games next season, buy less merchandise, and watch or listen less than they otherwise might.

Between the broadcast situation (and the disparity between words and actions), the inability to understand fan motivation and to bring people to the ballpark, and tone-deaf business decisions, the overall message to fans is that the business side of the Twins leadership team thought that they could cut costs, pocket profits, and that fan goodwill would exist just because of the 2023 team advancing in the playoffs.

Hopefully, this fall's hostility disabuses them of this belief, and hopefully, this will lead to a group that better seeks to improve the fan experience for their customers and true believers. This team can have an incredibly bright future, if only those in charge don’t get in the way of that.