There was a story a few weeks ago about a high school that
had decided to set up a VIP room at its prom.
Students who wanted to pay a little extra in order to be treated like a
little big shot could. It was as much
inevitable as it was another sign of a coming apocalypse. It won’t be long before preschools offer a
premium recess area with newer, better toys for children of parents willing to
pay an additional tuition surcharge.
Yet, in the larger sense it’s hard to blame these
enterprising high schoolers or their idiotic administrators for turning the
prom into an even more realistic version of life itself. Our sporting events have so embraced the
concept of premium seats for big spenders that it’s probably never occurred to
them that in doing so they are actually working at cross purposes.
As detailed in the latest Crain’s Cleveland Business, the
Indians recently sent out a survey to premium ticket buyers asking their
opinions on still another potential premium lounge at Progressive Field. If it came to pass, and at this point the
Indians claim they are just exploring options, the team would convert about 8
suites on the first or third base side into a premium lounge that would allow
dining and a view of the ball park.
This new premium lounge would be on top of the lounge that’s
available only to fans in the club suite, the social media suite that the
Indians condescendingly make available to the nerds infatuated with that whole
internet fad, the fan cave which is another group of converted suites and includes
such baseball viewing staples as billiard tables, and the Champions Suite,
which is a super suite carved out of a series of other suites.
I can understand Mark Shapiro’s quixotic journey toward
realizing greater margins that won’t be used to increase payroll, but at some
point this push to make watching a baseball game some sort of country club
experience seems awfully counterproductive.
The Indians are bitching and moaning about the lack of
attendance but act as if their attempts to make attending even more of an
exclusionary process aren’t somehow related.
They are.
It’s hardly a secret at this point that a strong corporate
commitment is needed in almost every city for professional sports to work. The cost of running a professional sports
franchise gets more expensive each year.
Player payroll is the most visible operating expense but hardly the only
one. There’s the usual stuff like
maintenance, utilities and insurance.
There’s also debt service, front office expenses, and in sports like
baseball, the whole range of minor league expenses.
One of the reasons a team like Cleveland constantly squeezes payroll is
because it represents such a huge part of the overall budget. The revenue streams from such things as
television and radio tend to be fixed for years at a time. There may be escalators in those contracts
that keep pace in some measure with the economy generally but on a year to year
basis there is nothing much a team can do to increase those particular revenue
streams.
The more variable revenue streams are things like souvenirs,
concessions and the biggest one of all, ticket sales. Projections are easily made for budgeting
purposes but if those revenue streams end up lagging it does directly and perhaps
significantly impact a team’s yearly bottom line.
It’s in this context that the push for even more secure
lines of revenue is being pursued. The
Indians aren’t necessarily lacking for corporate support but the economy since
2008 has taken a huge hit on local companies and hence their budgets for
entertainment. It’s the reason that there are so many loges available for conversion
into something else. When a company
doesn’t renew a loge lease and there’s no one waiting in line for it, it’s a
dead asset. And right now and for the
foreseeable future, the Indians have a lot of dead assets. So do the Browns.
But is the answer to all of this more premium seats? Is that really the right market to
pursue? Maybe not.
Premium seats are purchased by premium buyers, meaning
corporations predominately. Even as
those seats might be available for individual purchase, I can all but guarantee
that unless the vast majority of them are purchased by corporate buyers then
they’ll mostly go empty night after night, like now.
And while these premium seats may be too expensive for the
individual taste, they are still cheaper, often much less so, then suite
tickets. A suite comes with a preset
number of tickets that must be bought, usually at least 10 per game. Then there is a minimum food spend per
game. All in it’s an expensive way to
see a game, any game.
But buying, say, a couple of club seats for the season and a
few more in one of the other premium lounges ends up being a significantly
cheaper proposition for a corporation.
So much so, in fact, that it provides an increasingly more attractive
option then purchasing a suite for a season.
In other words, the more of these lounges that are created,
the less the demand is for suites. There
isn’t a broader untapped market out there just clamoring for the right kind of
suite. It’s the same market looking for
a different and sometimes cheaper option.
As the Indians create more specialty suites and lounges it’s done at the
expense of those who would otherwise spend their dollars on the traditional
suites. In short, the Indians will end
up just cannibalizing the same market but otherwise not making progress. Arguably they could end up further behind.
**
Do you think the Browns are sensitive about the criticism
they’ve been receiving for the lack of attention to the receiving corps? Have you noticed how many stories you’ve read
recently about Mohamed Massaquoi or Greg Little and how both are supposedly
poised for a breakout season? If you
answered yes to the second question, then you have the answer to the first.
The Browns’ public relations department has attacked the
criticism by doing what a public relations department is paid to do, manipulate
the story. Using the local beat
reporters who tend to like their stories spoon fed, fans are getting a steady
diet of stories that would tend to make you think that the team’s biggest
weakness is actually a strength.
First there were the stories about Greg Little and his
suddenly leaner frame that will put him in position to have a breakout
year. For the last few days the focus
has been the undersized Massaquoi and how he’s over all of the various injuries
that have plagued him in his first three years making him ready for a breakout
year. I hope there are enough footballs
to go around.
Give credit to the Browns’ p.r. department for the onslaught
while reading the stories in the local papers with a grain of salt. No matter how it’s spun, the Browns receiving
corps as presently constituted is one of the worst in the league. With no meaningful off season acquisition,
it’s the same group that was one of the worst in the league last season, just
older.
There is some benefit to experience making it reasonable to
expect Little to be better. But his
better isn’t ever going to turn him into a legitimate number one receiver. He simply doesn’t have that kind of
speed. He’s a power forward that’s being
forced to play center because management thinks it doesn’t need a legitimate
center.
Massaquoi is a different story. He’s injury prone which is related to his
lack of size. But more than that are the
injuries he’s suffered—concussions. With
each day that passes, players are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers of
concussions and their long term impacts.
Massaquoi has suffered two concussions already. Even club president Mike Holmgren
acknowledges that the concussions have taken a toll on Massaquoi and have
changed his game. Translated, Massaquoi
is playing more cautiously, which is understandable.
So even if Massaquoi is technically healthy right now,
there’s nothing about his performance that suggests he’ll have any sort of
breakout season, particularly as he approaches his job with even more caution. And even if he did have a breakout season
what exactly does that mean for a passion receiver? Like Little, Massaquoi isn’t blessed with
great speed and isn’t the kind of game changing receiver that teams have to
worry about irrespective of how healthy he is.
The Browns are slowly, surely starting to fill the many
holes on this team. The receiving corps
remains a big hole still and no matter how hard the Browns p.r. department
spins it and no matter how compliant the local media is in that scheme, the
underlying facts won’t change until the Browns actually change them with better
players.
**
It looked like the Twitter universe got a bit overheated on
Thursday with “news” that the Browns were supposedly for sale. The source of that rumor was a no nothing
blowhard who got his one day in the sun by essentially making something up.
Maybe that’s unfair.
If you assume everything has a price, then the Browns, like any other
team in any other sport, are for sale.
I’m sure that Randy Lerner, if you could find him and then wake him,
would say he has a price. It may be
outrageous and unrealistic, but he probably has a price.
But the Browns thought enough of the essentially non-rumor
to flat out deny it, which likely will only fan the flames further. Remember, in sports when a player says it’s
not about the money, it’s about the money.
When a general manager gives the manager or head coach a vote of
confidence it’s the first step toward firing him. And when an owner says his team isn’t for
sale, it’s usually for sale.
Browns fans shouldn’t fret either way. The Browns aren’t going anywhere even if they
are sold. The league is not going to let
the Browns escape from Cleveland
ever again. Anyone buying the team will
have to keep it in Cleveland. Set that in stone.
If you accept that as a given, then fans should welcome a
sale. Lerner has been a disaster of an
owner by any way you to want to measure.
It is literally a case where a new owner couldn’t possibly do any worse.
Don’t get your hopes up, though. Lerner is a contrarian. The more compelling the case for a sale, the
likelier he’ll get further entrenched.
**
It looks like whatever supposed quarterback competition
there was going to be between Brandon Weeden and Colt McCoy won’t survive
mini-camp. Head coach Pat Shurmur has
all but anointed Weeden the starter.
Maybe it was the anecdote Shurmur told about his time with Sam Bradford
in St. Louis. Maybe it was the passive aggressive way he
punctuates every question about the offense with the comment “it all starts
with the quarterback.” Or maybe, just
maybe, it is the fact that he is giving Weeden most of the reps with the first
team. Yea, that must be it.
McCoy fans, let’s face it.
Barring injury, it’s Weeden’s job if for no other reason then Weeden is
Shurmur’s guy and McCoy is not. That’s
probably how it should be, unless you think Shurmur shouldn’t be trusted with
any decision more difficult than paper or plastic.
What this all means is that the Browns’ management is taking
a longer view of its path forward. They
recognize that this team isn’t playoff caliber and are willing to sacrifice
another season so that a youngish team can mature all at once. As far as plans go that’s as good of one as
they’ve had for years.
At some point though the fans are going to get fed up paying
for sacrificial seasons. I suspect that
there’s maybe one more season left in the tolerance bank so long as fans see
legitimate forward progress and not the usual running in place on a 4-12
treadmill.
**
So Grady Sizemore is still feeling soreness and his rehab
has had a setback, meaning he continues to collect a multi-million dollar
salary while adding zero value back, which everyone knew was the most likely
outcome. That leads to this week’s
question to ponder: Does Sizemore have the best agent ever?
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