Selling the Sizzle

Nothing like spreading mulch to spruce up the beds when it’s the leaky pipes that need fixing.

In what can only be described as a shift from selling steak to selling sizzle, the Cleveland Indians under the direction of president-in-waiting Mark Shapiro have turned their attention from the product on the field to the product around the field and they’d like it very much if you did the same.

Crain’s Cleveland Business reported this week that the Indians have solicited bids from various local and national architectural firms to, in the words of Indians’ vice president of public relations Bob DiBiasio, “reshape and revive [Progressive Field].”

The intention is to make the ballpark even more fan-friendly, which is code for making the ballpark the destination and not the team.

As a business plan, it’s a risky and bizarre endeavor. The Indians are currently last in attendance in the American League, trailing only Toronto. They also possess the second worst record in the entire major leagues and have a roster comprised of overpriced underperformers and middling prospects from questionable trades.

I don’t mean to be such a cynic, but my current working theory is that the Indians aren’t drawing fans because the team stinks. It would be one thing if they were losing most of their games 13-9. At least there would be some fireworks most nights. But they are losing games in such a mind numbing and tedious fashion that just hanging around for all 9 innings requires a level of endurance that most people just don’t have anymore.

Apparently, though, mine is just an unproven working theory. To the Indians’ deep thinkers, attendance would be greatly improved if there were a few more diversions to distract the fans from what’s actually taking place between the lines.

That’s why, according to Crain’s, the Indians are close to announcing the hiring of an architectural firm, likely Populous, formerly HOK Sport which built Jacobs Field, to spruce things up a bit. Talk about a solution in search of a problem.

Crain’s quotes DiBiasio as saying that the Indians are currently working on a strategic plan that “encompasses…the wants and needs of our fans from a variety of issues that matter most, including sightlines, culinary trends, comfort (and) the audio/visual experience to name a few.”

Ah, that’s what’s missing from Progressive Field, a world class audio/visual experience. Personally, if I were naming a few of the wants and needs of the fans, I’d start with a massive overall of the mix of players in the everyday lineup. But that’s just me. Maybe some others would identify a desire to overhaul the ownership and management structure that has convinced themselves that all this franchise needs to attract more fans is a ferris wheel in center field and a better brand of hot dogs in the concession stands.

The article goes on to note that with the Indians struggling to sell suites, they’ve taken to using some of that space for other needs such as a presidential suite and a “FanCave” that features video games, a billiards table, a wall of HDTVs and “other unique amenities.”

Not to rain on the Indians’ parade, but as John McEnroe might say, you can’t be serious? If a buddy of mine called me up and said “Gary, let’s head down to Progressive Field, plop down 10 bucks to park another 20 to get inside so we can play some pool while we watch the game on television” I’d look at him like I do my wife when she asks me if these pants make her butt look big, dumbfounded.

If you want to play billiards, drink beer and watch the Indians on television, there’s about 100,000 places in Lakewood alone where it’s infinitely cheaper and more convenient to do that than Progressive Field.

Perhaps the most unintentionally funny quote in the article came from Mark Rosentraub, a professor of sports management that Crains sought out for insight. Rosentraub surmised that the Indians were “looking at their underperforming areas and asking ‘How can we restructure?’”

I guess if you’re specialty is sports marketing, that might be how you think. But if your job involves actually running the Indians and you are indeed looking at underperforming areas, I’d start with their draft department. The only everyday player in the lineup originally signed by the Indians is Jhonny Peralta.

But why dwell on the tough stuff? It’s far easier I suspect to focus on underperforming areas like concession stands and video parlors as if that somehow holds the magic bullet for improving the financial bottom line.

The Indians supposedly are looking at teams like the Washington Nationals for inspiration. Oh boy. In Nationals Park there is a sports bar in left-center field where you can pay $20 for a ticket and free food. If it’s a rousing success, you could have fooled me.

Two weeks ago I found myself in the nation’s capital with a little free time one night and ventured over to National Park to watch Washington play Colorado. I wouldn’t say that the Nationals are struggling with attendance but I would say that on most nights, including this particular weekday, the Chuck-E-Cheese in Decatur, Illinois is more crowded.

I had a great seat, how could I not? After all, I bought my ticket at the box office about 10 minutes before the game started. Around the second inning I ventured up to their food court where they were advertising Italian sausage sandwiches. I tried to order one but was informed that they were already out. When I asked how that could be possible, the forlorn and completely underworked clerk admitted they hadn’t really made any because most of the time they just go to waste. I settled for a lousy hot dog made worse by bad mustard.

When I ventured out toward the vaunted left-center field bar, there were plenty of seats available. The few that were there were watching the Washington Capitals in the NHL playoffs seemingly oblivious that the Nationals were not only playing but, for once, winning. I surmised that they must not have even realized they were in a ballpark, saw what looked like a local sports bar, wandered in and treated the ticket price as a cover charge.

If this is the future the Indians see for themselves, then this franchise is in a far deeper mess than initially imagined.

You can only distract the fans for so long. Indians’ management is delusional if they think that attendance is suffering because Progressive Field has grown long in the tooth. If anything, the only thing to like about the team at the moment is that it already plays in a ballpark that is both beautiful and comfortable. About the only thing most people would change about it is the beer prices.

Look, I’m all for improving the “game day experience” and maybe a half dozen more fans per game may show up if a softer brand of toilet paper is installed in the restrooms. But as long as the words “game day” are in that phrase, sustained improvement in attendance will only occur when fans have a reason to watch this team. Until then, it’s just mostly worthless window dressing meant to distract the fans from the real problems, kind of like addressing the need for a right-handed hitter by signing the left-handed Russell Branyan.

The Giant Sleeps

As the Cleveland Indians are finding out in rather painful fashion, decisions have consequences. When CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee were traded in consecutive years and fan favorite Victor Martinez was similarly dealt, a fan backlash erupted that is hitting Larry and Paul Dolan where they can least afford it, in their wallet.

According to an article in this week’s Crain’s Cleveland Business, the Indians have sold the equivalent of 8,000 season tickets for 2010. That’s accomplished through a series of full and partial game packages. It also represents nearly a 33% drop from the 2009 season and an approximately 45% drop from 2008.

Now you know why the Indians only off-season acquisition the Indians could afford was Russell Branyan. Indeed in that context his signing represents a near perfect metaphor for the state of the franchise.

Crain’s notes that by contrast the Philadelphia Phillies and the Minnesota Twins cut off season ticket sales at 24,000. The Twins, of course, just opened a new stadium so the enthusiasm there is understandable.

But what is less understandable is that right now the Indians are scraping near the bottom with teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates when it comes to season tickets. That should trouble the Dolans more than anything else. The Pirates have been awful for nearly two full decades. The Indians, on the other hand, at least have had some success in far more recent times.

The Crain’s story reaches the predictable conclusions by quoting the predictable experts: attendance is cyclical and will improve as the team improves. History certainly bears that out but this may be one time where past performance truly is not indicative of future results. The truth staring them in the face is that this may not be a cycle at all.

The Indians’ renaissance of the 1990s pivoted off of the opening of Jacobs Field. Until then the team was toiling in Pirates territory and without the new ballpark they’d probably still be. But the opening of Jacobs Field and the significant streams of revenue it opened up for Dick Jacobs gave the team the kind of money it needed to compete on equal footing with any other team.

As a result, it could and did buy good, solid and proven free agents to fill in the holes as the younger players developed. Management did its part, too, by hitting more often than missing on free agents and rookies.

But the shine of Jacobs Field has worn off. Now known as Progressive Field, it’s still one of the best facilities in baseball but it’s no longer an attraction in and of itself to the casual fan. The Indians of this year are either a team people will pay to see or won’t on its own merits and not because they play in a novel ballpark.

At this juncture, it doesn’t look like too many will be willing to pay. The season ticket base gives the Indians a Cleveland Municipal Stadium-like attendance base of just 648,000 fans. That means that even if they triple that amount in single game sales, they still won’t draw 2 million fans for the season.

And that’s just the folks in the stands. The Crain’s article doesn’t mention it but the Indians are similarly struggling in selling loges, another significant source of revenue. All told, even if the Indians could slash their payroll by trading Travis Hafner and Jake Westbrook, they’d still lose money at the end of the season.

And the really chilling reality in all of this is that there isn’t another attendance jolt like the opening of a new stadium lying in their immediate future, either. Consequently, the Indians ability to move the needle on attendance and hence revenue is more or less completely related to their ability to get better on the field.

That’s a tall order, particularly when you operate in a league where the only level playing field is the one between the foul poles.

For too many years now, the Indians front office has been swinging and missing on acquiring good young talent, the kind that comes cheaply. Their drafting record rivals that of the Browns, or maybe it just seems that way because every mistake in this atmosphere is bound to be magnified. Making matters worse is that the team has pretty much run out of high-priced talent to trade, meaning that the only prospects will be the ones they draft.

What you see on the field now is pretty much what you’re going to be seeing for awhile. There will be movement around the fringes, there always is. But unless this group suddenly gets good it’s going to be taking its lumps for awhile without any sense at the moment that it ever will be good enough and cheap enough to truly compete for a playoff spot.

Which gets you right back to the issue of attendance. If it tracks performance, and it usually does, the Dolans will be taking their lumps for awhile as well. But perhaps it’s not just performance related. While the economy certainly had some bearing on the drop in attendance, fan backlash is a major part of it as well. Crain’s quotes Bob DiBiasio, the Indian’s vice president of public relations and someone who’s been associated with the team for 31 years, as readily acknowledging that he’s never seen anger from fans on par with last summer’s.

The breadth of DiBiasio’s statement is sweeping but very explainable. In the ‘70s and ‘80s there wasn’t much anger because, frankly, there wasn’t much to get angry about. Fans understood the Indians had lousy ownership and a lousy ballpark. They had witnessed institutional incompetence for so long that they were numb to the fact that there was even a team in town. It’s pretty much what Pirates fans are like right now.

But if anger is driving Indians fans, and there is every reason to believe that it is, then even a few upticks in performance aren’t going to make much of a difference. Indians fans are angry now because they’ve been to the show. They know that this team and this town are capable of great things if given the right circumstances. They also know that this ownership really hasn’t followed through on its pledge to the community to deliver consistently competitive teams. Twice in the last 5 years the Dolans and their management team have been given that opportunity and twice they’ve deliberately squandered it by not taking the necessary next steps. In fact, each time they stood still which, in professional sports, is the equivalent of stepping backward.

The fans have also seen that general manager Mark Shapiro has been rewarded for his approach by being named club president, which more than anything else says that things aren’t likely to change. Mix all of this together and you more or less land on a spot that suggests the only path forward is of the sea change variety.

There was a point in the ‘80s where the Indians had Case Western Reserve University study the fan base. The study concluded that this attendance-starved team was really a sleeping giant and that all the fans needed to see was a little success and they’d turn out in droves. Not exactly a revelation, certainly, but it at least gave confirmation that there was a fan base ready to spring into action when given an actual reason to do so.

The chicken-and-egg nature of remedying the situation Tribe teams in the past experienced eventually was solved when Dick Jacobs bought the team and got Jacobs Field built. The added money begat better players begat better attendance. This time the team doesn’t look to be so lucky so for now whatever form of sleeping giant remains is locked into a deep and prolonged hibernation.