Global Ballpark

Michael Cox

Remember the "Free-agent fan"?

The guy who decided that the best way to stand up for the "common fan" was to send press releases to the media declaring his undying affection for whichever team could convince him of the team's quality and its fans' loyalty? Remember how he picked the Phillies, and you couldn't stop breaking out in spontaneous giggles for a week?

Well, we're all free agents, only without the press.

Most baseball fans either cannot or simply do not attend many games live. The season ticket base for the average major league team is somewhere around 20K, but a total fan base that low would send a team to the sports graveyard. TV, radio and merchandising are what bring in most of the money and hold the fans' attention, and that's where MLB's opportunities have expanded unbelievably.

In the old days (about 15 years ago -- ancient times in technology years), a team had a local over-the-air TV station, a local radio station and a few in outlying areas, and if they were lucky, they might be on the weekly NBC or ABC game once or twice. Out of the immediate area, the reach of any team except the Yankees, and to a lesser extent the Dodgers, was minimal.

Ted Turner changed all of that with the combination of the Atlanta Braves and WTBS, which he pushed to cable companies nationwide as a "superstation" and took a team that looked as likely to fail in Atlanta as it previously had in Boston and Milwaukee and gave it a national fan base. Once the Braves started winning in the 90s, blue-and-red caps sprouted across the country like beer logo t-shirts on fratboys and the team began accruing the resources to keep it in high payrolls for years to come.

More importantly for us, however, the Braves also showed that baseball fans will in fact put up with most of their team's games appearing on cable, and now almost every big-league team appears on a regional cable network. Add three ESPN and two FOX national cable games per week to the second-half papa FOX national game and you've almost achieved saturation. If you have a satellite dish, or in some areas digital cable, Extra Innings gives you six to eight non-local games a day.

We haven't even addressed the Internet yet, with its live RealAudio feeds of every single MLB game every single day, and someday soon the video as well. The bottom line is this: If you don't like your local team, you can find another at your fingertips without even changing your normal behavior patterns. You just tune in your new team, buy a cap from the internet (we recommend the team store links in our Team News and Stats area) and bookmark the team's local paper's web site.

No one on your Baltimore block to share your newfound love of the Astros? Get on a mailing list or into a newsgroup and discuss all you want (with the appropriate netiquette, of course). You can immerse yourself totally in any team you choose at any time.

All this can have severe ramifications for the various teams, of course. If everyone in Kansas City is listening to the Rockies at the Giants on RealAudio, not only are they lowering the Royals' ratings, but they're hearing and potentially patronizing the Giants' advertisers (many of whom are national companies) and boosting their listenership. You've seen the Twins caps in the southwest in '87 and '91 and the Braves t-shirts in Seattle throughout the middle of the decade. Now, with any team available instantaneously, the front-running non-local fan will be a huge economic force.

What's more, there's an untapped global market for all this programming. There is internet and satellite TV in most of the developed world, with no additional infrastructure cost to MLB. If an intelligent team can correctly market the sport and themselves, there's a windfall waiting to happen. (Heck, if Quokka.com can throw that much money at hiking and yachting, MLB should...oh, yeah. "Marketing" and "MLB" are mutually-exclusive terms.)

In fact, if a ball club is smart, they won't waste time, money and goodwill asking for a new ballpark, they'll throw themselves into international marketing with great zeal, and hire someone just to make sure their RealAudio feed is directly linked on every possible site (this is where MLB's exclusive deal with Broadcast.com is very, very stupid).

Of course, this won't mean a thing if a team can't put the goods on the field, but no longer will there be "small markets" and "major markets," there'll be Japan and Australia and Italy. A team's market will only be limited by their marketing capability and the team on the field, and they'll finally have no one to blame for their economic fortunes but themselves.

about the author

Michael Cox loves bullpens. Honestly. Just as long as they don't contain Norm Charlton or Jesse Orosco. Offer him Jim Corsi and see how he reacts at mc@strikethree.com.