Forget Salary Cap, Baseball Needs a Profit Cap

Scott Boras set off a firestorm – like only Scott Boras – when he issued a doctrine about team spending and use of revenue sharing funding. It’s not a new debate, but more pertinent given the timing, at the start of a free agent period when teams may start to reign in payroll, thus cutting [...]

YES Network Marketing Follies for Live In-Market Streaming Package

“Watch the Yankees when you’re locked out of your house?” I know that’s not the first thought when I’m locked out, it’s a distant second, with everything else behind gaining entry! Yet, that is how YES Network is pushing their product to the market place.
When the Yankees, YES, and MLBAM announced the first live in-market [...]

ESPN Live Twitter-Type Coverage Good Thought, But Not There Yet

After a week of many negative Twitter stories, it was great to see ESPN experiment with its use in real-time, live game coverage, which can be a sweet-spot value proposition for the microblogging tool. ESPN employed Baseball Writer’s Jayson Stark, Rob Neyer, and Amy Nelson, now legendary Bill Simmons, the Stats and Info group, and [...]

Will Customers Say ‘YES’ to Double-Charging for Streaming

YES Network officially launched its partnership with Cablevision to stream Yankee games in New York Wednesday, the first local market live streaming deal in the major professional sports that rely on local TV revenue. A day later, the network had the perfect bargaining chip – a mid-week afternoon game. Now fans can catch [...]

Cowboys Prove Ticket Demand Still Exists – At the Right Price

…and that price is different in every city for every team at every stadium. The Cowboys are the team in Dallas. Though the Mavs sell out and the Stars usually do well, the Cowboys headline that city. Jones built a palace, charged the highest prices around – $16-150k per PSL as reported by SBJ – [...]

A More Effective Ticket Promotion Than Giveaways

Research shows that not even new ballparks can sell tickets after a year or two if team’s don’t perform. Winning sells tickets, which makes the marketing and ticket sales jobs at the Pirates, Royals, Reds, and other perennial non-playoff contenders, among the most difficult in sports. Filling up Yankee Stadium in its final season with [...]

Joba Fist Pump

David Delucci doesn’t like it. Frank Thomas could care less. Yankee fans say its pure emotion, Yankee haters claim its bush league. One thing seems clear, the Joba Fist Up is here to stay.
After a key strikeout of Dellucci in Thursday’s game to end the eighth inning, Chamberlain gave an emphatic fist up, yell, and [...]

O’Neill Strikes Out in YES Booth

Of the small army of Yankee analysts YES network employs, Paul O’Neill proved he deserves a spot at the end of the depth chart. Paired with play-by-play man Michael Kay in a two man booth during the Yanks opening series with Toronto, O’Neill lacked the commanding, confident voice of successful analysts. In fact, his monotone [...]