Show Me The (TV) Money

You are. Contracts can be renegotiated, right?

Just sign here:

But it really is a bargain when you compare it to the other league and college TV packages out there. And the cost for a yearly MLB.TV sub runs me less than going to a single game when you throw in all of the expenses associated with being an out-of towner and spending a night in a major league city.
Personally, I don’t care where the Cubs end up being broadcast as long as MLB.TV remains available and stays at under $200 a year.

For starters, I hope the Cubs win every World Series from now until the end of time regardless of how many games are on WGN America.

However, if the Cubs continue their losing ways and don’t have any games on WGN America, I see the national fan appeal eroding. That national fan base wouldn’t erode overnight.

Perish the thought, let’s say the Cubs have bad seasons from now until 2019. Let’s say that the Cubs don’t have any games on WGN America from 2015-2019. Under those circumstances, there’s no way that the Cubs will have as many fans outside of Chicagoland as they do now.

Perhaps, with the potential increased revenue the Cubs could get from TV deals that don’t involve WGN could help the Cubs become more competitive. Thus, because the Cubs would be more competitive, the team could expand its fanbase because of good old-fashioned winning. The Red Sox and Yankees have national fanbases because of winning. I know that’s the argument for potentially dropping WGN.

The Cubs had better think hard about not having a TV contract with WGN. Sure, if the Cubs can get a lot of extra money from not including WGN, I’d do the deal. However, if the Cubs only get a little extra money from not including WGN, I wouldn’t do it.

The Bulls, Blackhawks and White Sox all get a bigger share of CSN — and presumably a bigger share of the ad dollars there — and the Cubs get their own network.

You’re right, I don’t think any of those three teams could sustain a network of their own.

RSNs make a lot of money for teams via every cable customer paying a piece of it. Maybe they can try and not screw WGN Ch. 9 out of the games but get a fraction of the fee generated by carrying WGN superstation, which is how Cubs fans nationwide see the Cubs. Maybe they can set up a deal where WGN superstation becomes like a quasi-RSN for them.

And yes, Cubs games on WGN date back to 1948 (when WGN went on the air). Cubs were on WGN longer than Bozo when Bozo was around. Bozo was arguably bigger with its 12 year waiting list for tickets. Imagine waiting 12 years for tickets to any regular Cubs game. Yikes.

As kid growing there from 1966 through 1974, Wrigley Field was a pretty empty place sometimes, even during the Banks-Santo-Williams et al heyday. Not until WGN went national and especially with the additon of Harry Caray, did Wrigley and the Cubs become a Destination.

I don’t think there was any real momentum getting built for a national Cubs fanbase before 1982, when Harry Caray came and the Cubs began to improve their play on the field. Cubs fandom didn’t really proliferate in a big way until 1984, when the Cubs won their first division title.

Again, I’d love for the Cubs to be a consistent playoff team and keep their fanbase that way, so the issue of having games on WGN America becomes a nonissue in maintaining a national fanbase. My point is that the Cubs have a safety net, if you will, in WGN America, even if the Cubs are bad. If you have the combination of the Cubs losing on the field with no coverage on WGN America, the Cubs will be in real trouble in maintaining their fanbase.

Now Airplane II: The Sequel, err, the Winnipeg Jets.

Despite the fact that Atlanta has had major pro sports since 1966, I still think the most popular sports team in Atlanta is a football team in Athens.

Seriously, though, this news about the current deals running through 2019 just ruined my day.

I don’t see a world in which the Cubs can compete with the big boys for top free agents… well, until 2020. They foolishly signed away a hundred million dollars a year – money that their competitors are going to be using to sign Roy Halladays and Yu Darvishes.

How does anyone sign away their TV rights for decades on end? How anyone you possibly project what the contract might look like even 5 years out?

What a gigantic bummer.

… by having the blackouts lifted, so anyone can watch CubsNet (or whatever it’s called) anywhere.

Bud Selig will have to be out of office first, though.

Okay, there’s men’s basketball. Problem is, the good games are going to be picked up by other networks. And no one really cares about the Big10’s 2nd through 5th most interesting mens basketball games. And even if people DID care, these teams only play so many games. It would add (at most) another 30-50 days of interesting programming.

The market for Big10 sports beyond football and men’s basketball is approximately zero.

The Cubs can point to 162 days of their primary attraction. That’s almost half the year, and it’s substantially more than the Big10 Network has to offer.

Plus another 30 days of spring training games, and offseason “hot stove” shows like what MLB Network has, except, obviously, Cub-centric.

Given the Rangers and Angels deals, I doubt WGN will have the resources to keep the Cubs.

Some say about $40 million per team, some say more.

So Comcast would presumably need half a billion dollars to be made whole. The Cubs aren’t going to be able to do that.

I think we should get used to the idea that the Cubs are going to be a de facto mid-market team for a while. They can’t compete with the TV money the smart teams are making. They aren’t even in the same zip code.

They’re starting each year literally a hundred million dollars in the hole. That buys an awful lot of on-field talent.

… despite being a mediocre to bad team the last three years, and only 40% of games on WGN.

I can see what South Side Expat is talking about, but I don’t see that as being doom and gloom as he does.

… this is one of the biggest reasons the Cubs became the #1 team in Chicago. In 1967, it could have easily gone the other way — the Sox had been good for almost two decades and the Cubs had been bad.

But the TV choices helped make the teams what they are now.

…was having the father of modern advertising, Albert Lasker, as the team’s principal stockholder from 1916-25, as well as having William Wrigley, Lasker’s junior partner, waiting in the wings to take over the team knowing that once his family name was above the ballpark entrance, the “Wrigley” brand would receive priceless free publicity on a daily basis from virtually all major media outlets in the USA.

That’s why until World War II, the Cubs gave away broadcast rights to any radio station that wanted to cover games at Wrigley Field, and why the same practice was used by P.K. Wrigley in the early days of television, when all Cubs home games could be seen in Chicago on three channels.

For the years 1925-49, the value-added benefit of publicizing the Wrigley brand by giving away broadcast rights made sense, but once the innovations of Wrigley’s baseball competitors began to strangle the franchise, he partnered with the Trib, selling that organization not only exclusive TV and, ultimately, radio rights, but also a direct financial stake in the franchise.

There should be no mystery why Wrigley I bought the team from Lasker, why Wrigley II refused to sell the franchise despite his inability and/or unwillingness to compete on modern terms, and why Wrigley III took what may have been a lowball offer from the Trib when his estate tax liabilities as well as the skyrocketing costs of player free agency forced him to sell the team in 1981. In each instance, securing the Wrigley name above the ballpark entrance appears to have been a principal motivation.

In terms of marketing genius, it’s only fair to say: “Well done, gentlemen.” Through a combination of luck, drive and salesmanship Lasker, the Wrigleys, and the Trib built a unique business model – a sports franchise largely impervious to financial peril as it continues to sell the Wrigley brand – now not only to move mountains of chewing gum, but also to market the ballpark that became a brand – baseball’s most sacred venue, Wrigley Field.

…for a new stadium in 1988.

Of the many reports of possible moves that followed the Sox during their 20 years in the wilderness, the one I liked best was Charley O’s very public offer to move his Oakland A’s roster to Chicago to play as the 1976 White Sox. Under the Finley Plan, the old original Comiskey Sox would have been packed up and sold to Seattle interests to settle a lawsuit filed by that city against MLB for moving the expansion Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee after that team’s one disastrous season in 1969.

This transfer would have been great for Chicago baseball had it been approved. Finley presumably would have been able to pay his stars the going rate, and fans here could have enjoyed watching Reggie, Bando, Rudi, Campy, Vida and the rest play in several AL Championship Series while representing Charlie O’s home town of Chicago.

Kenny Holtzman would have been back in town to nail down his customary 20 wins, while Bill North, another ex-Cub, would have been roaming center at Comiskey and leading the league in stolen bases until the productive Finley Sox minor league system brought up another Chicago native, Rickey Henderson, to begin his Hall of Fame career in 1979.

It all made too much sense for Chicago fans, but Phil Wrigley predictably was opposed, while the old guard Chicago media completely rejected the concept while welcoming the return of Bill Veeck as owner of the old, original, and then-moribund Comiskey Sox.

Amazingly, after 15 years in exile, Veeck now represented the interests of baseball’s establishment, ready to screw Finley the same way he himself had been forced out of baseball in 1953 by being denied the chance to move his St. Louis Browns to Milwaukee.

If Charlie O had been able to bring the A’s here, it would have been no contest as to which team ruled Chicago baseball. The Cubs had been mothballed by the Wrigleys in ‘73 at the end of the Santo-Williams Era, Phil was in his dotage, Salty Saltwell was the caretaker GM, and it doesn’t take much imagination to realize that the 1976 Finley Sox would have instantly become the most popular team in town.