Right now the Orioles are the best team in the AL, 2nd best record in baseball, and they have 22nd best attendance in baseball, and 10th of 15 in the AL, to show for it. Granted attendance is up 24%, higher than the MLB average 9%, but that still does not reach the level to come anywhere close to the big teams, who in order to crack into the top 10 they would need an attendance boost of 50% on top of what they already have.
Also as a counter to your claim, Tampa has been consistently good for years now, though they have a random off year here and there, and they are 27th. There is no evidence that if they just spent money, then they would suddenly gain the extra 100m+ in revenue they would need to keep the team together.
Now it is possible with the renovations, and if they can actually do something about the city to make people willing to go there, that something like that could boost attendance, but I have not found an example of a team in MLB that went from the bottom of attendance to the top tier just by having a good product.
Well, couple things here:
a) raising ticket prices isn't the end of the world. If you consistently put a product on the field that's worth watching, like many of the big market teams do, fans will pay a higher price for tickets. Willfully. That's pretty universally true.
b) Tampa (and Florida in general, quite frankly), in your example, struggles in two aspects. One, they rarely have any actual "star" players. They have a roster full of very good players, but nobody that the fanbase can get behind, because they won't be there long enough to get invested in. Star players is what drive people to come to the stadium.
Second, and most importantly, Tampa is basically a really shitty shorts town across the board. They've never really supported baseball at all, the stadium is in St. Pete, which is effectively an old person's village, and frankly they never support the Bucs that much either before Brady got there.
In most situations, teams attendance will rise and fall with the product on the field. See places like Kansas City, Cleveland, Houston, etc. Houston's attendance was putrid in their "rebuilding" years. That's a pretty big market with lots of $ to spend. KC stadium was full during the brief period they were WS contenders (and winners).
c) It's a major fallacy to suggest the team can't operate in the short term at a loss. They certainly can. 10 teams had negative operating income in 2022 alone. Some of them with very large amounts of negative operating income. It's not a requirement of the business that they be profitable every year. That's an Angelos choice.
d) Raising ticket prices isn't the only way to generate higher revenue. In fact, it's not even the best way. The best way would be either to put a product out on the field that MASN will actually pay you more $ to broadcast for, or create/spin-off into your own RSN.
The Yankees did almost $400M in revenue more than the Orioles last year. Gate receipts were about $250M of that, which is substantial. Orioles will never get to the gate receipt level of the Yankees due to pricing and just lack of brand name, but they can bridge the gap.
The other $150M is the difference between what the YES network pays to broadcast Yankee games, and what MASN pays to broadcast Orioles games.
Because of the Orioles declining controlling interest in MASN, and the fact they're required to re-negotiate every five years with the Nationals for broadcast rights, they really don't have a good "deal" compared to how other markets have structured their RSN agreements.
www.cbssports.com
