Luke Jones and Nestor get real about Orioles attendance, growth and realities of the brand
Nestor Aparicio 34:01
I’m gonna move the conversation your direction, that you’re not all you don’t always love this one. It’s more of an off season thing for ticket sales and where they are and the positioning of the brand. I have not has Katie Griggs made herself known to you or anybody else? I mean, is she been a part of the media thing?
Luke Jones 34:18
I don’t, I mean, and obviously, with me doing double duty, I’m not, you’re not there all the time for every minute, but I don’t believe so Nestor. I mean, I don’t you know if she hasn’t
Nestor Aparicio 34:29
greeted everybody in the back of the press box or done any of that. So I don’t even know, physically in Baltimore, I don’t know anything about Katie Griggs, other than they hired her and I’ve read her resume. Um, she’s got her hands full. I mean, you got a team here since second year of being really good, really competitive and winning, they have television problems all the way around with mass and they have a new ownership. I see things that they’re changing. And if I were writing about this, I see they have put, um, a camera on a string around the base of the state. If they’re getting new angles for television, that’s
Luke Jones 35:02
great, by the way, just seeing that in the press box and seeing the I commend them on that, because that’s some of the best production I’ve seen from massen. So that I do like because I’ve
Nestor Aparicio 35:13
seen, yeah, I please, I interrupt you all the time. Um, so I’m watching it on television because I have been abused by the new people, and I’m I will be writing about this in the next two weeks before Labor Day, as you labor and I sit here watching the games on TV as a radio station owner, a lifetime local journalist, and everybody seems to think that’s okay. It’s not okay. Wouldn’t be okay if they did it to you would be okay if they did it the bo small wouldn’t be okay. If they did it to Jerry Coleman, it wouldn’t be okay. So all of that being said, I’m watching it from $65 come see us all month, right? For two months, 130 bucks. You go every night. You don’t get a seat, but there’s plenty of seats to be had. My boy, Ozzy Hazel was in one of them, and I featured him on Sunday because he’s probably the biggest sports fan I’ve ever met. I’ve ever known who’s still there. They put him on television, and Jim Palmer doesn’t know who he is. And I’m like, that’s kind of a shame that Jim Palmer’s never met. Ozzy doesn’t know who the real fans are, like Ed Lauer, the guys that are out there every day, not the press box, people like you that are there free. Get paid to be there. You know, get free part. I’m talking about people that pay and go every night and buy concessions and get on a bus, a plane, a train, park their car, all of the ancillary, let alone go off to Toronto or Tampa and put the Baltimore B hat on with the floppy hat that, apparently, you got me a couple of weeks ago that I didn’t really want, but I’ll take it. I’ll wear it. Um, I see a lot of empty seats. I see the Red Sox in town. I see on nights when they bobblehead, a lot of people are there. I had some flippant conversations in Ocean City with people who are Oriole fans, who were mistreated by Angelos in regard to government, who come up to me in different ways and say things. And I had a really sort of off the cuff conversation over, like, the third beer secrets on maybe Thursday night with an old friend, and I said I was I was a dick. And I’m like, what are they going to grow the brand? They have a great team. They have great young players. They do run the bases. They do. Kids are free. They do. Here’s a bobblehead. Here’s another bobblehead. They do. Here’s a selfie. Day. Their television production is K Fay. It is, it’s, it’s almost laughable in the way that ravens media is. It’s just so much cheerleading and so much all the social medias that way. In regard to sports teams, it’s it’s become usurped while sports writers who criticize them, or fans that are pissed at Craig Kimball or wherever that is. But the the bottom line is revenue. The bottom line is intro, I’m interested in the Orioles. They haven’t gotten a nickel out of me. Didn’t even get any money that day. I went down and sat in the box seats because I got the tickets for free. And other people and other people bought me beer, thinking maybe I did buy a beer earlier this year because I wanted to honor Mr. Rubenstein, until I met his people, and then I stopped spending money, and my wife stopped watching, and she’s on the hiking and breaking her ankle and doing other things. I’m 55 years old. I’m not going to go down there and be mistreated, but I’m a media guy whose last name’s Aparicio, and I’m the pariah and the free the birds guy and the anti Greg Bader and Auntie Jennifer grandall, although I’ve never met her and never spoken to her, so all of this being said, That’s my ax. But I sit here and I watch it on TV and say they’re really good. They’ve had all year to sell tickets. The Red Sox aren’t down. The Red Sox usually take up 1012, 15,000 tickets. I know their brand has been in decline ahead Dan Shaughnessy on last week about that this is their time to grow. It’s not October when they’re charging $400 for playoff tickets and then you’re only going to get rich people. Ozzy can’t afford that. My girl, Melanie and Don talk has been a season ticket order for 30 years. She couldn’t afford playoff tickets last year, so somebody else will be in those seats in the playoffs, and they’ll sell them, and it’ll be, God forbid, they have empty tickets for playoff games. I don’t think that could possibly happen. Uh, it happens in other places, but I don’t think it could possibly happen here, but there is a price point for them to really piss off their Birdland membership people. I’m not one of them. I mentioned pika earlier. He’s one of the few people that I’ve ever had a conversation with ever in my life about Birdland memberships or discounts, and it’s only because I went to opening day with pika, and he was telling me, I go over there and I get my beer for that. I go over there and I get a discount. I use my points, and I can get a free ad or a ball or like, I don’t know, I’m Marriott reward member Southwest Airlines, and I know the value of all that and credit card, but I’ve never examined the Birdland thing because I’ve never thought about giving them a nickel, let alone giving them $1 because of the way I’ve been treated from the old group to the new group. That being said, I watched this. I wonder when the there is going to get there. And it’s going to really get built and be as mature as it needs to be, because when fans are getting nickel and dime for $1 here or $2 there, that’s how they’re keeping Adley rutschman. That’s how they’re keeping gunner Henderson, they need to generate revenue from you, the public, the fans, everybody needs to go give them a lot of money in one way or another, whether it’s cable television, whether it’s buying a tchotchke, whether it’s going down there to eat boobs barbecue. Happy birthday, Boog, I’m honoring you number 26 of 26 oysters. But do you feel like it’s growing or do you feel like it’s plateaued in a point where everybody who was ever an Orioles fans run back because they’re good now they’re good. I’ve run back. I’m watching them every night and giving them money. And there’s a lot of people like me that could sit here and watch the games on TV and never go down there and still be very supportive of the team. But just the optics are one thing. The revenue is the most important thing, because at the end of the day, this Birdland membership thing last week was about somebody recalibrating, oh, we’re good. We can charge him more. And I’m thinking, dude, I grew up in Dundalk. I mean, I’m I’m ball, I I’m as Dutch Ruppersberger once said he’s real bomber. I don’t know where this money’s coming from. And that was my thought to you. That was my thought that Kurt battenhausen is we’re talking about franchise values, because this team’s really good, and they need to grow this thing, and they can’t wait till next year to do it. This is it. They, they’ve, they’ve got people’s attention. I was down at Secrets Oriole hats. They got people’s attention. Now, when are they going to get their money?
Luke Jones 41:37
Yeah, I mean a couple things. And full disclosure, I have not studied the Birdland membership information and price points and all that into all I
Nestor Aparicio 41:46
know is everybody’s pissed off. So it must be something. These are the fans who are the biggest fans.
Luke Jones 41:50
Correct? Yes, correct. So I couple things. Look, prices are always going to go up in anything, right? Prices are going to go up. However, when there’s a price increase coupled with a diminishing of what you are getting, which is what I understand. A lot of people seem to be upset. I’ve seen multiple people, whether it’s just on my social media, a couple articles I’ve seen, you know, whether there was a banner or the sun, whatever, people that have mentioned that. Look, I understand that I’m going to pay a little bit more. But then when you reduce my discount in concert with that, it’s the same thing as, like, when people are ticked off at the grocery inflation and tax, yeah, exactly. Or, or the bag of chips is more expensive, and I look at it, and the bag’s gotten smaller also. So it’s inflation and shrinkflation, right? So, you know, when you hear some of that stuff. So I so I think that’s, you know, that’s part of it. I think there is absolutely a big picture, you know, tug of war going on here, where you say, You know what look I stuck with you. I was there even when fans came back in 2021 and I was there at the beginning of 22 I was there back in 2018 and 19 and more. So specifically 19 because 18, they actually tried to win. That was, that was the mistake at the end of the
Nestor Aparicio 43:05
video. Paid to watch Rio Ruiz play their face. You were there, right? So
Luke Jones 43:10
there’s a thought with that. When you say, look, I gave you money in 19, not 20, because of covid, 2122 I gave you guys money then you were, you deliberately were not trying to win at that point. Yes, they, they didn’t enter tanking in terms of, they were really good and then got really bad on purpose, because we know that it completely fell apart. But they did nothing to push that process along at the major league level in terms of getting better, in terms of spending money on veteran players or anything like that. You know, we know that understood as a paying customer who was still supporting the team financially at a time when they were not trying at the major league level, they’ve gotten good. That’s great. I’ve enjoyed it. I understand at some point in time that the prices were going to go up. But where is your where is the commitment from ownership in the front office to ensure that my money is going to be well spent in terms of an extension for a gunner Henderson, or maybe more in the more immediate let’s talk about Anthony Santander on maybe a three or four year contract for him that we wouldn’t have talked about three months ago. Where is the commitment when it comes to something along those lines, to say, Hey, you’re going to be charging more money, but we we’ve given gunner Henderson a contract extension. Well, the
Nestor Aparicio 44:31
crazy thing is, they’re charging more money, and the understanding between you and I is Corbin burns isn’t going to be her opening day next year. They’re gonna, they’re gonna, they’re not gonna go with an opening day. They’re gonna go with the strip state shrimp station going, they’re good. I mean, I like them. They’re fine, but they’re not filet mignon and, um, you know, and because we don’t pay for that here, we can’t, we can’t afford that. We’re small market. We are. We gonna afford this if we don’t afford so this shell game. And this guy, Rubinstein for the hats, and Mr. Dancy and Mr. Magoo running around and all that. Dude, I have you under review. You and the Whistler, you’re all under review, like my press credential, and I’m reviewing this with the public right now, and I’m concerned. And my flippant friend who loves the Orioles, he says they’re not gonna grow the brand. It’s an old white people’s game. And he looked around everybody here’s old and white. He’s talking about the politicians that were in the room. They’re watching the baseball game. Go down the street and see what’s going on down, you know, anywhere else in Ocean City where young people are and other people have other things to do. And I thought about this from the ocean city standpoint. I thought, when you’re Ocean City and you charge too much for a hotel room on Friday or Saturday night, the general notion is somebody else to come along and pay for it. So everybody loves the beach. Everybody loves the beach. They’ll go down. They’ll pay for it on fourth of July weekend, upcharging all of that, paying a little bit more to convenience store, which we’re all, can we’re all but there are, is not an unlimited amount of baseball fans. There’s you and me and the people you see down there. They are the ones who love baseball and recruiting new people to baseball. Okay, I’ll hear that. I mean, my elementary school’s celebrating 100 years on Thursday, Colgate Elementary in the east side of town. My son still lives there. My son lives in the house my parents lived in. He’s second generation Venezuelan and Hispanic living in a neighborhood. He’s a gringo like me. He’s living in a neighborhood where 72% of the people are Hispanic, and it’s a Hispanic sport. We talked about Suarez, we talked about Santa all these guys you want to give money to, they’re all they all look like me and boxed out of the press box. By the way, I’m the only Hispanic journalist here. So if you’re talking about a population that likes baseball, there’s a Hispanic part here. There’s an African American part here that is non existent in their in their scope of fandom, except for Ozzy. You they put on television, they like to put the people of color and kids and, you know, people that don’t look like all white people on television to say, Hey, you’re welcome to that’s great. You know that that’s cool, but they’re not coming, and they’re not I don’t know if it’s interest price point. I hate downtown, all of the usual tropes. The bottom line is they should be growing their brand, and part of growing your brand isn’t scalping your own pissing off your own customers in the middle of a penny race like whatever they did, they didn’t piss me off. They pissed me off for 25 years, by the way they behaved, but they’ve angered their own people who are writing these checks, and they’re the only ones that are going to write these checks. There are no fortune 500 companies here. They finally got T Rowe on board. It took them years to do that, and they’re going to do a naming rights thing for the stadium, I guess, to try to get some revenue. But this is no longer Peter Angelo’s checking out and his goofy kid that we’ve seen for years be goofy. This is now Major League Baseball coming in with these billionaires. I saw Eric get his own with ripkens kid this week I met that guy didn’t meet, didn’t get the guy that was given the free beer out when I met him. Now that being said, these are the people running this, and they don’t live here. And Katie Griggs is she didn’t know where Dundalk or Highland town is, and she’s coming in here and relying on Greg Bader and Jennifer grandall and TJ Brightman to say, Well, what do we have? What’s the situation where our fans, we discounted this, we discounted that. We got a television problem. How are we going to do this? We’ll charge them more. Wow. Or let’s go find new fans. Well, I don’t even see him recruiting dude. I didn’t see a billboard on the way to the beach. I don’t see them doing anything outside of having Melanie Newman eat chips and and and and the games themselves, where the pregames Terrible, they have nothing, no programming all day, and they’re they’re catering to the people they have. And now, last week, they just said, we’re gonna give you less value and charge you more. Come on in, because it feels to me like they don’t know where the next 50 or 100,000 Oriole fans are coming from. And a couple of years into this, I’m worried about them, about that, for them, on behalf of their ability, and their ability to step up and say, We’re small market team Rubenstein. Three years now, we’re we bought a small market team. We only paid 1,000,000,007 for it. We’re small market team. Sorry, gunner had to go play for the Dodgers. Well, and Scott Boris will be the bad guy. I’m thinking like Angelo’s would think, well, 25 millions enough for Mr. He’s agent. You know, like, it’s easy to do that when you don’t sign a player. The the Red Sox are doing that over bets right now? Well,
Luke Jones 49:42
I mean, a couple things that come to mind. I mean, kind of going back to what I said a few minutes ago. I mean, you had your base, small as it might be, but your base that was continuing to support the team, they were sold this idea that the money that was being. Being saved in terms of Major League payroll, yes, was being reinvested in other aspects of the organization. But we know that not all of that, you know, not all of a, what was once a $150 million payroll, goes into player development, right? It’s
Nestor Aparicio 50:13
a, it’s amazing. You go down to Sarasota, and I haven’t been in there because I’ve been boxed out. I I’ve never had a media pass in Sarasota since they mean, they’ve been there 15 years, and I’ve never, never been allowed in ever, right? But I see that facility when I drop you off at the front door, because I’m like, driving Mr. Luke, when I’m in Florida, I drop you off at the front door, and you go into that building, and you’re like, hey, it’s really nice. And they spent, yeah, they spent the kind of money. They spent 3 million for. They spent nothing. They spent a backup middle infielder like I mean, but things are, they have improved things. I know there’s no doubt about it, but improving the team is the ultimate capital expense to think about what it’s going to cost to sign any of these kids.
Luke Jones 50:54
So this is so this is where you start to run into the problem, though, specifically with the perception of fans, when you raise prices and you cut amenities in what you’re getting is there was a perception. And this is why people not and this isn’t a Baltimore thing. This is a major league baseball thing. This is why people, fans are leery me, media members are leery of these long term rebuilds because they sell it as though they’re saving up this treasure, treasure chest in the meantime of rebuilding and focusing on player development and drafting and and growing arms, growing bats, not spending at the major league level, with the idea that when the time comes, you’ll have all this money to augment and to retain your young stars, so you’re sold that, and I’m not well here, it’s
Nestor Aparicio 51:44
even worse, because we’ve had Angelo’s. I mean, we’ve been lied to openly forever. It’s a little different than the trust you would put in the St Louis Cardinals or even the Kansas City Royals, or some of these other friendly midway where ownerships been trying hard, maybe a little can’t get out of its own way. Ownership here has been derelict for a generation of horrific Ness, like all the way through. So these people have to be extra better, extra better. Like Mr. Rubenstein given out hats behind home, place like that, something. It’s almost like Trump thrown at toilet paper down in Puerto Rico, like, Oh, that’s nice. And it they’re all about the Johnny Bravo optics. I mean, that’s who they are. That’s what I’m seeing from the Rubinstein people. Is everything has to be look good. It has to look good. Well, looking good and being good is different. You know what I mean? Well,
Luke Jones 52:37
and I will say, and this is where I’ll stick up for them a little bit. They have not owned the team for an off season, yet at the trade deadline, they did take on salary. Now, was this a salary to push it into top 10 payroll, or top 12 or even top half of the league payroll? No, of course not, but they took on Zach efflon contract next year, which I don’t think would have happened two years ago, with John A in charge. So there are signs of that. But again, you’re asking people to spend more and receive less, and there still hasn’t been that smoking gun. Oh my gosh. Look at the financial commitment that they just made. You know if gunner Henderson had been extended, if they had announced a contract extension for Anthony Santander for, I don’t know name your price point, three or $75 million before they announced to their but they
Nestor Aparicio 53:29
did put Tickets on sale for 130 bucks for the rest of the year. I thought the place, and they did not mobbed, but I thought like, oh, I mean, they’ll they’ll get the optics they want. They’ll get asses in the seats. They’ll be people in the upper deck. There’ll be people there. And that didn’t feel the feeling for me over the weekend, like, like the way I thought it would, especially with college kids going back to school and whatnot, I thought, like, there would just be a lot of I thought people would start coming and make me wrong. I’m not wrong. I’m right. They they have and I’m gonna write to the owners soon about all of this. Katie Griggs has a lot of work to do to undo damage caused by Angelos. The notion that we’re not a big market. We don’t have a lot of money. The fan base is limited. There’s a team in DC, the all. There’s a team in Philadelphia. You go up to Aberdeen and go past there, there’s another team. So they have a this is a challenging economic environment for them, and especially challenge when they basically say you can come for almost free, for a couple bucks, for for one check will let you come for two months and sit anywhere you want. And the most important games of the year when the weather’s good and people aren’t, people didn’t take advantage of that in the way that optically I thought they would. And I I’ve spoken to you for 11 months now, since last year, when my wife and I went down there for the clinch games last year, and there were 18, 20,000 people there. And I thought, it’s not the way it looked in major league in the movie, you know, night they clinched, the place got packed. Everybody came. You know, everybody wanted to be in on it. Everybody want to have that Delman young moment, you know what I mean? And you don’t have a lot of moments like that. Come on, man, you’ve been watching, you’ve been watching baseball your whole life, waiting for anything to happen ever like look, you’re, you’re still waiting to see a playoff win other than Delmon young, you know, so. But I would say those moments for fans, and just said it, though they haven’t had a moment. Okay, fair enough.
Luke Jones 55:25
You just said it. They haven’t won anything yet. And I’ve said this to you over and over, and I’ll continue to say it. This is a dial. It’s not a light switch. When you have as much damage was done to their brand for as long as it was, people don’t come back overnight. I think, a good comparison right now. Couple things here. First of all, two years ago, when they first started getting to the point where they were respectable again, there were 23rd in attendance. They were averaging 17,000 people. They’re up to 28 so there’s there’s been growth now. Has it been amazing growth? Has it been earth shattering, shocking? Oh my gosh. This is a powder keg kind of growth. No, not at all. There are 18th in attendance. I think I’d say a relative, relevant comparison right now is go look at what they were in 2014 a similar point that were two years into being good. 2014 was the peak of the buck Showalter era in terms of wins and losses on the field. And they got to the ALCS that year. By
Nestor Aparicio 56:29
the way, Master was printing money at that point too. I mean, they were very flush, sure, and they weren’t putting up the team. The money never went to the team. I’ll make that clear for anybody that knows that. I know, because of the poison pill, anything they gave themselves they would have to give to the nationals. But they were the angels family. Was very, very flush, feeling so good that they gave Chris Davis money, quite frankly, right? Sure.
Luke Jones 56:48
And we saw the payroll go up the following year, and they raised ticket prices, if you recall, and that probably that kind of, you know, they probably missed the mark there. And then, then it certainly didn’t help that wasn’t soon thereafter that they got bad again, and obviously. But you know, in 2014 they were 13th in attendance. They were at 30,800 was their average attendance. 2024 a decade later, at a similar point in time, in terms of they’ve been good for a couple years now, they’re 18, 28,000 so you look at it, that’s, you know, roughly 2500 people. Has that been what they lost, in terms of, you know, just that the five years of some of them are dead. I mean, like over 10 years, well, I mean, I, I
Nestor Aparicio 57:37
hear, you know, whatever, gone, just gone. There are
Luke Jones 57:41
still young people do like baseball. I mean, like, you know, that’s like it enough to pay for it, and I Well, and that’s fair, that’s fair. But I think you look at all of these factors, and I think there needs to be sustainability here. They haven’t won anything yet. We’ve talked about this kind of with the rave we’re having, the conversation about the ravens, not so much in terms of attendance or anything like that. I mean, the Ravens have been what they’ve been for a quarter century now,
Nestor Aparicio 58:14
on Friday. So be careful. I
Luke Jones 58:15
don’t care. I don’t right, I don’t care about that. Though, you know, it’s preseason. It’s not, not real, not you couldn’t give tickets away for that at this point in time. But in terms of the Orioles, like I said, it’s a dial. Has it? Has attendance improved? Has their following improved? Of course, it has, you know, couldn’t have gotten much worse than it was five years ago, especially throwing covid into the mix there and considering that. But they’ve got to continue that. They’ve got to maintain. And that’s why I’ve said to me, raising prices is one thing, or cutting back on the discount is is one thing, doing both in concert without having made that smoking gun. Oh my gosh, they just made a massive financial commitment in terms of extending gunner Anderson, or resigning Anthony Santander or extending Adley Ross, you know, pick. Take your pick. You know, whoever you want to pick in that conversation that, yeah, tick to tick some people off. And I can understand that. I certainly can do I think that it’s a fatal blow. Do I think that means they can’t continue to grow their their brand, no, but they’ve got to continue to work hard. And I’ve made the point to you. I said this a couple weeks ago. Houston Astros, they’ve had a decade now. They’ve won championships. They’ve been in the playoffs every year all of that. Go look at their promotion schedule. They do bobbleheads and all kinds of stuff all the time. I think that’s part of what you just need to do in this day and age. You’ve got to incentivize people to come to the ballpark. In addition to the understood part of this, that is the biggest part of this, of it’s got to be a good product, it’s got to be a winning product, but you need bells and whistles. Whistles. And I think people will pay money for those bells and whistles, but you have to have bells and whistles to go with it. So they’ve got to continue to maintain that. And again, for these fans, for these Birdland memberships, for these people that have been their base, you know, the people that were out there in 2021 or 2019 when they were god awful, they’ve got to realize that they’ve got to continue to work hard to attract more people like that, and it’s a dial, and yeah, they’re going to have to break through. It’s going to be tough for them to get where they might want to go, from a brand vision standpoint, for them to not at least make a World Series at some point here in the next few years. Because you know, otherwise, then you get complacent, even as a fan base, you know, we’re Ravens. That’s, that was the point I was trying to make, the Ravens waiting for Lamar and this current era of ravens football to break through in January. You know, it’s not good enough just to get to the playoffs anymore, right? It isn’t. I
Nestor Aparicio 1:00:55
think if you asked, yeah, there’s no game in October that’s going to matter for them this year or right? That’s, that’s a fact.
Luke Jones 1:01:01
Well, I mean, yeah, right, for the ravens, for the Orioles, all the games matter, and they got, they’ve got to break through. So look, this is, we’ll continue to talk about this, because this is, there’s a lot of meat on the bone here. But, yeah, I think for me, it was the double whammy of raising prices and lowering the perks. Yeah, that that’s a double whammy that ticks people off when you haven’t won anything yet, when you haven’t truly made that. Oh my gosh. Look at the financial commitment they just made to resign gunner Henderson, or to resign Anthony Santander. You do those things before you’ve done that. That’s where people, you know, their skepticism lingers. Not saying it’s all skepticism, but it lingers until until you show otherwise. Luke
Nestor Aparicio 1:01:42
Jones is covering all things Orioles baseball all week long. I’m Nestor. He’s Luke. We are W, N, S, T am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking Baltimore positive.
