They’ve gathered for many years to discuss how to lift the Baltimore sports community and how local business and humans support it all. Finally, Georgetown sports business professor Marty Conway joins Nestor on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour at Amicci’s in Little Italy to discuss the commerce and future of professional sports in Maryland.
Nestor Aparicio and Marty Conway discuss the evolving business of sports, focusing on the Baltimore Orioles and the NFL. They highlight the importance of internationalizing sports brands, citing the NFL’s global reach and the NBA’s 35% foreign-born players. Conway emphasizes the need for proactive communication and fan engagement strategies, noting the Orioles’ current challenges in ticket sales and fan interest. They discuss the impact of ownership changes and the necessity for sustained success. Conway also stresses the importance of creating and curating fans, leveraging media, and community involvement to build a loyal fan base.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sports business, Baltimore Orioles, fan engagement, media strategy, international markets, NFL scheduling, Amazon Prime, Netflix games, fan experience, ticket sales, player acquisition, community involvement, sports marketing, fan demographics, sports franchises
SPEAKERS
Marty Conway, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Okay. Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive. We are in a place that I’ve I’ve had a lot of marinara here. I’ve had some big boy grown up grape soda. Here we are at the bar enemy cheese. We’re in Little Italy. It’s all brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery. Raven scratch offs get way. We got a holiday party going on behind us. Everybody’s going to be big winners here today. Also our friends at Jiffy Lube, multi care put us out on the road. Luke’s getting us ready for the Steelers this week. Houston on Christmas night, we got lots of friends stopping by today. We’re going to be a cost us on Wednesday. There’s a rumor that Hall of Famer Gina shock will be stopping by on Wednesday too, but I get all Hall of Famers here. Sam sess is going to be coming by today from WTMD. John maroon is going to be here. Alan McCallum and friends going to be here. Chris Corman from the Baltimore banner, where, when this thing all implodes, I’m going to need a job, so I’m glad that he’s coming by. And we’re going to begin things with a guy that’s never done this next to me, you know, and it’s terrible. When i i sent out the APB to all my friends, Marty Conway, amongst everybody, I said, I’m gonna be doing Coco he’s gonna be doing fadley. He’s gonna be doing Gertrude. It’s gonna gonna be doing Costas. All my traditional crab cake places, and all my buddies picked a meat cheese. And they don’t have a crab cake here, so I don’t even know if this is the real crab cake tour or not, but we’re gonna have a pan a rotundo here, but I’ve already had calamari, so I’ve already gone to the sea, so there’s been a seafood element here. And if I see food, I eat it. But happy holidays, man, I’m good. Thanks. Good to be here. How is the good professor from Georgetown University and all of these other sports business things? It’s great time to be talking about sports business. Why bother you so much? Bring you on. Because it is, it is a it’s a vibrant topic. And I think even when I have Chris Corman here, or Alan talking baseball later today, or whether it’s the ravens and where sports are going, the money in the business. And I think as we all figure out, where’s the game? Is it on Netflix, Apple, TV, Amazon. That’s all coming with football playoffs the next couple weeks, where this confusion reigns and you sit in the middle of it, honest. Marty Randy Orioles for many years back in the 80s, in sales departments as well as the Texas Rangers and Major League Baseball. Also America Online, just as a full for anybody that doesn’t know Marty’s work, but you teach this. And I had Mark Hyman on since the last time we got together from Maryland, talking about journalism students, which I would have been that guy. But I think as life has evolved, I probably if I went back to college, I’d be in your class, right? I’d be in the sports that’s where my head is. And I remember when I was a kid saying that Jack Gibbons was my boss, like, who cares about the business of sports? I mean, I don’t care about that. You know, if you don’t care about that, you can’t address major league baseball, let alone Oriole baseball in an off season in this way, right? I mean, and I think the fans are figuring out now, well, Mr. Rubenstein’s got big pockets, but there is the business behind it, the stadium. What the Ravens have done that needs to cultivate the vibrancy. As I look through all my old Baltimore Colts stuff that’s gone,
Marty Conway 03:11
yeah, yeah, no, the mixture of sports business and now media is a pool of you know, it’s a common area that you’re right, you can no longer just separate the reporting of sports, say, on the field, compared to the reporting of Sports Business Media. We’re gonna have two games on Christmas Day from Netflix. For the first time, all eyes are going to be on what’s the quality? How many people tuned in? Subscriptions, all those different things. That’s going to be the story. The NBA used to own Christmas Day, right? Five or six games, everybody focused on that. The NFL said, Excuse me, we’re just going to elbow you out there because Christmas is on a Wednesday this year. So teams are playing, all four teams that are playing on Wednesday have been organized to play on Saturday this weekend, right? So you have some of the best teams in the NFL, some of the teams that are likely playoff teams. Uncanny how they picked those playing, yeah, playing three games within 10 or 11 days at the end of the season. Why? Because it’s the drama. It’s the end of the season. It’s when the ratings are highest. People are watching the most streaming subscriptions and all that. So it’s all it’s all carefully planned because the dollars now are so tall, so high, the investment so high from the media organizations. They’ve got to get that teams right. They got to get the best teams. They got to get increasingly in the NFL, the number of games that are no longer Sunday at one o’clock that are Thursday night. They play Monday night this week, Saturday this coming because of the media, starting this weekend, we see Saturday games in the NFL for the final three weeks of the season, because they want that game and they stand alone. Own wind broadcast window, because it has a tendency to draw more eyeballs at that. So I think in the future, you’re going to see fewer and fewer games Sunday at one o’clock. That used to be the traditional Sunday at one, Sunday at four. Now you’re going to see fewer games at one, fewer games at four, and more games in prime time spread out through the course of the week, including Christmas. Like I said, again, it’s a Wednesday. They’re going to be playing on a Wednesday.
Nestor Aparicio 05:25
I would think for the junior version of Marty Conway or little Nestor Aparicio if I were a student 20 years ago, let’s say at the dawn of the internet, late 90s, at you know, 25 years ago now, to think that Pete Rozelle or even Paul Tagliabue, who’s still with us and alive, would have the ability to go beyond CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox, which and then ESPN came on right HBO was giving him 10 cents for inside the NFL that, you know, like all of These marketing little pieces that were part of the NFL now with Amazon, Netflix, Apple, mean these multi billion dollar international companies platforming this, if you’re logging on to Netflix in Australia, you’re getting a football game on Christmas Day, right? I see that with Amazon, Amazon Prime, with these Thursday nights. I’m not a big Amazon shopper, you know, I’m just not, but I’m, but I’m keyed in, and I go in there the buffering part, the quality of that sham fight that Tyson put on a couple weeks ago, and those issues I all of that bakes into the the thing you talked about 10 years ago when you came here, which is Roger Goodell is going to grow this business into whatever the billion bill, 30 billion, whatever the number was, right? Yep. And how that’s going to happen. It’s going to happen because Paul tagliboon, Paul Pete Rozelle, couldn’t have seen ravens.com nfl.com streaming, anywhere, anytime. They certainly couldn’t have thought about gambling revenue. It was something that was never illegal. It couldn’t have even been brought up as a revenue stream. And it’s now, I don’t want to call it an ocean, but it’s a pretty good little pond. You know, they’re great lakes that they’ve built on all of these things. I don’t know what, what is over the hill, other than the international part of this. And maybe this speaks to me, thinking of the Baltimore Ravens as a local organization, because it’s just it’ll never be that again, because it can’t. The Orioles are a local organization. And you see where that problem is that they can’t have one soda, they can’t have good toys. They might not be able to have Gordon Byrne, where, when you pool that money in the NFL, they’re going to put a game next year in Germany, a game in Brazil, a game in Mexico City. They’ve done all that this year. They’re going to continue to do that. And the amount of money that comes in has to become international money. And I think the number one way you do international money is to do international business, right? And that’s where Apple and Amazon and Netflix take them above and beyond ABC or ESPN or things that anytime you travel outside of this country, you have no access. Nobody knows what the hell NBC and ABC or CBS are in Toronto. You don’t know what they are, right? Like, literally, but these other things make them. Somebody in Singapore be watching the game because they logged on to Apple, right? Like, literally, right?
Marty Conway 08:28
Yeah, no. Broadcast entities are licensed in this country and around the world. They’re licensed nationally, right? BBC in England, NBC here, whatever it is, Amazon, Netflix, etc, Apple. Those are not, right? Those are, like you said, international platforms where you play one game and you show it in 195 countries, or whatever your limitation is to do it. So they’ve recognized that, just like Coca Cola or Pepsi, or, you know, any of the other brands, you’re only going to grow when you grow outside the territory that you primarily sold in, right? So spoke of that with the
Nestor Aparicio 09:03
Washington commanders. They made a hire recently. I mean, the Ravens have hired Sashi. Brad, hi, Sashi, I’m still here if you want to come and talk about your football team. But the Sashi of the commanders is not in any way a football background person, right?
Marty Conway 09:19
Came from Campbell’s Soup Company, CEO of Campbell’s Soup Company, right? So, international, well known brand, we’ve been on the shelves of grocery stores for decades. Right now, they look at that and say, we are not just a team that functions eight or 10 home games. You know, preseason, regular season, we make soup every day. Camp we exactly and they sell soup every day at Campbell’s, and the commanders and everybody else in the NFL is in the business of being in business every day. Is there something to sell? There’s not a game, obviously, every day, but there’s something else. Teams now want to have the draft the it’s in May, in their local market. People more than a Super Bowl. People wanted to move the. The Combine out of Indianapolis, but the but the scouts and everybody pushed back, but to be able to take those things so there’s more and more, I think you’re going to see fewer, less training camp, more regular season games. Because what’s going to demand is, like I said, the dollars that are coming in from media have to go somewhere, and they’re going to demand games number one regular season games and games in prime time. So it’s really just a reflection that nimble and flexible, whether you’re Apple Steve Jobs or whether you’re Roger Goodell, you need to recognize where the opportunity is, and look Roger Goodell has, you know, the Packers are community owned, but otherwise, there’s 31 other board of directors that he works for, and they each have invested a certain amount of dollars. Increasingly, the commanders at 6 billion, right? And they need a return on investment. Where’s the liquidity going to come from?
Nestor Aparicio 10:54
Stakes are a lot higher when you buy 6 billion than where Steve Bucha D is, where he put us 600 million up two decades ago,
Marty Conway 11:00
right? Yeah. And what you’re paying for, you know, what’s the interest on that dollar? What’s the finance and things that you’re doing on that? So the ROI, the return on investment, whether it’s a new stadium, you look at what just happened in Buffalo, right? They’re getting a new stadium. It’ll be open in roughly two years, and people Long Island paid for it, and they have now some minority investors, and you look at the valuation difference from when the pagula family bought the team to what the valuation is now it’s exceptionally higher. So they sold 25% of it to minority interest, right, minority partners. And if you look at the valuation, what changed, Buffalo is still the same market, but they have a new stadium. The games are now with massive TV contracts, and so are they doing
Nestor Aparicio 11:42
PSLs? Up there they are doing PSL. Oh, my God, for that fan base in the modern What does a PSL look like at this point? I mean, like, I called it a poor suckers license in 1996 when Roy summer off and David came on. I mean, I coined that phrase, even though I bought eight of them originally, and I wound up keeping four of them, and I literally turned them in and got nothing for them. I know some people that turned them into money. I had a couple of friends mindset. I sold those things to 513 for $8,000 and I’m like, God bless you, man. But that was not my experience. The Jets and the Giants were gonna do that too, right? And the
Marty Conway 12:19
question is, what is it worth? I mean, how much would it have been worth in New England 10 years ago? How much is it worth in would it be worth in Kansas City today? Well, the bills are winning at the right time. That’s what I’m telling you, right? So that’s if you can put those combination things together, then that has the ability to be worth something more in the future, but increasingly in sports, particularly in the NFL and other high stakes, you cannot any longer afford a two years in a row of a losing season. You literally can’t because the depression into your fan base. Suddenly your team is no longer on prime time games that look
Nestor Aparicio 12:54
at what the Raiders going into Las Vegas and being just tremendously awful,
Marty Conway 12:59
right like, and that’s why, if you listen or go to a Raiders game, or listen or watch a game, more than half of the people in those seats are for the other team, right? Well, the amazing things like the
Nestor Aparicio 13:10
chargers and the Rams in LA, I was there when the Rams won the Super Bowl at home and all that, they’ve been there five minutes. Everybody been a rams fan for about four minutes, right? And the Chargers are out there trying to do something. And I even I saw Joe Ortiz down when Bucha and those guys blew me off the owners. But he said, I said that, Joe, I do have a chargers up a towel that I got when I was out there years ago. He said we got plenty of room on our bandwagon. I’m thinking how, and I know that there was 12 million people in LA or whatever, right? But like that is that the Jaguars just the Tampa Bay Rays, these the Orioles aren’t far from that. I mean, the Orioles, you know, have a a better thing going than and certainly Katie Griggs, and we’re gonna get to that in a minute. Marty Conway is our guest. We’re to meet. She’s here. It’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery. Jiffy Lube, MultiCare. We’re doing the crab cake tour, even though we’re gonna have meatballs today, but the baseball thing to say we’re gonna be bigger and better. I haven’t heard anything from them in two months. I haven’t met Katie Griggs. I haven’t I don’t see anybody on the streets. The players have been gone. There’s a level of embarrassment about not scoring runs or whatever that shouldn’t go away Christmas week, when they’re trying to sell this new thing that they have here, against this ravens thing, and for bad franchises and franchises that are have played themselves into small market or awfulness or room to grow. I look at like the Cincinnati Bengals have gotten up and become like a thing there where tickets are $300 demand for what’s going on there. And I guess, you know, NBA, NHL, you can go through some places where markets have really moved greatly, but Oriole baseball is one of those things that I think Rob Manfred people in baseball, you’ve said it, I’ve said it, maybe because we’re old farts. Me, remember Boog and Brooks and all that they. This is a sleeping giant. I don’t know that. I believe that it’s a sleeping giant. I believe that it’s at least asleep and it can be awakened. I don’t know how good it can be. I don’t know that it’s going to be 3.6 million people with the team in DC anymore, but I do say, where is the North Star? Where’s the ceiling? Where’s the glass ceiling? Because the NFL, as much as it’s offensive to some people and whatever, there’s gonna be 80,000 people in Buffalo, they’re gonna fork over a cruise ship, you know, two grand, five grand, 10 grand, just to be able to buy a ticket, right? And I did that here a generation ago. And then there’s the Orioles can’t get $10 for playoff ticket, right? So somewhere in between being good and the Orioles are good and being something people want to invest in, and then what the level of investment is, because the Ravens have spent all this money doing all these sky boxes and stuff. Same thing with the bills. Like the bills are going to build this bigger stadium, and then the bill is going to come, bi of the check is going to come for the fans, and they’re gonna say, well, that experience used to cost me 80 bucks, and now it’s 225, bucks. Yeah, that becomes offensive to some. You know, that becomes they do price people out. Baseball hasn’t done that at all. Baseball still like the affordable thing. Now it’s like, all right, man, let’s go. We got a new owner. Let’s go. And that’s why I brought you down today because this is a baseball bar. There’s opening day count that we’re 99 days to opening day. You’re the city wants to, like, explode on baseball again. And I’m, I’m beginning to wonder, right? You know, and I know it’s early, but I want to see them do not just sign a player, but like, do things differently than they were doing it. That’s all. Does that make sense? Yeah,
Marty Conway 16:41
no, it does. If you look at what the NFL has done, I mentioned this earlier when we were talking off air, they have nationalized and internationalized the game and the fan base, so that they are not entirely reliant on the local fan anymore. If you go to any game now, I challenge you to go to any NFL game, and if you can’t find 10 to 50% of the people sitting in those seats wearing the jersey from an opposing team for the most part, I don’t care if it’s Denver, Cincinnati. A couple of weeks ago, the eagles were here. That was close to 40, probably percent of the fan base. So they’ve done a great job of internationalizing and nationalizing the fan base, whether it’s Joe burrow or, in the case of the of the bills with with Josh Allen, right, that what that’s that’s what people are attracted to. Increasingly, sports fans, younger demographic. Sports fans are more interested in the player than they are in the team. And so that’s sort of a replacement strategy that’s been going on for is that good with that model for a long time? I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, but I know it’s where they now have to go, because we said earlier, the cost and the investment is so high that if that particular fan isn’t coming, I got to find a replacement for him or her. And where do I go? I’m going to look in the local market first, and then I’m going to go regional, and then I’m going to go national, and then I’m going to go international. The number of people that progress through the Raven stadium here who are from Germany, England, I’ve heard them out on on, out on the various walk walk arounds, and it’s unbelievable. David
Nestor Aparicio 18:18
Modell came back, yeah, 30 years ago, I sit here with David doing a show, and I’m buying a PSL, and I’m all ravened up, and Vin Testaverde is the quarterback. If I would have said they’re gonna, it’s gonna become an international game, I bet a guy like David, who’s even had a Hollywood background and all that, would say this isn’t gonna sell in England any more than soccer is ever gonna sell here. Right? Right? You know what I mean? Like American
Marty Conway 18:40
football can’t work in England or Germany, whatever. Can’t work out anywhere
Nestor Aparicio 18:44
outside of America. I mean, even baseball had the foothold in the Caribbean Japan, right? Baseball had some things going on. This football phenomenon over the last 25 years has been very, very intentional. That’s right. I mean, there’s no doubt about that. And I would have said to you 15 years ago as nasty Nestor on the radio that ain’t ever happening. You know, ravens gonna pick up play over in London. Who’s Who’s gonna show up? What do you take the whole city from here over No, I mean, I rode the subways over there, right? I don’t know how and why it’s become popular. That would be something for me to talk to Niels, who saved my wife’s life in Germany, that when I met him online 10 years ago, he told me he watched football, American football every week in Germany. That was 10 years ago. He’s 31 now. He’s been watching American football since he was a teenager, because they put it in front of
Marty Conway 19:36
him. That’s right, yeah. I mean, David Stern put the playbook out there for everybody back in the early 80s, David Stern, Commissioner, new commissioner of the NBA, essentially made travel trips to China and literally visited media, Chinese state media. Other Other men said, Here’s tapes. Please put these on and show NBA games in China. In the early 1980s that was the germ for how all of this began. And literally, what it comes back to, there’s this very simple principle in marketing, particularly sports marketing, and that is reach. The first thing that you need is reach. If people can’t, China’s got more people than anybody else on India, literally, if people can’t see it, then they can’t be it right now, that time horizon might be decades for that transition to occur, but that is why the NBA has about 35% of its players are foreign born players wanting and needing to play in the NBA. Why? Because it’s a simple economic theory. If you’re labor you want to go to where your reward is the highest. Doesn’t matter what you do, whether you play basketball or you’re a scientist or anything you want to go where you get renumerated the highest. And right now, the NBA and the NFL are at that level. Same thing for Major League Baseball. If you’re a Dominican kid at 11 years old, your dream is to be signed by a major league baseball team and play there when you’re 19, and it’s certainly possible. One of the things that the NFL has done, in addition to this outreach strategy, is they’ve done a great job with what they call their pathways program. I think I read recently that they’re somewhere in the mid 20s the number of players on NFL rosters now, most of them are on practice squads that are from other countries. I think there’s three, four or five players currently on active rosters, punters, kickers, things like that, who came from Nigeria or Australia or wherever it was. And that’s what they’re doing now. They’re developing that talent pipeline. If you look back at the 1992 Dream Team, that’s what kicked off, NBA, the draw the globalization, globalization of it, right? So David Stern, in the 80s, goes to China. They put professionals in the Olympics for basketball in the 1992 very controversial. And then suddenly, 30 years later, what do we have? We have the best, some of the best athletes in the world want to play in the NBA. Why? Because that’s where the greatest return for their talent and investment is. And
Nestor Aparicio 22:03
you feel that when you land in other places, the NBA, I mean, I felt that when I land in China, when you land in Tokyo, you land in other places South America, yeah, it is. It’s a foothold. The NFL is going for that here during the holidays. Marty Conway, so let’s get the baseball in the Orioles, because that’s why I drag you down here. I think we talked about a month ago about revenue one Soto, they haven’t spent a lot of money. They bought a player from the Red Sox. They bought a one year. They are behaving as though Angelo’s owns the team, and maybe he’s added 20 million in, you know, and pot money, 30 million in pot money, that they’re gonna have a little bit more to spend. But I met Mr. Rubenstein. I know I told you this the thing that disturbed me the most. He said, Well, it’s pretty you know, in baseball, it’s common to spend what you make. And I’m thinking, Well, I hope you plan on making more, right. And planning on making more is the only way that Juan Soto or gunner Henderson or Jackson, I pick any phenom you want, any 3040, $50 million player, pitcher, six, year, eight, year, 15, year deals that they’re given to these guys at this point. If you’re not playing there, you’re not getting the best talent right. And I think one thing’s been a theme on my radio station, certainly with other hosts and stuff, is you want to win. You get the best players. I mean, that’s what you do. And in baseball, the best players, they don’t always win, but they give you the best chance to win. And in the case of the Orioles, right now, I don’t see anybody out on the front end of this saying things are different, and it doesn’t feel different. And I see this on this isn’t about me or my press pass, or my history. These are the people in my world that buy tickets, that are Birdland club members, that have had the prices raised like all of this, there hasn’t been good messaging from the baseball team thus far, other than we have a new owner, I think that’s been the only message. I’m waiting for that. And I really do think the mass in part of the financial part of this, and the way I’m going to get the game, whether it’s going to be mobile in my home, how I’m going to receive it, and where the revenue for all of that is, as we sit here and chase down these Christmas NFL games, where am I going to get the game? How much is it going to cost me? And I don’t know that they’ve made that really clear, because we’re not going back to home team sports.
Marty Conway 24:21
Yeah, look, doesn’t matter whether you’re a sports brand or soup brand or Nike shoes, whatever. You can’t let your brand be defined by others, right? And the moment that you’re not talking, that you’re silent, people are going to fill that void with whatever they want. And so as we’ve discussed the idea that now, because media is essentially walking around in your pocket every every day, you have to have a proactive approach to almost flooding the zone, if you will, which is we’re going to be proactive in telling that story. And again, whether you’re Nike or whether you’re Campbell’s or doesn’t matter, on down the list, you. You have to be in that position where you’re literally publishing almost every day or every hour repeatedly to do it, because there’s a non stop interest in consuming news about you. And obviously, Baltimore, the team
Nestor Aparicio 25:12
websites, have taken that to that’s a level of obsession to where, like, it’s too much for me, and it’s, you know,
Marty Conway 25:21
but that’s getting people, that’s that’s waiting for people to come to you literally, let’s literally people saying, let me go on and see what they have to say. You have to be in a position where you’re almost the evangelist on a daily basis for whatever your cause is. And in this case, the cause is baseball or football or whatever it is. Because, like I said, if you’re not talking about it and other people are, that’s the narrative. And so it’s a different it’s a different media in a different consumer environment today than it ever was. And so back to your original point, whether this team in Baltimore is going to be defined by whatever look building a fan base, whether they’re here in Baltimore or they’re in San Diego or Seattle or whatever it is that’s your job is to find new fans and get them involved. I know there are great statistics about if you can get somebody to your game before the age of seven or 10, or there’s various numbers about that, how likely they are to be a long term fan of yours. And so those, those numbers are, are very specific. And so like I said,
Nestor Aparicio 26:25
Well, kids run the basis freeze been going on for at least a decade, yeah, and
Marty Conway 26:28
then that’s fine, but that, that’s just one piece, right? You’ve also got to get to people. Those kids don’t have disposable income. It’s nice to get them, but if you want to look at people who are between the ages of 18 and 34 that’s the demographic, and sometimes it goes up to 45 that’s the demographic that consistently has the most money to spend on anything, and so that’s your target audience. That’s what they call the money demographic, and men and women, and you have to have a strategy that gets to them on a daily basis. It can’t just be about who you’re signing and not signing, right? That there’s
Nestor Aparicio 27:03
that. That is the only narrative there was. There was that for and how much my tickets are, land deals. The other thing I read, right? So what
Marty Conway 27:10
my experience in the game was there were two seasons. There was the playing season and the talking season, and we had a strategy for each of those seasons. Tell
Nestor Aparicio 27:19
me about this. I love to hear this is real Oriole way, right? Yes. So Larry Lucchino, what yours
Marty Conway 27:24
is 88 when did you join? That was the late 80s. You about to move the Camden Yards, all right, right. So there was the
Nestor Aparicio 27:31
and the seasons weren’t good. Then, Don Ossie Lee, let you know the seasons 80 trapped
Marty Conway 27:36
into 45678, you were same experiences. Got trapped into signing free agents, and then those didn’t quite work out, and now you’ve got a minimum salary roster, and that roster almost wins the American League East and all that narrative. It’s not so much different than today. The dollars are a lot different, and the culture is different. But like I said, there’s a playing season, and what’s your strategy around? You know, a media and communication, all that. And then there’s the strategy around the selling season.
Nestor Aparicio 28:03
What is the talking season? What is the selling I mean, the talking
Marty Conway 28:07
season is starting in almost late August, okay, we’re gonna put our tickets on sale for next year. What’s the price gonna be? When can you buy them? All the different things. What’s the packaging? What does that look like? And then progressively, during the course of whether it’s the non football season or non baseball season or non basketball season, you see organizations that are thriving. If you look down at Washington, right, their NBA team, I think right now is like three and 20. Right? How many people do they have in their seats? 15,000 you would say, gosh. How is that possible? The team is three and 20 who would care? Those tickets were sold months ago. They were part of a package. They were part of some other organization. There’s some reason to be there. So Ted leonsis and his group, both the capitals and wizards and the mystics, they do an excellent job of being out there in the marketplace every day of the year, virtually, including the talking season. Because you’re three and 20, you’d say, gosh, there should be 7000 people in the stands. There’s not. So that
Nestor Aparicio 29:07
shocks me. I did not know that that there were three, no, I found that out the other day. Three and 19 tweeted about it, right? And it kind of shocked me a little bit. And the capitals are outstanding. You know, a lot of folks don’t know that either. I’m gonna have some guests here later. Me, she’s talking about that as well. But yeah, the fact that you get after it in the off season, so you have a base you you don’t want to enter opening day with 6000 tickets sold for the second day, which has been going on for 50 years here, right? Like, that’s repeat
Marty Conway 29:40
buyers, people buying in advance, people repeat buyers. All that. All of that takes cultivation. It takes staff. It takes commitment to do it. It takes evangelizing, not just the not just the performance on the field, obviously, or the court for the wizards, but what they’re doing in the community. And look all teams and organizations. Do it. Some teams and organizations do it exceptionally, and that’s that’s just the difference, because the playbook is available for everyone. That’s
Nestor Aparicio 30:08
a local effort to do exceptionally. If you’re doing it exceptionally, you’re doing it within 30 miles of your facility, right? Literally,
Marty Conway 30:15
I don’t know about there’s a distance, but you’re doing it authentically, right? And people understand authenticity, and they understand a commitment from the ownership on down. Because look, at the end of the day, these are local businesses. Why do people support a local business? Yes, the food is great here and fantastic, but they know who these people are, right? And so they’re going to familiar, sure, and they’re going to want to support that. So that takes time. You have to build that culture over time. Obviously, there was an ownership group here that over time it deteriorated to the point where once Peter was no longer really actively involved, or even capably involved, it just sort of frayed, literally, till the point of saying, I don’t know if I really want to sell, but we really need to sell, right? And so now you’re starting, literally, probably from almost Ground Zero. Look, they’ve done a nice job. There are, what I said earlier was, there are fans here. Look, this team went through what, 11 or 12 years of under 500 baseball and people said, Oh my gosh, they’re missing a whole generation of Oriole fans. They’re gonna leave the answer that was no, to me, it was like Bermuda grass in the winter. It’s there, it’s dormant, and it’s great and brown, you’ve got to put something on it in order to make it green.
Nestor Aparicio 31:32
Marty Conway is here. He you did everything but mow the lawn of Memorial Stadium back in the 80s. Give a little bit of your baseball background, because I think of your lacrosse official, your your basketball official, too. Yeah. I mean, you, you’ve done a you’re a sports guy, but I think of baseball as you’re sort of Homecoming. It’s what you worked in. And you still like baseball. You still watch but anytime I’m you know, you, you what? You stay up with the Nationals when they were good, the Orioles. What is it about baseball for you? Because you didn’t grow up in a baseball city, right? I grew
Marty Conway 32:04
up in Syracuse. We had a minor league team, right? Right? The minor league team was the New York Yankees for the longest time, and then they left because Toronto expanded. The Toronto was the expansion team in the Toronto Blue Jays came. I worked for that team. I sent a letter every year when I was 1213, and 14 to the General Manager, asking if I could work. And finally, he wrote back a letter to my parents, not to me, and said, when he turned 16, I can hire him, because that’s the legal
Nestor Aparicio 32:29
age to work. That’s how bad you wanted to work in baseball. Baseball was all you wanted. My parents
Marty Conway 32:33
were season ticket holders to minor league team, and we, that was our who just play there. The Blue Jays kind of stunk, right? I mean, from, I mean, the Thurman months and days, Ron Guidry day. Okay,
Nestor Aparicio 32:42
so you had the early 70s. That’s okay. So Bobby Cox was
Marty Conway 32:45
a player there before he became a manager. Like, those are the kind of people that came through that town. The home team, yeah, Toronto was very early. They were an expansion team. That was the Ernie whit days. And people
Nestor Aparicio 32:57
McGregor pitch there. He did, yeah, McGregor pitch there for the games before the
Marty Conway 33:01
trade. When that trade 76 Yeah, when that trade happened, all those guys came there, and then eventually, you know, went to Baltimore.
Nestor Aparicio 33:08
I love talking baseball when I go say McGregor, and you know, that’s what I
Marty Conway 33:12
said it was, you know, very simply, that was what it was. I worked there for three years while I was in high school. So worked games, played baseball, you know, did all that, and it just became something that was kind of second nature to me. And I could watch a game, but you didn’t
Nestor Aparicio 33:26
play ball at that level. You play high school ball, like that, high school ball played at college, okay? And so, like I said, baseball is an incredible thing. Like, I mean, my last name is Aparicio, so I got it honest, but you you kind of can’t quit it. And being here and still having this crazy radio station all these years later, watching this change over and meeting Mr. Rubenstein and wondering what Katie Griggs, I mean, I said to everybody, seeing this thing get resurrected again after Peter, would just be a great part for my life at this point, my life as I almost I’m 56 you know, these next 10 or 15 years. But I also stand in judgment of everything that’s gone wrong. And it feels to me like the new group wants all of us to have amnesia because they weren’t here to witness it either. Well, and this is where I said trauma, right? Like, yeah, that those 10,000 seats are absolute trauma. There’s that should never happen here. My father would roll out. My father couldn’t, would not be able to believe that, after all, that’s been built the last 50 years, that they reverted this thing back to 1973 where you can’t sell out playoff tickets.
Marty Conway 34:36
Yeah. So look, it’s not uncommon. When I was working in the game, there was a circumstance in new in in Boston, Tom Yawkey and the yaki family had owned the team for a long time. Tom Yawkey passed away, and his wife, I think his wife’s name was Jean, she went by Mrs. Yawkey. She owned the team for a long time, and had sort of day to day management people in there, but nobody that owned. When the team was literally running it, they went through a pretty awkward period where they were a terrible and the Red Sox Nation, as we know it today, suddenly was like, we’re not showing up. And it was terrible. And it wasn’t until finally that Mrs. Yawkey passed away, and that’s when Latinos group came in and bought the team, and instantly, within a year or so, revived it. Why? By giving it attention. That’s not unlike, I think, what’s happened here, which is there was a period of time where it was just impossible, really, to do anything, given the ownership structure. And look what happened that ownership group that went in, collectively with Larry and other folks there, and suddenly put some energy into the franchise and listen to fans. And ended up with, you know, there was discussion, if you don’t remember this, there was discussion, we need a new baseball
Nestor Aparicio 35:51
Oh, I was up there in 99
Marty Conway 35:55
baseball stadium and and I remember Larry and others talking and saying, I don’t it’s like, wait a minute, this seat, this stadium holds 34,000 How can you make that franchise competitive? When stadiums have 10 to 15,000 more seats than that, charge more they Well, no, they figured out the experiences. They put some, you know, seats on top of the green. Miles hired Janet Marie. They did things like that to energize the ballpark energy. Now, back to your issue about buffalo earlier. Guess what? It costs more now to go to a game in Boston than it did, but people don’t even think about it, why the experience is so much better, and they feel comfortable about who’s getting the money and what they’re doing and they’re trying to win. Now, there are times when the Red Sox just don’t win and they’re fourth in the division or fifth in the division, but there’s always a sense that we’re just around the corner. We are one year away from getting back into it. You have to be able to instill that sort of confidence in the fan base, which is, we’re never going to be two years out. We’re never going to be three years out. We don’t have this five year rebuilding plan. I don’t think fans really have a patience for that anymore? Well, Bucha,
Nestor Aparicio 37:01
he was the first one to say we need to be competitive every year Exactly. And that’s something that you know, that they’ve held through exactly for two decades. It’s how coaches keep jobs. And
Marty Conway 37:10
why shouldn’t you, like, that’s the you’re in the performance business. Why would you ever go into a business as
Nestor Aparicio 37:15
performance? Well, somebody’s gonna be in last place in all these sports, right? So many things
Marty Conway 37:19
happen. Quarterbacks get hurt, injuries occur. There’s always things, but if you have people in the key positions that are functioning well, and you have the capability you should always be for baseball, for football, that’s the quarterback and it’s the head coach. For baseball, it’s the pitching staff, it’s the middle of the order, whatever it is, you need to have that nucleus. Because what you were saying earlier about signing players is it’s not just the winter meetings of baseball, it’s your roster. Because if you look at baseball compared to other sports, baseball needs on average, I think probably somewhere in the mid 40, number of players, maybe even more, who are going to come through and be on your roster during the course of 162
Nestor Aparicio 37:56
game season, gonna use 20 pitches. So what kind of
Marty Conway 37:59
depth do you have to do it? Because if you look at it, the last Earl Weaver used to say, you know, after 100 games, I’ll tell you what I have. Because for him, that was the point of the season where he knew what he had, and the last 60 games was where you won or lost. And I think he proved that when he managed, it’s like Alex or Alex Ferguson, that management at the end of matches or the end of the season, is the difference between being in the playoffs and then once you get in the playoffs, you have a shot. And that’s all that really matters, is getting your team to the playoffs, whether your home team, road team, whatever, then you can win three in a row in the NFL, or you can win 10 games in Major League Baseball and get into the World Series. Well, the mike
Nestor Aparicio 38:41
Tomlin things unbelievable, right? For all these years to be above 500 that’s
Marty Conway 38:44
it’s, I think when people look back at it, they’re gonna look at that and say, How did that happen? Like,
Nestor Aparicio 38:50
look at what happened to the Patriots even, right? Like, you know, this fall from the system
Marty Conway 38:55
in all sports is set up against that sustained success with baseball, but the reverse order draft, you know, other things like that. I know they’ve tried to make it such that you can’t tank anymore, and they’ve tried to try to do that, but generally speaking, you’re penalized for your success, or you’re at least put to the back of the line, and you have to prove that you can do it all over again. And so sustained success in sports is something that you whether it’s in the New Zealand All Blacks and the World Rugby or whoever it is Manchester City now in the Premier League, that’s what you study. And say, how are they doing that? They’re doing that with continuity. They’re doing that with all these but they’re doing it by changing and adapting along the way as well. Marty
Nestor Aparicio 39:38
Conway is here. We are at a me cheese. We’re at the main bar here in Little Italy on High Street. Get down here. Get the meatballs. I mean, get a gift card. They’ll love a meat cheese. It’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery. I have Raven scratch offs to give away. Also, Seth Elkins gonna be bringing me some fresh scratch offs. Apparently, they give me the magic eight ball scratch. Also, magic eight ball. We’re. So the oral spend money, Blue Man, you know, appears to be so I don’t know. We’ll do all of that. Also our friends at Jiffy, new multi care Luke is back and forth during the holidays Pittsburgh and Houston. This week, we got a lot of things going on. We’re gonna be a cost us on Wednesday, sort of a parting shot for you on the baseball thing. And this is, I’m trying to organize a dear Katie Griggs letter, and just try to figure out what the game plan is talking to really smart people like you, people that have run franchises, what’s on her desk and managing through that above and beyond mass and in who Mike Elias is going to sign that that that’s the baseball stuff, and the fans are going to talk about all of that, but what really arrived on her desk when she got here, and what are the first plans of action, and what is the big strategy on her whiteboard, and her big office for her new lieutenants, and all it like I’d love to know what they think this can be. Do they think this can be a $200 million payroll? How do we get there? Is that the 600 million they’re gonna spend on this and that, and that, and they’re gonna have a casino, and they’re gonna do this, and they’re gonna, I don’t know, but they need to generate more money. And to your point, get people excited, right? You want to get people excited about the team, and get them into it. And CFG Bank Arena. I didn’t want to be interrupted, but you were going on and on about experience and experience and the CFG Bank Arena, it’s such a better experience than the Baltimore Civic Center ever was. So when people go there, they don’t mind a little bit more of this, a little bit more of that. And they say, Oh, the show’s there. I’m looking forward to going there. And the way, when something’s at merry weather, you feel good about it when it’s at FedEx field, or whatever they’re calling you’re like, I don’t know about the stones down there. Maybe I’ll go to Philly instead. You know, like, because of the venue, Camden Yards is not that the baseball team is not that I hear what the community would say about crime in the city, and as I sit here in the middle of the city looking out the window, I would just say the baseball has something to sell here that they didn’t have five years ago, which was a long, boring, like, I don’t need a golden Halo home run, right? I mean, whatever this stupid thing, whatever that is dumb, the Manfred man’s dumb. There’s a lot of things they’ve done that have been dumb, but the experience of selling baseball now, you’re gonna come down at 630 on a summer night see a good baseball team in a premier ballpark. Peters dead. I mean, all of that, gunners alive, you know, like there’s a lot for them to sell. They have something that Peter didn’t have the last 15 or 20 years, including fresh credibility if they want it, if they’re willing to earn it, and authenticity, if they’re willing to invest in such a thing. I haven’t seen that yet. I’m invested, and I’m here today talking about them. Are they talking about themselves? So you and I are here. We’re invested. We’re talking about the baseball
Marty Conway 42:45
team. You know, another you know, other people are talking about it during the course of the week sometimes. But you know, I don’t know what’s on the big board or what the overall development strategy is, but it’s pretty simple. No matter what sport you’re responsible for, whether it’s basketball, hockey, baseball, etc, your first responsibility is to create fans, and your second responsibility is to curate fans, right? So we got it, what’s our what’s our approach on creating fans, right? Men, women, you know, tall people, short people, whatever it is our approach. And then once we have established them as a fan, how do we curate them? Do we get them to the ballpark once? Do we get them there once a month? Do we get them there six times a year? What does that approach? Do they do other things besides, you know, go to our games. Do they go to other things like that? So it’s pretty simple, because without that fan base, everything else literally doesn’t exist until you have that fan base showing up all the time, and so the NFL is challenge has been not just developing fans, but getting them like is the is the football game experience better than the TV game experience, right? That was an issue for the last five years, and teams here in Baltimore and others have invested heavily in the in the fan experience, because we want you to be there, like you said, the decision that you make to get in your car or get on your train or whatever it is and go there, wherever there is Lincoln Financial Field, or, you know, FedEx field, now Northwest Field. That’s a conscious decision. That’s your time. The most valuable thing that you and I have is our time. We have money, sometimes we have more, sometimes we have less. The most important thing that you have is time. And so people baseball ask a lot of that. And people are emotional and rational beings. And so everything that I’m thinking about has to appeal to that emotional component and your rational component. Why should you come out? Why should you bring your kids? Why should you meet your friends there to do it? Why? Why? Why all the time and address those so, like I said at the at the core of it, it’s creating fans and curating fans. The rest is the business that you pile on top of it, and you can ultimately figure that out. But the groundwork is, every day, you should be out there thinking about, how do we create how many fans do we create today? What’s our strategy on that? And then, once we have them, how do we curate them into an Orioles fan? Maybe they grew up. In Montgomery County, and they were prone to the nationals. Can we make them into an Orioles? Is there something about that? So the work is never done in that regard. And if there’s 45,000 seats times 81 games, that’s your number, right? We need to sell 3.3 million tickets. That’s our goal, in tickets. And then we move on to other things like media and communications and community and other things like that. Young people interested in this when they come to class with you, George, oh my goodness, yeah, tremendously it’s there are people who are working sports because they’re excited about sports as they should, because they see it as something that is bigger than themselves. Right? Now, your daughter works in sports, right? Yeah, she reports on it. She thinks about the football, you know, almost every day. And so whether your passion is about helping people in healthcare or finance or investments, whatever it is, but people come into our program at Georgetown previously disposed to some sports experience that they had as a little kid or little girl or whatever it was, and they see themselves and think, I think I could be there, and I think I could make a difference. And secondly, it wouldn’t feel like work, right? Literally, if you work in the sports industry, the little dirty secret, it didn’t feel like work to the 33rd year for you, you go to, yeah, right, you go to work, while others come for their enjoyment, right? If you’re at the game facts matters, you’re not seeing much of the game because you’re working constantly, so you better enjoy it for something existential beyond that, because, like I said, you’re working while other people are playing and enjoying and so it has to be. So they come, they come to us at Georgetown because they know they want to do this in one way shape or another. They’re not quite sure which area of the industry they might want to work in. And so they’re doing internships, and they’re sampling and they’re hearing from their instructors, and eventually they figure it out. We just try to give them a leg up over the horse and get them riding the horse, and then eventually, you know, where they go is up to them. Do
Nestor Aparicio 46:50
you think all this sports business chase this, this, I think they had a pretty good party here. They had a hell of a party where to meet cheese. We’re in downtown Baltimore. We’re in Little Italy, as they say, Come by get the cannoli I have at some point gonna get the garlic cheese bread and the meatball and bring all that together in the way that I like to do it down here. But come for the marinara, stay for the grown up grape soda. Marty Conway is the sports business professor at Georgetown. I was involved with the Orioles and the Rangers. He is my friend. He wanted meatballs. He didn’t want crab cakes. Sam says is going to be stepping up here. I think Seth Elkins coming by. John maroons gonna be coming by later on today. Alan McCallum, our original Oriole reporter, in a bar where they love the Orioles as much as anybody I know, also with Monica Pence and Monica Barlow her her legacy in the family here with the Orioles. So there’s an Oriole countdown here of 99 days to go, they always have the standings up here to meet you. So this is legit come on down here. And I know it’s not your first time to meet you, because you and I have dined here previously. So will be a casus on Wednesday. We’re gonna be at the LIBS grill in Bel Air on the seventh of January and put something together up in Harford County, the Maryland lottery, bringing it together for us. And we’re going to continue to march on him. Let Marty go get himself a Caesar salad proper, and maybe some of that calamari that I had here. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S, T, A, M, 1570 Towson, Baltimore. Happy holidays. We’re back for more. Baltimore, positive stay with us. You.
