Sodboy13

@Skycast

Hell, I love baseball as much, if not more, than when I was a kid, and I've only owned one Tori Amos album.

I was wondering where Madison, WI was in this, so I looked it up. Turns out they're in a different league, League One Volleyball, which is set to begin play in November 2024 and will have franchises in markets including... uh, Atlanta and Omaha. Ah jeez, this isn't gonna go well.

It's an offhand reference to "The Business of Emotion," an old song by Big Data I happen to like.

Shame they didn't have it in them to move once more and become the Roscoe Rush.

Always a good sign when the announcement of the team botches the name of the home venue. The decently-sized Sudduth Coliseum at the Lake Charles Civic Center holds 7,500, but from the pics on the site I'm guessing that's for events that take up less floor space than an arena football field. Metro area's just over 200,000. All the new logos based on old AFL identities have been downgrades.

This is a league with teams in Montana and five-figure cities in Kansas. Also any TV exposure is going to require cash up front from the league, which I will believe they have as soon as they show it.

Please look at Rockford on a map and its location relative to Chicago. Then look at Rosemont, IL, and understand that some people both local and out-of-market get twitchy about teams in that town labeling themselves "Chicago." (I am not one of those people.) "Rockford Rush" is a perfectly cromulent name for a market with its own well-established minor league sports scene. You aren't going to win over Stateliners by pretending you're Chicago, and you're not going to get Chicagoans coming 70 miles out on I-90 to see you because of it, either. So what's the point?

Welcome to "Whose League Is It Anyway?," the game where the finances are made up and the home markets don't matter.

Lest you think that 4/27 game is some sort of commemorative one-off, the Rush account lists its location as Rockford, IL. So yes, we are apparently doing that again, and if you can call Rockford "Chicago," you can call Everett "Seattle," Council Bluffs "Omaha," and Dodge City, Kansas "Los Angeles." Now you're a big-time football league!

And this is part of the problem, right? The seeming lack of interest on MLB's part to develop a national fanbase outside of NYY/BOS/CHC/LAD, and instead be content with a bunch of fans who aren't interested unless it's their team that's playing. (And if it is their team playing, blackout restrictions may apply, but that's another part of the decline to address.) Put it this way, no one's going to look at the numbers and spot loads for, like, a Kings-Bucks Final and say, "Well, you can't expect that to draw and sell, it's Sacramento and Milwaukee."

It was almost certainly whittled down. They'd start it up with the theme music stinger, run the bed underneath it, Kevin Monster Energy would toss it to the booth, and the booth would acknowledge Kevin and anyone else who was with him as the bed music faded. There was no cut or beat to indicate it as optional spot space, and there may have even been crosstalk at times. I mean, it could have served as filler, but it would have been an extremely awkward return to programming with Boog Sciambi saying "Thank you, Kevin" or whatever.

I don't think the TV breaks were locals, because there were other breaks that popped some local ads and news promos. Also, in the case of the Fox station in Chicago, it's an O&O, so different slice, same pie. It is entirely possible that the radio breaks I mentioned were built for local and there simply was not any inventory for it. But again, they whittled down those breaks to a minute of available ad space from the 2-ish that would normally be available.

Starting a topic for MLB in the vein of the long-standing NHL Best Business Practices Thread. I've watched a lot more baseball over the past couple of years, both in person and on TV, in no small part because our boys have really gotten into the sport. And I really think the game itself is pretty good, in fact, better than what was on offer pre-COVID at the major league level. You're seeing less of the three true outcome consultant garbage, the pitch clock and batter minimums have helped with pacing, the disengagement rules have brought back stealing, and shift restrictions are encouraging strategic hitting instead of constant swings for the seats. But the World Series just ended, and everyone's gonna bemoan the ratings. (I remember this from 2005, where there seemed to be an inference that the White Sox's win didn't count as much because not enough people watched it happen.) For me, the ratings aren't the big concern: Broadcast ratings for everything that isn't football are either stagnating or declining, and that's just how it is in the 5,000-channel universe. But what does concern me is what I saw between innings this postseason. To wit: This is the biggest event programming of the year for MLB, and Fox, its biggest broadcast partner, seemed to have profound difficulty selling the advertising space in it. I started noticing a shortage of true ads during the playoffs, and it stunned me that the shortage only seemed to grow during the World Series, which should be the biggest sell. There were a ton of Public Service Announcement/charitable-type ads (which the broadcaster may get some money out of, but definitely not at full market rate,) and plenty of promos for Fox programming. In fact, during Game 4, there was at least one break that led off with a PSA about storing one's gun away in a safe to reduce the risk of committing an impulsive murder-suicide, and then nothing but promos for the NFL on Fox and other network programming for the remaining 90 seconds. This is during prime time. I also listened to a good bit of the playoffs on ESPN Radio, as the boys wanted to listen to the games as they went to bed. ESPN actually went as far as to shorten their between-innings breaks, filling up to a minute of each one with studio content from some over-caffeinated Kevin. As for what was in those breaks, well, one from Game 5 had back-to-back "donate your car for the tax write-off" ads from Heritage For the Blind and some vaguely shady "stop our children from getting abducted outfit." Another was a 30-second promo for an ESPN podcast, then a :30 promo for the MLB Postseason, not even with a title sponsor or anything that might be revenue adjacent. No money was made on a national scale for that break, in the dang World Series. Combine this with the popping of the regional sports network cable free money bubble, and the news from this week that the Padres had to go loan-sharking for $50 million during one point in the season to make payroll. The canaries are still flying and chirping down in that coal mine, but man, you don't send them down there without a reason.

I'd be careful if I were the Texans. Last time they got involved with horn devices, Deshaun Watson ended up on the Browns.

I believe they went from screenprinting to tackle twill in 1994, so that would explain the difference.

This is a fair point to make, and it is more than worth remembering that Reagan Carey and the other folks in charge of the league announced a huge boost to the salary cap and were signing players to contracts reflecting it, while quietly negotiating an acquisition deal that would void every single one of those contracts. Profoundly bad actors.

Now to find out where they stole it from to do the click-and-fill recolor and shove some trees in the ears.

You know what? Give me the Fox Sports NIL Tournament presented by FanDuel or whatever the hell. Give me some garish trophy with a million damn dollars in cash stuffed in it for the winning players. Big-money college sports is one of our more absurd institutions, and I say lean into it.

We're two months out from the start of the season and there's no schedule, no confirmed venues to go with the market assignments, and only (informed) speculation on (very bad) team identities. It feels like a "dog finally caught the car" scenario. This sounds a bit like women's soccer, where too many people are power tripping in their little fiefdoms to see the bigger picture and the change and growth that are happening. On the micro level, that gets you the Chicago Red Stars being fall-down drunk as an organization over the past couple years because Arnim Whisler was still operating like the offices were in a Lincoln Park three flat and Rory Dames being allowed to operate as an abusive god king. On the macro level, that gets you US Soccer seemingly ignoring all the stories from 2015 and 2019 of "Hey, (European nation) finally figured out how to give a crap about the women's game" and then being completely shocked by how ordinary the USWNT was in 2023.

"Serve in the roll." I don't know that I'd trust any of these people in the food service industry.

I remain at least partially convinced, as I have for years, that the people running the PWHPA and now PWHL want to run women's pro hockey into the ground. I've been losing my mind all day at "Toronto Torch." Good thing there's not another pro hockey team in Canada with a storied history of torch imagery. And even better that such a theoretical team does not have some sort of blood rivalry with Toronto.

In reading these proclamations citing sources, it is best to focus one's emphasis on the "could" and "might." Boosting up to twelve teams all in their home markets, some getting their first home season of spring football in this era, and some (PHI, NJ) having profound obstacles ahead in the way of venues is an instantaneous money pit, and remember this is the last year of Fox's financial commitment. Yes, I know they've said they're making money in the USFL. As I said in the Arena thread, these people say a lot of things.

The people heading up this league, they say a lot of things.

Yeah, you get adjusted to the motion in the backfield after a couple games. I decided to add 2022 estimates of metropolitan statistical area populations to the current lineup of franchises, because I have real work to do and do not want to do it. Orlando, FL - 2,764,182 Albany, NY - 904,617 Council Bluffs, IA - 976,671 (includes Omaha; city population 62,799) Rapid City, SD - 154,165 Wichita, KS - 650,039 Salina, KS - 46,889 (2020 census population, no MSA available) Dodge City, KS - 27,788 (2020 census population, no MSA available Odessa, TX - 177,216 (secondary city in Midland, TX MSA) Billings, MT - 190,208 Everett, WA - 4,034,248 (as part of Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue MSA; city population 110,629) You're telling me big networks are going to spend on broadcast rights for this when there's 100-yard football up and running during the same time of year? Alternately, you're telling me this current iteration of the AFL, clearly more fly-by-night and seat-of-pants than the two before it, is going to have the money and planning required to broker time from even a mid-major cable net? This bunch is going to be lucky to get games streaming on Twitch with a handful of Ring cameras.