monkeypower

13 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

I'm trying to figure out the logic to all this: they need a new name so that people will go to games and buy merchandise, but people don't want the new name and wouldn't buy the new merchandise, but also the team is still going to wear Snappers stuff for Sunday home games? Guy gave away the game when he said "well then you pay for it," he's just a small-timer who wants a toy to play with. 

The guy is also the owner of the Pensacola Blue Wahoos for what that's worth, but it does come into play.

He says that without this new stadium, the team wouldn't exist anymore, which would line up with Beloit being on the alleged list of MiLB cuts at the beginning but apparently not anymore. He said that the team is not leasing this new stadium from a landlord like the city or whoever, instead the team is on the hook for all the costs associated for the stadium (which is a roundabout way of saying the team owns the stadium?) so the re-branding is an effort to increase the merchandise revenue stream to add more money to the coffers. 

I think a lot of it is what Brandiose and other rebrandings have done to the MiLB where teams become like the Cowtown YeeHaw Buckaroos instead of the Calgary Cowboys. Yeah the local fans might not like it, but look at how many wacky hats they've sold to people on the internet and how much money they've made, so other owners take notice.

There are still wacky teams and logos that have good branding but are restrained, like the Blue Wahoos, but most are trying to go to far.

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

 

Brandiose could make 1950s-hamburger-stand mascots out of a snuff film.

That one's actually not that hard.

The Hash Slinging Slashers or the Butcher Petes.

It's made the news. Snappers fans believe new owner “destroying brand” with name change.

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In order to cover the upkeep costs of maintaining Beloit’s new baseball stadium over the next 20 years, Snappers Managing Operator Quint Studer will change the team’s name.

 

Some fans do not see that as rational decision.

 

“I just think he’s wrong and he’s destroying a really good brand,” said Ben Witkins.

 

Witkins is not happy about the Snappers changing their name.

 

The lifelong Beloit baseball fan and a growing petition of more than 2,300 believe the Cheeseballs, Moo, Polka Pike, Sky Carp, and Supper Clubbers are simply a joke.

 

“It’s just so sad to me that we have this new stadium, the fans are so excited, the community is so excited, but it’s just this epic buzzkill we have to deal with with this new corny name that the entire city is embarrassed by,” Witkins said.

 

The man drawing this amount of ire from snappers fans is Studer. An Illinois native and former Janesville teacher, Studer is coming in to run the team.

 

He believes there should be a little more gratitude on their end.

 

“Anybody can sign a petition and if they want to take over and put 12 to 17 million dollars into this team, they can certainly name it,” said Studer.

 

But Studer is not upset. He hopes that enthusiasm continues and helps boost dwindling attendance numbers, which have dropped by more than 20 percent over the last 15 years.

 

In 2019, the Snappers had just 14 full season ticket holders and ranked second to last in the Midwest League in attendance.

 

“I think this has certainly been a wake-up," Studer said. "They’re so fortunate because if it wasn’t for Diane Hendricks building a stadium, they’d keep the Snapper name, but there would be no team.”

 

Studer, who is also the owner of Pensacola’s Double-A club, says without a new stadium, Beloit would be in the running to lose its MLB affiliation.

 

Witkins says he understands Studer’s position, but the name means so much to his community.

 

“We’re appreciative of the team staying here, we’re appreciative of his efforts, but the name is a big deal for a lot of people," said Witkins. "Alienating fans is not a good idea and I hope Quint hears that.”

 

However, Studer has made up his mind.

 

“The team’s moving on and the Snappers are there on Sundays and it’s just not going to make a difference,” said Studer.

 

Studer says the club will celebrate Snappers history every Sunday by wearing jerseys.

 

While Witkins says Beloit unanimously hates the name change, Studer says they conducted a survey where 70 percent of the community supported it.

"If you want to name the team, just buy it!"

I guess that also kind of explains Beloit's spot on the chopping block, maybe it was conditional on the building of a new stadium.

19 minutes ago, Kramerica Industries said:

 

I don't know if you're joking - I know you're Canadian so you don't get American networks - but, just in case you aren't, NBCSN now is what OLN used to be two names ago. 

Yeah it was a joke about when hockey was on the Outdoor Living Network for a bit. But no I didn't know that OLN is NBCSN.

44 minutes ago, the admiral said:

 

You can't preempt their hottest new original programming, Attractive Young People And Uh They Work In Some Professional Office Setting I Dunno.

Does OLN want to get into live sports again?

A new expansion team in the WCL was announced today, the Edmonton Riverhawks.

This team will be run by the new lease holders of the Edmonton stadium who won the bid back in May. After losing the bid and having talks fall apart with the new stadium ownership, the current summer collegiate team, the Edmonton Prospects of the WCBL, announced they will be moving to the Edmonton-area city of Spruce Grove for the 2022 season.

I posted in the Minor League news thread a couple of months ago about the whole situation in Edmonton.

So now there will be two summer collegiate teams 30 minutes away from each other in Edmonton who play in two separate leagues and the WCBL isn't too happy about this. (The stadium situation is also in question because if the Riverhawks start in 2021 and the Prospects don't have a stadium until 2022, I don't know what'll happen there)

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“Our league sees this as a totally unnecessary hostile intrusion into our footprint, something both leagues have respected for the past 10 or more years,” said Prospects managing partner Patrick Cassidy, whose team is one of 12 franchises across Alberta and Saskatchewan making up the WCBL, which was founded in 1931.

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“While I’ve been a proponent of two franchises in this market for some time, what made sense was to have them both operating out of the same league and from two stadiums so that co-ordination of scheduling and prime dates could be orchestrated and, from a WCBL standpoint, travel for all league teams could be reduced,” Cassidy said. “I’m not sure what their plan is to reduce travel for players, but that is always a major consideration for any league and often the reason many bus leagues falter.”

 

The closest WCL team is a nine-hour drive from Edmonton, with two-thirds of the league located south of the B.C.-U.S. border, while that same nine hours runs the distance on the entire WCBL.

 

“That’s our longest road trip, from Lethbridge or Medicine Hat to Fort McMurray,” said WCBL president Kevin Kvame, pointing out travel has plagued U.S.-based baseball leagues with teams in Alberta since the glory days of affiliated ball with the Edmonton Trappers and Calgary Cannons. “I don’t know how it works with the West Coast League, they haven’t given us the courtesy of a call or an email back or anything. I have other dealings with one of their general managers who gave me a heads up about a day or so ago, but he wasn’t even aware that they were doing this until recently.”

Travel is going to be an issue for the Riverhawks.

(Feel free to move part this into the Minor League news thread if you feel it's needed mods, but this is backstory I felt would be needed to discuss the announcement of the team and would get more eyes on it than on just in the Minor League news thread. I'm sure I'll have more updates for the Minor League news thread in the future if stuff starts to pop off later)

I could be convinced into Supper Clubbers, but it would be better if they dropped Supper and went with just Clubbers.

Clubbers kind of ties into baseball and they could still theme the branding into a supper club without having "Supper" in the name.

Oh dear...

Some interesting background here.

So basically the Snappers are not leasing the stadium from a landlord who will cover stadium expenses, they instead are on the hook for everything at the stadium for the 20 year lease, which they say will have them spend $12-15 million over those 20 years (so I guess this is a way of saying they own the stadium?). They said without the new stadium, the team would have likely left Beloit so they are looking to increase revenue streams to help pay for stadium costs, with one of those revenue streams being merch sales.

They said the Snappers average $50,000 a year but with a new name they estimate sales of $300,000 in year one and then $200,000 in year two. They point to the Pensacola Blue Wahoos who did $750,000 in sales for year one and then have averaged about $450,000 a year since then.

At least it's good that Cheeseballs and Moo have been getting the same reception on Twitter as they are here.

I should also be offended as part-owner of the Timber Rattlers that any sort of identity that would come from Moo would infringe on the Timber Rattlers' Wisconsin Udder Tuggers identity. Not a great move on Beloit's part to have a potential name that is what another team in the same league already has.

This whole Beloit change seems really half-baked to me too.

• They're still going to be playing part of next season in the old stadium while the new one is completed which does make sense and is understandable.
• They're going to still be the Snappers (or at least wear the Snappers jerseys at home) for the part of next season that is still played at the old stadium and then switch to whatever the new identity is when they move into the new stadium. So are they going to be this new team in name but still wear the Snappers jerseys? Or are the going to be the new team on the road and Snappers at home? Or are they going to be Snappers full time while the old stadium is there home and then make an entire switch when they move?
• Then once they move, they are still going to be the Snappers on Sundays, so they're still keeping the Snappers around despite the change

If the reception to the remaining three names are as poorly received as Cheeseballs and Moo, I can see there being issues with the team not just ripping the Snappers band-aid off to start the season.

Speaking about relocation, I've seen a lot more doom and gloom from corners of the internet (namely r/hockey) about the Panthers situation.

There's (apparently) an out clause on the lease in 2023 and the Panthers have been (allegedly) cutting payroll in the front office/business side of the team recently. Combine that with a general history of not having any success outside of one year and continued low attendance/fan apathy and I don't know...

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

Historically, what NHL players would really miss are their teammates' wives.

Or teammates’ sisters. Concussion-like symptoms.

He also posted this absurd (since deleted) tweet earlier in the playoffs.

23 minutes ago, monkeypower said:

Deion Sanders is going to Barstool.

 

No idea what kind of use they've got for each other or how long Deion plans on being there, but it's what's happening I guess.

I don’t listen to PMT anymore, where the Deion annoucement was made during the episode that just dropped for tomorrow morning, but comments from people who already listened say that he’ll have a podcast, do some video stuff with NFL players and do a PMT spot on Mondays during NFL season.

Deion Sanders is going to Barstool.

No idea what kind of use they've got for each other or how long Deion plans on being there, but it's what's happening I guess.

On 7/12/2020 at 6:23 PM, Yee Yee Go 'Stros! said:

Why not just wear the 70s throwbacks with the old Double Ŧ.  It’s easier to draw than the new one and we can still keep the new athletic font.  

I'm the opposite of you. I'm more of a fan of the current Double T logo and I'm not the biggest fan of the font.

On 7/12/2020 at 8:11 PM, MCM0313 said:

They look pretty good, but I’m not terribly happy that they chose to introduce everything as mono. 

They introduced them all in mono (well actually there's one picture that's w/r/r, so not entirely an all in mono) but you can see in their photoshoot video that they have non-mono combinations.

They've been using some of these non-mono pictures in different social media graphic since.

(I'm just glad it looks like the grey is gone, at least for the time being)

Here are the pics (I don't know why the link in that post above didn't directly embed the tweet).

It's not very clear from the pictures here, but the sleeve stripe colours are flipped on each arm. The left sleeve of the black jersey (as seen in the side profile) has white at the front of the jersey and the red at the back, but red at the front and white at the back on the right sleeve (as implied by the front-ish shot of the black jersey). You can also see it on the red jersey in the wide shot of all three jerseys. The left arm has white at the front while the right arm has black at the front.

I'm not sure where I stand on these jerseys, it's just kind of a lateral move in my opinion. I was a fan of the chest stripes, but I don't think it's a huge loss or anything.

3 hours ago, TBGKon said:

Not true, i have seen the same popups on other sites.

Not to same extent at least in my case. It’s recently gone to having both a top and a bottom banner ad. As I type this right now in phone, there is quite a large ad above the keyboard. Pressing the “x” on it replaced it with a different ad and then pressing “x” on that replaced it with a top banner ad.

At least I haven’t had that ad for that Amazon Prime show (that would freeze the site until it had a chance to do it’s full animation of making a border around the whole screen of my phone) any time recently. Anybody else get that one?

So are we just never going to be able to discuss this whole Washington name change thing? Because I totally understand not wanting random NFL (or MLB in terms of Cleveland) threads derailed by posts about Washington when it's unrelated to the topic at hand, but there are actually things going on right now related to the name.

If something does happen, are we going to be able to discuss it?

Canes’ unusual contract offer to broadcasters could lead to John Forslund’s exit (The Athletic, so paywall)

The colour guy, Tracy, agreed to a contract earlier this week, but Forslund is a free agent as of Wednesday.

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Multiple sources said the Hurricanes have been unwilling to budge with the terms they are offering - terms that broadcasting professionals have called "unconventional" at best and "unprecedented" at worst.

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While the Hurricanes are facing an unprecedented time and business outlook, the new contracts would make the formerly salaried broadcasters independent contractors with a base stipend and a bonus scale directly tied to attendance, according to a source. If the Hurricanes start 2020-21 - assuming there is a season - without fans, a source said the broadcasters are looking at a pay cut of more than half of last season's salaries.

Why would the salaries of the TV broadcasters be directly tied into attendance, that seems backwards no? Like in theory, the better they are at broadcasting means the less people that would be at games.

And here's the Ducks plans for the Honda Center land that was mentioned in the Angels article. Called ocV!BE... which is I guess their play on LA Live, but not a great name.

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A sustainable community emphasizing walkability, health and wellness, and lifestyle amenities

30,000 capacity of live entertainment, including a new 6,000-capacity concert venue

30 acres of public open space including three unique plazas and 20 acres of park

A 5-acre, riverfront park with the ability to host seasonal outdoor concerts and events

30+ restaurant concepts, including a food hall with diverse offerings and multiple standalone restaurants

Uniquely themed and intimate clubs

Two hotels, consisting of 650 rooms total, thematically aligned with the energy of the district

A network of pedestrian bridges and walkways including a landmark bridge crossing Katella Avenue

825,000 square feet of office space, including a new 325,000-square-foot office tower

2,800 residential units, including a commitment of 15% affordable housing units

8,700+ parking spaces among several structures, new roads and increased capacity to enhance ingress/egress

I'm not saying transit is a good solution, I was just throwing it out there as possibly a potential side-option (in the loosest sense of the term) because it is right there, sort of.

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

I'm totally on board for losing the giant hats and the Disney rocks, but I am having a hard time reconciling how you're going to run a baseball team out of Anaheim with no parking lots. What are people gonna do, teleport in? I like New Urbanism as much as any dork here but even I know where I'm licked.

40 minutes ago, QCS said:

Unless those buildings are parking garages, what is their plan here, to remove all the parking then hold their hands and say "well, we tried!" then head to whatever LA suburb will build them a stadium? I like it and it looks nice, but it seems like the game-day experience would be hell if you can't park within a reasonable distance.

The article mentions two parking structures, but then also prefaces it with this.

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For fans, the plan promises gathering places for eating, drinking, shopping and relaxing before and after games, in part a bid to ease traffic that largely would be directed to two new parking structures.

So there's plans for two parking structures, but all these other attractions will hopefully help reduce traffic by having people coming early and leaving later so there won't be congestion? I don't know about that.

The building directly above the Big A in the top picture is the transit station, so maybe they'll also work to have more transit to the games now?

Keep in mind, this whole plan is still subject to the sale of the land to Moreno's group, which hasn't happened yet, and this is the timeline in the article.

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Construction is set to start by 2025 and run through 2050

Angels development plan includes 150 acres of parks, shops, homes and restaurants. 

That open area in centre and left field are a proposed "grand entrance plaza" and I don't know if I like the look of it. Also, I guess prepare say goodbye to the parking, the big hats out front and the Disney rocks.

The article says the Ducks are supposed to unveil a similar type development plan for the Honda Center land tomorrow.

The Saskatchewan Huskies tweaked their logo. The head is a minor change but the S logo is a major upgrade.

They also created a new script logo and retired three logos, which were men's hockey specific logos.

Here's the brand guide if anyone is interested, you can see the new script and the newly retired logos. It's a cool read.

A big gain for the NHL on Sportsnet is a big loss for the CFL on TSN.