Sports outlook 8/10

Sunday, August 10, 2003

A recent telephone conversation with Jim Novak prompted me to surmise that those who are currently in control of the Kansas City Royals are either arrogant or ignorant. Novak was complaining about attendance in the 3-game series with the Chicago White Sox on the last three days of July. It was a hugely important series between the first place Royals and the hard-charging, second place Chisox. Attendance in the three games was steady in the low 20,000 range with 24,485 on Tuesday, 20,722 on Wednesday and 21,352 on Thursday. Ugh! And don't be misled by the 43,922 who turned out in Chicago a week later when the Royals paid them a visit. It was a half price admission night. Hmm, think about that one, K.C. management. Fault not the fans of the Royals for those disappointing numbers. Fault the promotional end of the business with an assist to the highway department for making access to the place nearly impossible from the areas where the biggest percentage of fans come. Those who run the Royals should have the words of the much-reviled Charles O. Finley set in raised block letters above the doors to their offices. As Finley said, "The Kansas City fans are the best in baseball. There are just too few of them." As it was in 1967, so it is in 2003. When attendance began a remarkable upward climb in the years after Royals Stadium went up, management was astute enough to take surveys and figure out just where their fan base was coming from. Guess what? The survey told them that 40 percent of the attendance was coming from outside the K.C. Metro area. Aha! The promotional apparatus began to crank up big time. Remember promotions like Nevada Night? The Community Choir sang the National Anthem. The mayor threw out the first pitch. In order to rate such an honor, you had to have 2,500 people in the park. They had Nevada Night for several years and always drew at least 500 fans. They had all kinds of nights for area towns and fans turned out by the thousands. In the late 70s and early 80s, Marion Shrimplin had season tickets and drove up from Nevada every night. Of course, games started at 7:30 in those days, which meant fans could leave after work and drive a greater distance to games than they can with today's 7 o'clock starting time due to longer games. The Royals once had a far-reaching radio network, television available from one of the bigger local stations and ticket outlets in cities all over. Nevada used to support the Royals in a big way. First, you couldn't get them on TV anymore. That was followed by the pulling of the ticket outlet because sales dropped off too much. Then the Nevada radio station found it no longer financially feasible to broadcast them and switched back to the Cardinals after an absence of seemingly 30 years. So, the Royals are exactly where the A's were when out-of-town fans stayed out of town. The Kansas City Metro area has grown somewhat, which means that more fans will come to the games. More does not project into a lot, however. The numbers are as static as ever. Tell me this. How can the Royals improve attendance with their TV contract with RSTN. If you subscribe to cable and are a customer of Time Warner, you have access to their many telecasts. Otherwise, forget it. Tell me how that can increase the fan base. Personally, I would pay for a season package akin to what Time Warner customers get for free. If you are a cable subscriber or satellite user living in Nevada, you are out of luck. If either of those had access to the Royals, I'd switch in a minute, or hope to. It's so difficult to talk to real people on the phone these days, it might take considerably longer than a minute because of the so-called, "heavy volume of calls" they seem to always be getting. Sure I believe both that and the moon is made of green cheese. That's neither here nor there. Kansas City management is going to have to figure out a new tack if they want to increase attendance, and a good part of that comes from out-of-towners. I know that it's not as easy to go up as it once was. Gas is more expensive and tickets cost more. But if a person used to drive up 20 times and now goes up zero times, management has blown it. For management to have done its job, that same guy ought to be going up a few times, at least. Anybody who reads my columns is well aware of my love for baseball. But even I don't enjoy going because of what they have done to the stadium. Instead of building a statue of Ewing Kauffman and naming the stadium after him, the Royals have slapped his memory across the face by changing the landscape into a NASCAR track lookalike. They have absolutely transformed what used to be a beautiful edifice into an advertiser's paradise. It makes me want to puke. Put advertising where it belongs, in the newspaper where interested people can peruse it, instead of being bombarded by people trying to sell me something I have no use for. Typically, Wal-Mart doesn't even advertise when the team is owned by a Wal-Mart tycoon. It seems as though everyone else does, though. I knew from the first time I saw his face, which is forever branded in my memory, that Marvin Miller would be the ruination of the game. You can thank him for today's astronomical ticket prices and the players can bow to him for their multi-million dollar salaries. All of that and they can't figure out why more people don't attend games.

To Read More
Subscribe Sign In
Continue reading with a subscription
Subscription options