The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jeff Schultz notes that, with the Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies coming to town, the Braves stand to play in front of hostile crowds at home for some time:
Fortunately, they will be checking tickets and not allegiances this week at Turner Field.
Revenue isn't the worst fallback. You take what you can get if you're the Braves, particularly when three of the visiting teams on a home stand — the Cubs, Yankees and Red Sox – come with overstuffed caravans and the term "meaningful games" locally appears to have a decreasing shelf life . . .
. . . The Braves knew the Yankees and Red Sox games would be the year's hot tickets. It's one reason why they initially sold them only through multi-game packs, also hoping to limit the presence of New York and Boston fans. But that plan didn't fill the stadium. Individual game tickets eventually went on sale three weeks ago.
The expected influx of Yankees and Red Sox is not surprising. It happens everywhere anymore. It's one of the consequences of ESPN and FOX's efforts to make New York and Boston de facto national teams over the past decade.
What kills me, though, is that there was a time when the Braves were the de facto national team. Maybe not quite "America's Team" as Ted Turner tried to package them, but certainly a team with a fan base spread across the country thanks to 144 games on TBS every summer. It's one of the reasons I'm a Braves fan. I lived in West Virginia when I was a teenager, and they were the only game on the dial. I watched every game, and no matter where the Braves played -- Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Chicago and even New York -- there was always a surprisingly strong Braves' contingent in the stands.
A couple of years ago, however, Braves' ownership decided to scrap that plan. From a broadcast perspective, the Braves are now confined to the south, and thus the national nature of that fan base is atrophying. I'm certainly losing track of them to some degree, and I presume others who used to follow them from afar are as well. I suppose the Braves' suits could point to how much better the Braves are penetrating their local market since the broadcasting change, but shouldn't they have wrapped up that market before now? How many more Meridian, Mississippi households can they possibly reach?
Atlanta fans are famously fair-weather, so the low attendance Jeff Schultz cites in this article is no real surprise given their poor play of late. One wonders, however, if there would be a greater enthusiasm for this team if they, like the Yankees and Red Sox, were consistently reaching a national audience like they used to.
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Haven't the Yanks, RedSox and Cubs been the biggest road draws since, um, ever?
I don't think you can solely blame ESPN here, but if you want to, I won't stand in the way.
"Biggest draws" and "biggest draws of bandwagon fans" are two different things.
NY and Chicago being two of the three largest cities in America, there have always been the transplants who worshipped Donnie Baseball or Ryno. Boston and the Dodgers weren't far behind. But that was just a baseline. It was guys who remembered their dads taking them to Fenway for the first time.
But what Craig's talking about is all the kids who were wearing Braves caps in the early 90s because they were force-fed Braves games on basic cable (remember, back then many teams still felt they might cannibalize their attendance by showing all their home games on TV), who now have kids who are being force-fed every single game the Yankees play against the Red Sox via ESPN.
And that's compounded by the announcers who continually refer to the "storied franchises," their rich histories, their traditions, their internal team dramas, etc., etc.
When ESPN first started their baseball contract, part of the deal was to give time to everyone. Now it's usually whatever game will get the highest ratings that night, and in most cases that's the game between the teams in the largest cities.
Had a comment for Craig but couldn't edit it in fast enough: the national TBS, as we know, no longer carries the Braves, so that in itself is the main reason they're no longer "America's Team."
Another issue is FOX's change in recent years, from multiple regional games to one national game - again, the biggest ratings draw they can grab.
I still think MLB should be putting its foot down and promoting the entire sport rather than three or four teams via its national partners, but unfortunately they wouldn't care if the money came Yankee pinstriped with Mickey Mantle's picture replacing Ben Franklin's, as long as it was spendable.
I know the Yankees always have been. I think the Sox is something of a newer phenomenon, at least in the numbers they draw on the road now.
But it's not so much that they're new as much as it is that the Braves used to draw well on the road too and they don't anymore.
Might it have something to do with certain events in the past 10 years?
I think that 95% of the blame can be put on ESPN and Fox, but especially ESPN. To back that claim up, why does one think that the Cubs are so popular? The whole country has watched them on WGN, and they haven't won crap. I know that when I was a kid, WGN was the only ones playing baseball games everyday.
Great write-up Craig. I spent 10 years in Atlanta and was fortunate to see some great games in person including the 1992 NLCS Game 7. I travelled a lot and loved knowing that if I was in Dallas or Seattle, I could find the Superstation and hear Skip, Don, Joe and Ernie do the games. Now I turn on TBS here in Western Michigan and see that the Braves aren't even carried anymore. It does seem that "America's team" has gone the way of the Tomahawk Chop, gone but not quite forgotten.
The Braves are still a very popular team. Besides Red Sox, Yankees and Mets hats, I see more people here in New England wearing Braves caps than any other team, including the Cubs. And it's not like we have a lot of Southern transplants up here. They might not be as prevalent as they were when they won their division every year, but the Braves are still one of the bigger-market teams in baseball.
I understand your point, but I think you have to think more about why Braves are not on TBS.
Almost all of the games on Braves were on TBS because (1) Ted Turner owned both of them and (2) the local Atlanta station WTBS's feed was broadcasted all over the country on cable stations as TBS. This was the case in the '70s and up to early '90s.
During the '90s, Turner began to merge with other media venues, leading to the mess that became AOL Time Warner. The Braves were part of this conglomerate along with TBS. Once AOL Time Warner merger was approved, Ted Turner no longer had the majority in the board room that would keep him as CEO or at least have a CEO that he can control. So Turner became just one of the big shareholders in the new AOL Time Warner, but no longer had the "overriding" decision-making capabilities he enjoyed as the sole large stockholder in previous incarnations of Turner Media and Time Warner.
So around 2005, AOL Time Warner (I think it was still called by that name) decided to re-brand TBS into a truly national cable network a la its sister station TNT, and not the WGN-like WTBS it used to be. They created (well, technically, re-name) a station called Turner South which would broadcast majority of Braves games instead. And following the plan to make TBS rid of its WTBS vestiges, in late 2007, the two channels were completely split and the local TV signal for WTBS became WPCH, also known as Peachtree-TV. It is through this event, the last remaining bunch of Braves games on TBS was shipped off to Peachtree, and TBS instead has the Sunday afternoon baseball game.
Also during 2007, the Braves were sold to Liberty Media in an asset swap between corporations, allowing Liberty Media to have near-majority control over DirecTV. So by 2008, when no Braves games were on TBS, there was no longer any link between those two units, other than in history.
So when you say Braves ownership decided to get rid of a national audience it had on TBS, I thnk you are completely mistaken. The Braves front office never had a choice whether to keep the Braves on TBS or not. That decision was made to them by a higher corporate entity. It is not as if the Braves front office had an actual discussion and said, "From now on, we'll only focus on the southeast." That was the hand they were dealt with Ted Turner's overzealous mergers, which led to Atlanta Braves, for nearly a decade now, being no longer owned by a recognizable single owner, but passed around from one faceless corporation to another.
I'm confused. Wasn't Time Warner the owner of the Braves? Didn't they decide to move the games to Turner South and later Peachtree?