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As if we needed any more evidence that the Washington Nationals are far from D.C.'s most popular professional sports team, the Washington Business Journal reports today that new ratings information indicates that "D.C. is the only TV market in the country where a team from another city gets better ratings than the hometown team." Yes, apparently an average of 16,000 D.C. households tuned into Orioles games on MASN this season, compared with 14,000 who watched the Nats. That's a rough slap in the face for the Nationals, though a MASN rep trots out that old canard that the D.C.-Baltimore area is "really one large mega-market."
Of course, what's not mentioned in the BizJo story is that at least these numbers represent an increase in TV viewership for the Nats. Last year, the team only recorded an average of 9,000 households per game.
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Those figures are higher than I would expect. Also, nice use of le francais.
My guess for the difference is that the O's play 1/4 of their games against the Yankees and Red Sox.
That's probably worth a lot. How many transplanted fans live in DC, and how many of them were fans of AL teams before they moved? The numbers would be much more enlightening if they were broken out by opposing team. One presumes that games featuring the Yankees and Red Sox would get the highest shares, followed by the Cubs, Cardinals, and White Sox, and only two of those are NL teams. Against cellar dwellers I'd bet the ratings were identical, if not, in fact, favoring the Nats.
I don't really think this is a good indication of support and/or lack of support. The Nats have only been in DC for a few years whereas the O's are an established franchise. Not to mention, prior to the Nats returning baseball to DC, the O's were the closest MLB team DC residents had.
This is similar to residents of Florida slowly moving their support from Atlanta to their two expansion teams in Tampa and Miami.
Give DC some time and you'll see interest grow within the beltway. It wouldn't hurt to win more either.
doug: i think that's exactly what sommer is alluding to in the last lines of this story...
I find it more telling that more DC households masturbate to The NEWSHOUR with Jim Lehrer than shaved panda amputee porn.
Does anyone else think Monkey uses manatees to write his comments?
Someone needs to make a monkeyrotica bingo board.
Gwen Eiffel gets my motor running. And I've always been honest about that fact.
The only real question is which city will get the Nationals when baseball in DC flames out for the third time? Indianapolis? Louisville? Las Vegas? Northern New Jersey? San Antonio? Austin?
Then DC will be left with a baseball stadium and no baseball team and an "entertainment" district with no entertainment.
I hate to let you down, but even though they suck, they aren't going anywhere.
Why not?
How is this a recipe for success:
-worst TV ratings in the league
-among the worst home attendance in the league
-non-existent fan support outside of DC
-ownership that is cheap
-new stadium that was built on the cheap and pales in comparison to other new parks
If an owner with the right amount of money came along and wanted to move the team to Indianapolis, or Texas, or Northern New Jersey, the Lerner's would sell and the other owners would vote unanimously to approve the move.
That sounds almost exactly like the Marlins or Pirates though (except I'll agree that PNC Park blows Nationals Park out of the water), and they're certainly not leaving their respective hometowns. Their attendance is way worse too.
Yep, and you lost me when you said "Northern New Jersey." I'm still trying to figure out if you were being serious or joking with that one. Ever hear of the Mets and Yankees?
The money here is too good. They may suck but they are not going anywhere. Also there is no way that Congress is letting a team move out of DC.
And as for the previous Senators. They didn't flame out the owner Bob Short, may he burn in hell for all eternity, sabotaged the team by bad trades and poor management. Things he repeated in Texas with the Rangers.
No chance. Zero.
I believe the Nats have a 25 year lease with DC for the new ballpark. The city won't let them out of that lease and they won't be going anywhere. Not to mention that no other city is going to build them a ballpark free of charge.
Correction - make that 28 years remaining on a 30-year lease.
What everyone is forgetting about is that Peter Angelos owns MASN and has total control of any "ratings" that are reported. The 9,000 number from the first time MASN reported was shown to be overwhelming bogus, and there is no doubt this one is as well. On the other hand that has to be the single largest market share increase of any baseball team. Someone has to either feel pretty good about that, or wonder why there is such large fluctuation in the numbers.
Boy, that sounds like some paranoid hokum to me. Please link to a crebible sourse questioning the validity of the ratings.
No matter how you cut it, baseball fans are baseball fans, and baseball fans typically stay loyal to the team they supported as a child. You cannot seperate baseball from nostalgia. Not everybody in D.C. is a transplant, and a huge percentage of D.C. area baseball fans grew up supporting the Orioles. Having the MLB drop a new team in your lap doesn't change that. Nobody is slapping anybody in the face. Facts are facts. 20 years down the road, after a generaton grows up with the Nationals, then you'll see true National baseball fans. The shift will take years. It won't happen overnight.
hillvada:
Only one of your 5 points is actually true. And DAJ has pointed out that the TV ratings are questionable.
So, nice try.
-Congress has no say in whether or not DC has a team. Do you really think Congress is going to take away the anti-trust exemption if MLB lets the Nats move? Remeber, if the Nats move, DC's loss will be some other city's (and state's with 2 Senators) gain. Congress let DC go more then 30 years without a team, it really doesn't care.
-Leases can be broken. Courts get involved, a settlement is worked out, end of story.
-Other cities, including Indianapolis and Las Vegas have previously committed to using public funds for a new baseball stadium. When the economy picks up, expect to see the same type of deals offered.
-the NY-NY-CT market is easily big enough to absorb a third team and, in fact, Northern New Jersey was being considered as a possible site for the Expos before DC got the nod.
-Whether or not Angelos is fudging the numbers, it is well known that the TV viewership for the Nats is terrible, as is the attendence. Every other MLB owner knows this, and every MLB fan can see then when the Nats are on ESPN and nearly every seat behind home plate is empty (as well as most of the other seats) is empty.
-As for the Pirates, Marlins, and Royals...The Pirates and Royals are gone if the right owners come along. The Marlins are getting a new stadium which they claim will help things, but that remains to be seen.
By the way, ask your local Baltimore Colts fan about teams that have "zero" chance of every leaving a city...
hillvada: given that the royals just had a $250 million refurb done on their stadium, and that PNC in pittsburgh is only a few years old (and a freakin' gem of a park), i don't know why you think they'd be more likely to move than the fish, who aren't in that new stadium yet.
There's that. And the issue of revenue sharing. As the Nats, Royals, Marlins, and others have learned, you can run a profitable franchise under the revenue sharing regime even if you only put 20,000 butts in seats a night as long as you keep the payroll down. Why move or sell if you can do nothing and make money?