Over the weekend, somebody transcribed S.F. Giants CEO Larry Baer during a podcast, talking about the potential for advertisements on uniforms. This isn't good, friends:
This is new revenue. And I think there’s always ownership support for new revenue, right? And, I think that also, quite frankly, we are, owners, very cognizant of ticket prices. And, if this is a way to — and I’m not saying it’s going to be mutually exclusive. I’m not saying, "Wow, if there’s advertising on uniforms, then ticket prices are going to be frozen for the next five years." I’m not giving to say that. But I do believe that, um, that could be potentially a better alternative. We would support, the Giants would support, this is a better alternative than continuous ticket price increases across the board to fund operations . . . I don’t know who would be on the sleeve, or, whatever. Something tells me it will be a sleeve. It would start with a sleeve.
When Larry Baer says "someting tells me," what he means is, "We've been talking about this for a long time, and we've decided that we'll start with sleeve patches, and eventually there will be signs on the actual field, and we might even get rid of team names on the jerseys, just like in soccer. Really, we're just waiting until a) Commissioner Bud is gone, and b) our figure filberts tell us the money we gain in sponsorships will outweigh the money we lose because fans won't buy as many t-shirts and stuff without the team names writ large."
And when Baer makes a connection between revenues and ticket prices, he's ... well, I won't say that he's lying. I will instead say that he's dissemblying, prevaricating, equivocating, and fibbing. Because he's smart enough to know there's no connection between revenues and ticket prices, and it's not nice to accuse someone of lying. But he knows what he's doing, and we know what he's doing.
Larry Baer's job is simple: Generate as much revenue for his owner as possible. This means winning games, maximizing ticket revenues, and selling as many other things as possible.
I hope I've said this before: As sick of Bud Selig as you might be, there are times when you're going to miss him. I suspect we haven't yet seen ads on uniforms during Major League Baseball games because Selig didn't want them. For which we should be grateful.
I dunno about you ... but I'm starting to miss him already.
/big tip of the cap to Hardball Talk's Craig Calcaterra
