Dodgers president Stan Kasten gives fans update on SNLA by SportsNet LA March 27, 2014 Dodgers president Stan Kasten gave Dodgers fans an update on SNLA on Thursday: Kasten on the demand for the Dodgers: "The other thing that's particularly irritating in terms of disingenuous rhetoric is when some of them say, 'We're not really seeing the demand for the Dodgers.' That doesn't pass the laugh test because you know about the attendance not just here, but we also led baseball in road attendance. We have the highest number of season tickets we've ever had; it is the highest in all of Major League Baseball. Last year our TV ratings didn't go up by 2% or 4%, they went up by 40% and looks to be higher this year. So come up with some other excuse because the reality is, in the history of this franchise, it is likely that right now is the period of time with the greatest interest that our team has ever had." Kasten on what Dodgers fans can do to help: "My suggestions to those fans who still do not have access to Dodger games, are the two basic ones, which is to tell your provider that you want the games. If you do that, you will get the games... They have to be told as many times as necessary that you want the games, that's what they're in business for. If you tell them that, they will provide it. And if for some reason it's not happening quickly enough for you, my other suggestion is to go to a provider that is providing it....Letting your provider know is at the end of the day what's going to get all of the games on TV." Kasten on the status of negotiations: "I am disappointed that deals haven't been closed yet...With the first regular season game coming on Tuesday, I am now concerned that some fans are going to start to not be able to see the games. And that's disappointing and shouldn't be happening. Kasten on price and carriage of SportsNet LA: "Let me assure you that we're talking about market rates and very consistently what's out there now, and that's what's disappointing...This is not about price, the price is consistent with the market place. In fact, to be blunt, some of these people, and they know who they are, are already on their own systems paying more than the price that's out there to teams in smaller markets. That's the truth." "This is not about price, it's about the game of negotiating." "I do occasionally see rhetoric that is disappointing because, to be polite, it’s disingenuous. For instance, when some cable providers say, 'Gee, we think the Dodgers should be a la carte.' All these providers know that there is not another team in all of baseball whose games are a la carte. Anywhere. Including, interestingly enough, on the cable systems owned by these same providers with their own RSNs. No one. They don't do it for themselves and by the way those same providers have done deals at higher prices for bigger packages than has been offered to them right now.
I went with 10 games. People are going to flip out when they can't watch the games and there should be riots. Luckily I don't have to worry about it though haha.
Twenty games in. It kinda sucks that it'll force people who don't watch the team/don't care about baseball/don't care about sports to pay more, but it will happen eventually. Until then, I'm going with Mousey's plan of changing my computer to have it fool MLB.tv into thinking I live in Denmark.
I tried to bring this up months ago and got run out of town. This is not a team to market to middle America that isn't a Dodger fan. Folks are very sensitive nationwide to rising cable/satellite costs and networks they have no interest in. The industry is on the verge of ala carte pricing anyway. I was accused of being racist (laughable) a prude etc. But when so much of the news about Dodger players is being a baby's daddy to a reality star and it being your third child and not wanting the other two to live with you. Being connected to a Khardasian along with the adventures of Puig in the media. None of this helps. You can only go with Khershaw so much. Kasten may have previously realized that marketing the Dodger concept is a lot easier than marketing the Dodger players when you are asking someone to pay who isn't a fan. The local press doesn't help non Dodger devotees as the generated headlines are not often the gold of marketing.
Pitcher- Ryu Catcher- Ellis****** First Base- Gonzalez Second Base- Gordon SS- Ramirez 3B- Uribe LF- Crawford CF- Kemp RF- Puig Race does matter to a lot of racist or non Dodger fans etc etc. Great to market to the various ethnic communities in LA but could be a tough sell to those who aren't so inclined. Just saying! Stan needs to understand game attendance is for the believers, a five dollar add on to the cable bill is for everyone. So throw stuff at me again but the publicity of Kemp and a Khardasian and their relationship before that could have been a concern of someone in management thinking ahead to this time in the tv deal. Fortunately Matt made sure there was nothing to it and things were moving along much better until CC doesn't go to Australia to have a child out of wedlock to a woman who is a reality tv player and was featured with a basketball player. Oh yeah he is trying to stop the mother of his other two children from moving to LA to be closer to him. Say what you want but reality often becomes real and bites you in the ass.
http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/news...p-for-astros?ymd=20140323&content_id=69955670 Tick Tock, Tick Tock Lets hope there is movement and soon before the speculation begins in a few weeks or more.
What is a closely kept secret is the terms of the contract and how many subscribers and at what price does Time Warner need to make the deal work. What worries me is what if any impact the possibility of Comcast buying Time Warner would have on the deal. http://www.deadline.com/2014/03/tim...pects-last-minute-deals-to-carry-l-a-dodgers/ Not sure of the double speak in the above from a couple of weeks ago. Lets hope it does as previously hoped for come together over the next week. We need a couple of signings to get the ball rolling.
"my other suggestion is to go to a provider that is providing it" OK. I will get right on that. "With the first regular season game coming on Tuesday, I am now concerned that some fans are going to start to not be able to see the games." WTF are you talking about? The season already started. Don't play it off like no games have been missed. I don't really care to hear these excuses. There are no less than 6 other providers, and you haven't made a deal with a single one. The common denominator in this equation is TWC. So until I have an option in my area to switch to, the problem is you.
Another thought on the marketing of our team personnel to joe average. Consider our rotation Keyshaw -a marketing dream Greinke -doesn't talk Ryu -talks just not in English Beckett -no comment Haren- TBD Bills- Could be a great story How many Dodger regulars are good on air interviews? Contracts with cable companies signed no problem. Contracts needing to be signed and the project being evaluated for worth? Yes a special thanks to Dylan Hernandez and his crew at the LA Times for their stellar reporting in the off season to dream up and create controversy. Especially with our media created four highly paid outfielders controversy. I hear overpaid and now you want joe average to pay their contracts. Thanks LA Times. Even in forums like this players get blasted and given uncomplimentary names and we expect someone else to, pay so we can see them play? Maybe it will all work out but paper commentators and forum participants need to look over their shoulders and hope no chickens are following them home.
Yeah, I get to see all the games also. Time will tell but the fan rebellion is misplaced in my opinion. We are being asked to pay for what we got. Want the mega payroll and quick turnaround then those in the viewing area have to pay for it. Unfortunately millions in the viewing area didn't want it and don't want to pay for it.
Well I don't want MTV, FoxNews, TNT...hell I don't want 99% of the shit channels on TV. If I can just pay 5 bucks a month for SportsNet LA exclusively, then I'd do that. Until that's an option these other carriers need to just make the fucking deal. This isn't on TWC or the Dodgers, it's on the cheap fucks at these other carriers. I have TWC in my area and if it comes down to it I'll switch but I'd rather DirecTV just pull their head out of their ass.
Dodgers at moment of truth with TV deal By Ramona Shelburne | ESPNLosAngeles.com March, 29, 2014 ASSOCIATED PRESS The promise of a new Dodgers regional sports network was always part of the owners' plans. Magic Johnson said a lot of things at the press conference in May of 2012 when he and his partners with Guggenheim Baseball Management were introduced as the new owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The one thing anyone remembers is that he lowered the cost of parking from $15 to $10. It was a symbolic gesture to the fans who’d felt taken advantage of and used by previous owner Frank McCourt. An immediate, here’s some money back in your pocket for all the ugliness of the previous few years that the new owners had nothing to do with, but still needed to start cleaning up. A little olive branch to get fans back in Dodger Stadium, so the work of regaining their trust and loyalty could begin immediately. Then came the trade and quarter-billion dollars of additional salary for Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Nick Punto, the $147 million deal for Zack Greinke and the $215 million contract for Clayton Kershaw. Along the way they dropped $150 million to improve Dodger Stadium, too. All told, another billion invested in the team on top of the $2.15 billion they paid to buy the team. So everyone knew the reckoning was coming at some point, right? The new owners were going to have to make their money back somehow. The promise of a new regional sports network was always part of the setup. The Dodgers new owners never tried to hide that. They said it to reassure fans they weren’t pulling a Jeffrey Loria and going on a winter spending spree just to make Miami taxpayers feel better about building his franchise a new ballpark, then trading away decent players making much over the league minimum by the end of the summer when things didn’t go well. They said it to explain how they could greenlight contracts like the massive deals they gave to Greinke and Kershaw and the record $235 million payroll the team will take into this season. They had to say it over and over to convince fans they actually did have money coming in to pay for things, and not just a parking lot in Boston to borrow against. They didn’t apologize for it either. This is how big market clubs like the Yankees and Dodgers should operate. That’s the advantage of being an iconic brand in the No. 1 and No. 2 media markets in the country. You get to make more and spend more than any team you want to, if you so choose. Teams like the Seattle Mariners can drop $240 million on Robinson Cano in the year their new TV deal starts, but that’s pretty much their one indulgence. Because their TV deal with the Direct-TV owned and operated RSN ROOT Sports Northwest is valued at $2 billion over 17 years, according to a recent Forbes magazine report, while the Dodgers' deal with Time Warner is valued between $8.35 billion (Forbes) and $8.8 billion (The Hollywood Reporter) over 25 years. As long as they kept reinvesting those profits in the team and not on a bunch of houses and fancy swimming pools, there was a tacit acknowledgement amongst fans that this was part of the deal. Same way there’s a tacit acknowledgement amongst Google users that the service is free because the company sells ads and metadata off their search history to make a profit off them. It’s not always pleasant to think about the implications of that, or peek behind the curtain at how much money is being made off your personal information, but on some level, if you use the service, you’re comfortable with the arrangement. The real question, the only question that really matters in these business arrangements, is whether the consumer trusts the company profiting off them. And for the last two years, that’s why the Dodgers new owners have worked so hard to earn back the trust of the franchise’s fans. Shoot, they practically hit fans over the head with that message. So that when it came time for them to make back their money with a new TV deal, fans were OK with how they went about doing it. They may not want to hear how much money is involved. Those kind of numbers are a turnoff to 99.99999 percent of the world. They really don’t want to hear about the negotiations between Time Warner Cable and all of the cable and satellite television distributors it is trying to get to carry the Dodgers new regional sports network. And they really, really don’t want to be caught in the middle while those negotiations play out. So long as Vin Scully is back in their living rooms soon, the cable bill doesn’t go up by too much, and the profits go back into the team, all this public negotiating between Time Warner and distributors like Direct TV sounds like noise to most fans. That is, until they start missing games. That’s when the moment of truth arrives for both sides. And it’s the moment the Dodgers new owners have been preparing their fans for since they bought the team. The contract was always transparent, if anyone was paying attention. Do Dodger fans like walking around and acting like the Yankees? Do they like that fat checkbook? Do they trust ownership to keep writing those checks? Both sides are about to find out. .
The issue isn't Dodger fans willingness to pay but the non fans. If it were ala carte it would be up to fans