Skin Blues wrote:Truthrising wrote:
I just don't get why the Jays need to tighten up they're belt when they're one of the richest owners in all of MLB and 22nd on the payroll list. If the Rangers are willing to dish out the 50 Million bid I can't see why not the Rogers can't do the same as well especially when it doesn't even count towards the teams payroll nor are they giving up any prospects along the way. Sorry for sounding like a broken record but they missed the ball on this one.
Why does it matter if it counts against the payroll? They're giving $50M to someone, they don't care if it's a player or a team. It's pretty scary that so few people realize that the amount of money Rogers possesses has nothing to do with how much they should spend on the Blue Jays
. They invest based on how much money they can make. Period. Whether they have $100M to work with, or $100B, it changes nothing. It has to be profitable, just like every owner of every team in every sport. And rest assured, Rogers will do what's financially in their best interests. Hopefully enough fans get pissed off at having a crappy team on the field, and they'll see the benefit of investing in a winner. The big Darvish letdown should help nudge them towards putting a more competitive team on the field. But no matter how much we hope otherwise, having a sh¡t-ton of money has nothing to do with what they're willing to spend on the team.
I agree which is why the missed the Boat on the Darvish sweepstakes, there's no other player available on the FA market that would be able to bring in the market revenue that Darvish could've done not even Fielder would've made the Jays as much marketing revenue if they really care about being profitable at the same time trying to put in a competitive field.
Let's take a look at what impact Ichiro had in Seattle and i'm pulling off an article from Forbes.com back in 2005:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0425/086.htmlDuring the past five years the team has averaged $163 million in revenues, behind only the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and New York Mets.
FORBES estimates the Mariners' worth at $414 million, the fifth highest in Major League Baseball
Attendance at Safeco Field jumped 12% in Ichiro's first season. Since then attendance has averaged 3.3 million, the fourth highest among American baseball's 30 teams.
Ichiro jerseys and merchandise have outsold those of all other Mariners, including former stars Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez.
The Mariners rank third in television ratings--measured as a share of each team's local market--behind the Red Sox and the Cardinals. Five years ago the team negotiated a ten-year deal with Fox worth $250 million. Only the Yankees, Mets and Braves generate more local media revenue. "I've never seen such a phenomenon," says Mark Shuken, general manager of Fox Sports Net Northwest.
Tourists from Japan account for 6% of sales at the downtown Executive Pacific Plaza Hotel; pre-Ichiro their share was less than half a percent.
"They are good shoppers," says Michael Cummings, head of Sports Den, a three-store chain in Seattle. Japanese buyers account for 10% of his baseball business. The Ichiro effect has pumped millions of dollars into Seattle's economy every year since 2001, according to a study by the University of Oregon.
Or how about this article from Forbes back in 2008 in regards to Asian ballplayers:
http://www.forbes.com/global/2008/0310/020.htmlCapitalizing on the popularity of imports like Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka, U.S. teams are signing a flood of Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean players. They are hot commodities not just because they often become stars in the U.S. but also because they attract a lot of Asian viewers both here and abroad, helping the Seattle Mariners, Yankees and Boston Red Sox sell advertising, sponsorships, merchandise and premium seating.
Sales of Seattle Mariners' MLB-licensed merchandise increased 60% in Japan during 2001, Suzuki's first season with the team. Suzuki's number 51 jersey is the most popular item for fans who buy Mariners merchandise. One reason the Mariners have a rich cable deal ($28.5 million last season) despite their small market is that the team's television ratings rose dramatically after Suzuki signed.
The effect intensified in 2001, when Ichiro went to Seattle. "Now people were getting up every morning and watching a Mariner game," says James Small, baseball's vice president for Asia. The league sent him to Tokyo in 2003 to open its first Asian office. Small, who's worked in baseball for 25 years, worked by himself for the first six months; now he has five staffers.
Small renegotiated the Japanese TV deals when he arrived, tripling their value to a reported $235 million over six years
That collective clout is good for the teams, says Miki Yamamoto, a senior vice president in IMG's Tokyo office, who oversees all licensing for MLB in Asia. Licensed goods sales total $300 million a year in Japan; the league gets a cut of that. China now has 30 shops selling MLB gear; South Korea, where the league has sold licensed togs for a decade, has more than 100 stores. In April MLB opened its first Clubhouse boutique outside the U.S., in Shibuya, and one opened in Taiwan last fall. Two more Japanese Clubhouses are planned, in Osaka and Fukuoka, as well as another in Taiwan.
That deal was Yamamoto's doing. But while MLB teams aren't permitted to strike their own licensing deals, they can troll for sponsorships. For its March series in Japan the Red Sox lined up EMC, the computer-storage company in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, near Boston, to sponsor the club's trip. A rare EMC logo will appear on Sox players' away jerseys when they take the field at the Tokyo Dome. EMC is a longtime Fenway Park sponsor, providing the video database system that lets players in the Red Sox dugout analyze their opponents. By sponsoring the games, EMC is aiming at customers both in Japan and in the U.S.
The Yankees, who enjoy perhaps the best name recognition in Asia of any MLB team, are working on signing up their own sponsorships as their new stadium takes shape in the Bronx. Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ), Canon (nyse: CAJ - news - people ), Sharp and Komatsu already pay for Yankee Stadium sponsorships, as does the Yomiuri Shimbun, a newspaper that's a corporate cousin of the Yomiuri Giants team
In China the league has different problems. MLB is funding a training academy there, but league officials say it will be at least five years before Chinese players are ready to start in a major league game. A Chinese Ichiro could be the catalyst. It's a scout's dream--and a marketer's as well.
