HEART OF THE ORDER
Last summer I was communicating with a friend from work via the office messaging service. Because we work remotely now —which began well before COVID-19 — I hadn’t seen this guy in a while.
He revealed a new passion. “I am completely obsessed,’’ he wrote, “with Formula One.”
“Me too,’’ I replied. “It’s like a soap opera on Pirelli Tires.”
Yes, I have become one of those people who actually care whether Ferrari or McLaren finish third in the constructors’ standings.
Formula One seems to be gaining new fans lately, particularly in the United States. The circuit enjoyed a whopping 58% jump in TV viewership in 2021 over the previous year.
A tough nut
United States-based Liberty Media bought the controlling interest in F1 in 2017 and has worked hard to grow the sport in this country.
The United States has been a tough nut for Formula One to crack for several reasons.
There are no American drivers currently, and there have been relatively few.
The only American to win the driver’s title was Mario Andretti, who admittedly was born in Italy and lived there until he was 15. America can certainly claim Andretti. Not only he is a US citizen, but he came up on dirt tracks like all other US driving stars of his era.
Still, Andretti’s F1 success was more than 40 years ago.
The only American Team is Team Haas, owned by Gene Haas, who has run a successful NASCAR team for 20 years. In six seasons in F1, Team Hass has never contended for the constructor’s title and finished dead last in 2021.
From 2008-11, there were no F1 races held in the United States. This season there will be two races.
The races generally don’t take place at a good time for US TV audiences.
Another problem for F1 with American fans is the style of racing.
Being on the pole or in the first two rows is of the utmost importance in F!.
The race is often decided by which of the cars the top three qualifiers can take the lead on the first lap.
There is little passing — or overtaking as F1 aficionados call it — of the leader. In many races, the only lead changes happen when the front runner makes a pit stop.
F1 has changed its design specs of the cars in an effort to create more overtaking.
And the past few years, the TV broadcasts have changed to put more emphasis on the midfield during the race rather — where something always seems to be going on —than just focusing on the leader for the whole race.
‘The Drive to Survive’
The centerpiece of the F1’s attempts to grow the sport is Netflix “The Drive to Survive,” which takes you behind the scenes with the drivers and the team principals.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s kind of like HBO’s “Hard Knocks” or Amazon Prime’s “All or Nothing” shows about the NFL.
Except here is what I think is the real genius. “The Drive to Survive” doesn't premiere until right before the next F1 season.
This gives the crew more time to produce the series, and I also think it helps get a little more honest answers out of some of the interview subjects.
If you know your impolite or impolitic take on a subject is going to blow up in The Daily Mail tomorrow, well you are going to be more guarded. But if no one will see what you say for months, you might be more willing to tell us what you really think about a rival driver, your boss, another team, or a teammate.
(I should note that the series has been criticized for taking liberties of pairing in-race audio with footage from another race and other tweaks to inaccurately heighten the drama.)
And the timing of when the series is first available is perfect to get fans revved up — obvious analogy intended — for the new season.
It would be great for baseball to get to see players reveal more of their personalities.
Any sport tends to be more interesting if you have come context and if you know the personalities. The story needs the game and the game needs the story, as we used to say in the sports writing biz.
Brave, new media world
Millennials and Gen Z-ers see eschewing cable TV as a point of personal pride. And they seem to assign what I find an odd status to shows on Netflix.
Though MLB has been streaming games since 2003 through its mlb.com package, streaming represents a challenge for baseball.
MLB made some inroads on the streaming front by signing a $30 million a year deal with NBC Sports and $55 million a year deal with Apple TV. NBC Sports deal is primarily for streaming on Peackcock.com.
But it seems to me, Netflix is the place to be.
I thought MLB was late getting to the table with ESPN, which was the place to be on basic cable TV from the late 1980s until recently. The World Wide Leader was more than a decade old before it showed an MLB game.
And while ESPN showed hours of baseball highlights in the years before and after it became a rights holder in 1990, I have never felt MLB fit quite right with ESPN. ESPN was more of a college football and basketball network that eventually found a comfort level with pro football and basketball.
Thus talking head Steven A. Smith blathered on recently about how lockout would move MLB from barely relevant to completely irrelevant. Someone else pointed out the always relevant, in ESPN’s eyes, NBA Finals drew smaller audiences the past two years than the World Series.
You might think Steven A. Smith is a fool, or at least wrong on this point. But I think he reflects ESPN’s attitude about baseball.
Note that of the national deals that MLB made, only one is for less money. Baseball’s deal with the Worldwide Leader is 21% smaller than the last deal.
Missed opportunity
Go back to 1980. Thanks to cable TV those of us in flyover country could finally see more than the NBC Game of the Week, with almost every Braves and Cubs game carried on “Superstations” WTBS and WGN.
Some lucky locales outside MLB markets access to Mets games on WOR or the Yankees on WPIX. The Angels, Red Sox, Tigers, and Dodgers were among teams that had a station available on cable systems.
MLB probably couldn’t have received big rights fees from the fledgling cable networks. ESPN didn’t have big money to pay. But baseball could have received great exposure.
ESPN was excited about showing taped replays of the previous weekend’s college football games, and even more excited could show some midweek college hoops games.
At times they were desperate. I remember — I am not making this up — they showed a table tennis tournament from a rec center in a small town in Missouri.
And MLB had all this inventory. Hell, they could have blacked out the local markets like they did the Game of the Week and like they did later with their Extra Innings TV and streaming packages.
You know what MLB was focused on in the early and mid-1980s when it came to cable TV? The Superstations were showing too many baseball games.
That era was full of missed opportunities for MLB.
Advice to Rob Manfred: Get on Netflix.
Liberty Media also owns the World Series champion Atlanta Braves. Not coincidentally, the Braves produce “Behind the Braves,” available on youtube, and the closest thing MLB has to “The Drive to Survive.” “Behind the Braves” is the right idea, though not done as well as “THe Drive”
Anyway, maybe Liberty CEO Greg Maffei can sell Manfred on the idea.
The RSN problem
With cord cutting continuing, the regional sports networks that provide MLB teams with piles of cash are struggling.
Here is the basic business model for cable TV. All the stations your provider carries charge carriage a fee for every subscriber. This was actually pioneered by ESPN.
The channels also make money off advertising (as do the cable companies). But primarily they live off those carriage fees.
Sports channels charge the most. Cable companies have gone along with this because even though sports channels are not the most-watched.
And the most expensive of the cable channels are the RSNs that carry your local pro sports teams.
Your local affiliates have better ratings. But here is the thing. No one buys cable TV for the local affiliates. You can get those over the air for free.
Sports has been one of the main selling points for cable since the 1970s. But now consumers are cutting the cable because of the high cost. So the cable companies are digging in their heels.
Business model breaks
No matter what deal the RSNs come up with the cable providers, consumers are dumping cable anyway.
So let’s say I am running an RSN that carries MLB team X and I want to charge one of the local cable companies in my team’s home area $8 a subscriber per month — whether they watch or not. The cable company and Direct TV and Dish bargain hard, and so we agree on $7 subscriber, Less than I wanted but . . .
We will say in Year 1 there are 1 million cable (and other pay-TV) households in the metropolitan statistical area. I am getting $7 million a month for my channel and I am paying the local MLB $40 million a year and the local NBA team $30 million. So I am grossing $84 million.
But Year 2 of the deal, the company has only 800,000 subscribers. So now instead of getting $8 million I sought in revenue, I am getting $5. 6 million a month. Now I am not making enough to pay the rights fees (there are also production costs).
By Year 4, we are down 500,000 cable households. Now I am grossing about $42 million and I am in a world of hurt.
The RSNs have agreed to pay a ton of money to teams for these rights. They are taking a bath, and there is no end in sight.
And this is a problem for the teams on two fronts. Six teams were estimated to have received $100 million or more each from an RSN deal. So they need the RSNs to stay in business. Some teams have an ownership interest in an RSN — meaning our losses are your losses.
Then here is a bigger long-range problem for MLB teams. If your fans dump cable or Dish or Direct TV, they can’t see your games. You lose an important connection with your fan base,
Chris Ripley is the CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the parent company of Diamond Sports Group, which operates the 21 Bally’s Regional Sports Networks.
Sinclair has deep pockets and has fronted Diamond Sports Group $635 million.
Ripley believes a direct-to-consumer stream option may be the future for his RSNs.
But Manfred isn’t sure about going along with his because . . . well, reasons.
The names change, but the people running MLB exhibit the same lack of vision.
BONUS FRAMES
Twins mitigate risk in Correa deal
The Twins somehow managed to get one of the big names in free agency without saddling the club with millions of dollars of obligations years from now for a player who is past his prime — or even retired.
General manager Thad Levine and the Twins brain trust deserve credit by landing shortstop Carlos Correa for 3 years for $105 million. Correa is in heading into his age 27 season, so he’s right in his prime and he is coming off his best season to date.
He was relatively healthy and finished second among position players in MLB in Wins Above Replacement.
It’s a disappointment for Correa, who wanted a longer deal. But he didn’t do too badly. He gets $35 million-plus each season, and he has opt-outs for next season and in the final year of the deal.
So if he has another season as he did in 2021, he may want to test the market again.
$100 million club
This is the third contract of $100 million or more the Twins have agreed to — two of them coming this off-season.
The Twins signed Byron Buxton to a $100 million, 7-year deal in December. I questioned this because of Buxton’s injury history.
Twins’ biggest contract ever was an eight-year, $184 million extension for Joe Mauer that was worked out before the 2010 season, ahead of the first game at the Twins’ new home, Target Field. The megadeal kicked in 2011.
Obviously, the jury is out on the two deals this off-season. But the deal for Mauer was a dud. His best season was the year before he signed the deal. He still had fine seasons in 2012 and 2013. But the last five seasons of the deal, he was grossly overpaid.
With the Correa deal, the Twins have avoided a long stretch of overpaying. It could still go south with a bad injury.
Collusion?
That Correa had to settle for less than he desired tells you a great deal about the state of the market.
Teams are reluctant to make long-term commitments, even to stars in their primes.
Some people are going to scream collusion. And while I wouldn’t put such chicanery past the owners, this looks more like common sense, especially in an era of analytics.
Is it collusion that by 2012, you couldn’t sell a standard-definition big-screen TV, which only a few years before had cost hundreds of dollars, for more than $10?
No. It’s called market economics. We were onto HD. and no one wanted a standard-def model, no matter how mammoth.
End of an Era
The Reds just held a springtime fire sale. But they still have some expensive talent. Joey Votto will make $25 million in his age 38 season.
You are going to see fewer contracts that pay this kind of money to players beyond age 35.
And deals that pay players long after they are retired are going to become less common, too.
The Reds’ eighth-highest paid player is a 52-year-old outfielder, Ken Griffey Jr., who will make $3.6 million.
Manny Ramirez, 50, will make a little over $2 million from the Red Sox. Manny left Boston in 2008. That was the year Dustin Pedroia won the AL MVP. Pedroia, 38, is no longer not the field, but he is still on the Red Sox’s player payroll, making $2 million.
Vinny Castilla, 54, will get $100,000 for the Rockies. His last played for them in 2006.
The Mets will be paying Bobby Bonilla, 59, more than $1 million every year through 2035. He last played for the Mets in 1999. Bonilla’s deal has more to do with the desire to make more than money than with overvaluing a player.
In 2000, the Mets owed him $5.6 million and agreed to pay it with interest over 25 years starting in 2011.
The Wilpons, who owned the team, had heavily invested with a guy named Bernie Madoff, who was delivering excellent returns. Or so it seemed. The Wilpons expected to make greater returns by putting the money they owed Bonilla to work with their brilliant money manager, Madoff turned out to be a crook.
Next edition: We will go where few in sports media have gone in the past 30 years — criticizing the MLBPA.
College Notes
Tennessee came into its showdown at rival Vanderbilt on April 1 leading the nation in home runs with 66. In the first inning, Jordan Beck hit one over the fence for what looked to be the Vols’ 67th homer of the season.
But after Beck circled the bases, the umpires got together. They were looking at Beck’s bat. Apparently, the bat was lacking a sticker that showed the bat had been tested
Talk about sticker shock.
Tennessee coach Tony Vitello told reporters after the game that the bat — and all the other bats used in the series — were tested to make sure they meet NCAA specs and given a sticker. He said Beck’s bat passed the test but the sticker had fallen off.
“That’s first for me, brother’’ Vitello said. “I probably need to be a better details guys, but that ain’t my territory. GId gave me a few strengths. That ain’t one of ‘em.”
The Vols still managed to win 6-2, for s school-record 17th straight win, and then went on to sweep the weekend series. They made it 20 straight wins with a victory over Lipscomb on April 5.
Drew Beam was named SEC Pitcher and Freshman of the Week on Monday, Beam has been tabbed the Dick Howser Trophy National Pitcher of the Month for March and the National Pitcher of the Week by the National Collegiate Baseball Writer's Association.
The Vols (27-1) are ranked No.1 in The USA Today coaches poll again and they finally edged ahead of Dallas Baptist (17-10) in the RPI rankings.
Trivia
Jackie Robinson made his debut with Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947 against the Boston Braves, Name the Dodgers Hall of Famer who played his debut two days later against the Braves.
Last edition: The Braves will be trying to repeat as World Series champions. What was the last National League team to win successive World Series?
The last National League team to win successive World Series was the Reds in 1975 and 1976. when the team was led by Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, and Tony Perez.
In fact, only two other National League teams have repeated as World Series champions. The New York Giants in 1921 and 1922. who were managed by John McGraw and the 1907 and 1908 Cubs teams that featured the double-play combination of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance.