As the Braves stunk it up , Liberty Media Chairman John Malone yucked it up. The team's comedy of errors continued on the field after the jokes flowed at a stockholder meeting, as reported by The AJC's Tim Tucker.
Sports teams always appeal to emotion. The Braves have an added incentive to do so this year as they try to capitalize on sentiment during their final year at Turner Field. They want fans to bask in the nostalgia from the long-ago days of 1997 before the team moves to Cobb Taxpayer Stadium.
But Malone talked about the club in the dispassionate terms of business, with the Braves as just another asset in LM’s portfolio. No room for sentimentality in the boardroom.
With the development around the publicly-subsidized ballpark the Braves will be “a fairly major real-estate business as opposed to just a baseball club.” The Braves are a content provider for Major League Baseball’s digital business: “Our indirect part in that is, I think, an attractive asset.”
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Beyond noting the Braves are rebuilding and cracking jokes, Malone didn't have anything to say about the losses. Management could "make its excuses for the poor starting performance of the team," Malone said. His job is to count the money, which flows whether or not the Braves win many games .
Some Braves fans will grumble that all of this illustrates the disadvantage of the Braves being owned by a corporate entity. They’ll say the Braves need a human owner(s) who cares about the performance of the team and will spend money to make it a winner, not a faceless corporation that views the club as numbers on a spreadsheet.
After nearly 20 years of covering sports, I’m here to tell you that a human owner would make little difference. Money is the main consideration for all franchise owners, whether they be rich guys or rich corporations. The only difference is that rich guys tend to be better at PR and would not be so tone death as to publicly cut it up with investors while the team struggles.
Those franchise owners who openly display their passion do so because they know that's what fans want to see. Seeming to care about their teams beyond the bottom line creates loyalty among customers who have been conditioned to see sports teams as civic assets. This also comes in handy for owners when they go looking for their next government handout .
That’s not to say there are no team owners who really do care about winning. The point is they care a lot more about making money, which is easier to do when the team wins but also can happen when they lose if their customers stick around.
For Braves fans angry about LM treating the team like a stock, the only way to change things is to stop consuming the product. Don’t go to Braves games. Don’t watch them on TV. Don’t stream them online. Don’t click on the team web site. Don’t buy Braves gear.
I'm guessing Braves backers will have little trouble staying away from Turner Field this season. Certainly Netflix and chill is a better option than tuning in for more bad baseball. But will Braves fans come rushing back to support the Braves at their new "real-estate business" in Cobb, forgetting how they felt about the team becoming a laughingstock as Malone laughed it up?
That's their prerogative as consumers but, if they do, joke’s on them.
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