Reese Kaplan -- No One Buying Buggy Whips? Sell 'Em Something Else

Recently while we were all overstuffed and groggy from the turkey's tryptophan (not to mention an assorted couple of thousand holiday-attributed calories), we awakened to what the retailer's have for my entire lifetime referred to as "Black Friday" which means the day in which retailers' ledger books move from red for the year signifying a deficit or loss to black which means they are making a profit.  

While technically that is not the actual origin nor meaning of the phrase, it's the one most people would recognize as being representative of a crowd frenzy hitting department and electronics stores on the day off to signify the start of holiday shopping and the official beginning of the Christmas season.

This past Black Friday was by anyone's measure a retailing example of what it's like when needs and habits change.  There was a profile done of stores on the east coast and west coast which showed that other than the electronics departments which had the usual eye popping discounts on TVs and related merchandise the stores were decidedly empty.  

Part of the explanation was the inflation hitting the USA which raised prices on nearly everything and made the spending frenzy of holiday shopping perhaps a thing of the past.  Another explanation was the preponderance of online shopping and the now accompanying day dubbed Cyber Monday in which folks feel it's easier simply to remain in their sweat pants and socks, logging on and making their gifting start over the Internet.  

The end result is that retailers must wise up and face alternative sources of revenue.

Well, y'all didn't log on here to read a treatise on the state of the USA economy (coming from someone who doesn't even live in that country anymore).  

No, we're here to talk baseball, yet the parallels are indeed there that ways teams produced revenue in the past have and continue to be changing which means new income streams need to be developed to address skyrocketing salaries and reductions in traditional ways to separate fans from their dollars.  

While the performance records of individual players and a team's place in the standings were traditionally the ways teams set about putting fannies in the seats, that business model is changing.  

This past season while Pete Alonso was setting a new team record in RBIs, Edwin Diaz was redefining what it was like to be a team's closer, Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom (for the most part) pitched like their Cy Young credentials suggest they should, solid contributions were made by a whole slew of others, and the Mets wound up with a 24-game improvement in their record from the previous year, finishing in the postseason (hey, wildcard playoffs still count!), and 101 wins on their ledger.  

Would you believe that the team's attendance was DOWN from what it was back in 2016 after their quick exit in the 2015 World Series where expectations were especially high?

It's not merely a Mets problem.  Across town the Yankees had their own one-man show in the form of uber-star Aaron Judge.  Between his 6'7" frame and weight tipping the scales a lot closer to 300 pounds than 200, he's a man-monster in size and has always shown the corresponding home run power that you'd expect someone of that magnitude would generate.  

In 2022 Judge stayed healthy and was able to rewrite the American League home run record books by clobbering 62 home runs wiping out Roger Maris' long time record, driving in 131 runs, playing multiple outfield positions and DH, stealing 16 bases and hitting .311. 

There's no question who was the Most Valuable Player in the game and fans should have flocked to see his every inning played.  They didn't.  The Yankees were also down in attendance for the season as well.  

Baseball has already formed new sources of revenue over the years, from assigning stadium naming rights, placing billboards for advertising within the ballparks, selling commercials during broadcasts, selling internet-streaming packages for games, and the like, apparently it's not enough for the games's future.  

Not even the approximately $200 million each of the New York baseball franchises will receive is considered enough.  

Take sports betting, for example,  Not only was it illegal not too long ago, but now it's a fully recognized and accepted component of the team's balance sheet where there is a stream of money flowing in from all of the casino and online bettors risking their own money on the expected results of games played.

Two new revenue generators will be highly visible.  Just like basketball and hockey, MLB uniforms will now rent space for sale on uniform jerseys and on batting helmets.  

They will soon display the logos of deep-pocketed advertisers to bring additional money into the hands of the team owners who are not seeing it from ticket sales and other withered sources from the recent past.  

Like any other kind of business operation, baseball is about increasing revenue while lowering costs.  Many folks (like the Wilpons) felt much more strongly about the latter by bowing out of many top flight talents for fear of what it would do to the revenue.  Under the brief Cohen-led Mets management, they seem to take the old "it takes money to make money" approach by spending liberally while realizing what it can do to a business' bottom line.  

Going forward expect marketing and accounting personnel in front offices to explore new and heretofore unused ways to help a team secure more money from fans, sponsors and media to help make it possible to sign the most expensive talents, offer up the best stadium facilities and continue to provide the game we all love, warts and all.