Red Sox to expand netting behind home plate
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True. But so will revenues. Revenues do not go down with the addition of nets.
Are you joking? Have you actually talked to any STH's in the net zone?
They did go down a bit. There were folks who canceled or moved their season tix elsewhere to avoid the nets. Not as many as I expected, but definitely countable.
But it's not like those seats are just sitting empty every game, right? Isn't any revenue lost from people who don't like the nets made up for by people who like or don't care about the nets?
As will income and sponsorship dollars. I don't think anyone is saying alcohol isn't a big liability, but living in the real world, you have to consider all variables of what a team is willing to do. Which is to say nothing of the fact that if you ban alcohol sales, it doesn't mean people won't get drunk before they come in or bring their own. There's realistic steps that can be taken. That they don't solve everything shouldn't eliminate them from consideration.
Some of those seats were resold, sure. Others are now team property for them to hand out to visiting bigwigs and sponsors. As a whole I'm sure there was little noticeable bottom line effect.
Yeah, those seats that are newly "obstructed" by additional netting sure seem to be empty/unsold.
I didn't say "extending the netting is futile," I spoke directly to the "futility of trying to guard against every small-sample size event whenever one pops up on TV." I really can't be much clearer than that.
Considering we're talking about a single girl in New York City , I'd say it has absolutely everything to do with it.
Good point. I had forgotten about the native infinity of cash flow. My bad.
Yeah, that's a feature, not a bug.
You are correct as to the bolded. Clearly, that facet of the conversation is unwelcome. I shall take my ball and go home.
What if someone decides to head dive off the Monster? They should tear that thing down.
Fans climbing the net is a pretty disingenuous argument to make. Ass holes are going to be ass holes, even if bubble wrapped and sober. As someone else noted, just because you can't solve all the problems doesn't mean you shouldn't solve the ones you can.
Again, other than autographs and photos, what's the argument against it? Whether it's $20k or $200k it's a rounding error and it's none of ours money.
Fans climbing the net is a pretty disingenuous argument to make. Ass holes are going to be ass holes, even if bubble wrapped and sober. As someone else noted, just because you can't solve all the problems doesn't mean you shouldn't solve the ones you can.
Again, other than autographs and photos, what's the argument against it? Whether it's $20k or $200k it's a rounding error and it's none of ours money.
Right, so this really can't be compared to, say, banning alcohol, which would have a pretty substantial bottom line effect on income.
Now, is it possible that there is a better, more efficient use of whatever money the Red Sox spent to put up and maintain the nets (i.e., something that would similarly be revenue-neutral at worst and that would protect more fans from injury than the expanded nets do)? Possibly, but I can't think of any off the top of my head and I don't think I've seen a realistic proposal elsewhere in this thread, though I may have missed it.
Lose actually has a pretty good solution: if you leave every game in the 7th inning, you reduce your risk by 22 percent.
Please explain what this post means, if putting "The new net is bad because" before everything you wrote is not, in fact, the point.Every year someone tries to climb the screen behind home plate. And if anyone tried to climb the new netting it's got serious guy wires attaching it to the bones of the ballpark. The lawsuits if someone fell or the netting fell with someone climbing on it (attractive nuisance) would be ridiculous
(this pic is old, of course)
Excited to read this thread and find out that the possibility of extended netting at ballparks has pushed people to reassess the need for improved infrastructure. Guess a few people in here will take their ballgame ticket money and sending it to the state as extra tax payments to improve those crosswalks.
The point is that installing new netting isn't a $20,000 deal. It requires serious investment in supports so it doesn't fall down when some idiot decides to climb up it.
The idea that the new netting is expensive enough for the cost to trickle down to you, the Red Sox Fan, is absurd.
And how do you think that $# compares to their liability when someone gets a ball in the face? More or less than when the woman got speared by a broken bat? Or the girl at yankee stadium? Call it $200k if you want, call it $2M. Where's the dividing line for a sport that does $10B in revenue and a specific team that did $434M last year?
Again, you're putting words in my mouth. All I've ever argued is that there are better ways to spend this money for safety.
Now you're moving the goalposts (moving home plate?) and talking market decisions. I agree that steps should be taken to protect people and there are thousands of seats that are protected in major league ballparks. Does every seat need protection?
I'm pretty sure the Red Sox spending money on a net wouldn't stop the City of Boston from spending money to paint crosswalks.
Yes, painting lines on the cross streets will keep everyone safe. And not selling booze will prevent people from being drunk and won't cost more.
Which is still a fraction of the cost that even getting a lawsuit based on an errant foul ball thrown out of court will cost, nevermind settling the case to avoid bad publicity.
The Sox and all other teams are on notice that foul balls hit kids. Regardless of whatever fine print appears on the back of a ticket, the team is not going to ever want to go to trial on a negligence claim with a recent history of ignoring the risk and doing nothing. Ergo, the nets.
People still go to hockey games despite the nets around the ends after a girl got killed by a flying puck in Columbus. The precedent is there.
I have yet to hear any of these from you in this thread, but I'm totally interested in what these better ways might be, so it lay it on us.
And yet have offered exactly zero evidence across 10 posts that this is a fact in any quantifiable way, especially a way that accounts for the outsized impact on public perception that you're just not going to get from $20,000 crosswalks. Not only are you making an overly narrow economic-only argument, you're hypothesizing about the cost/benefit of various acts without any rigor in your analysis whatsoever. Maybe take a break for a bit?
There are many people, STH's, single game purchasers, photographers, who have changed what seats they buy. And just because a seat isn't empty doesn't mean it was specifically sold. I'd say more, but this is a public part of the site.
My Nationals Park season tickets are beyond the net, but the edge of the net cuts right through my view of home plate. If given a choice, I’d actually prefer that they extend the netting so I don’t have to deal with the much more noticeable support wires. I’ve sat behind the netting and, after the first inning or two, I no longer even noticed it.
I'm not moving anything, if you want to remove MLB revenue from the discussion - which is fair - then fine. But if you are going to cite costs, the Sox did $434M in revenue last year. They can afford putting up nets pretty much no matter the cost. No, not every seat needs to be protected, but it's not difficult to do studies on where seats sit in danger zones (if you will) for foul balls. Those seats should be protected if for no other reason than there's no valid reason not to.
Can't be too easy if those studies were seemingly wrong at least twice.
Huh? The Sox average over 36k in sold attendance in a 37k stadium. Those seats aren't being filled by people buying bleacher seats and sneaking down to sit next to the dugout.
I honestly do not understand how there could possibly be a controversy here at all. Some of the arguments against this are the thinnest and most ridiculous shit I've seen on this site.
Are you a season ticket holder who's tried to sell any seats lately? I've lost money on pretty much every game I haven't been able to attend the last two years and haven't even been able to give away tickets for a couple games. Who knows what the breakdown for reasons are for that, but it's true.
I hated the nets when they went in and still hate them. Actually, I don't hate the nets, I hate the giant wires attaching them to the structure 400 feet away. They go right through your view of the pitcher to home plate - the worst possible location for them. There has to be a way to protect the couple hundred fans behind the net without impacting the view of 15,000 others who are provided no benefit.
Whatever studies you were talking about in your post before mine that I was quoting.
It's not tough.
I said 'it's not hard to do studies'.
You said 'they got them wrong twice'
What two are you talking about?
This is the weakest "I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin" I've heard in quite some time.
Please don't even attempt to insinuate that the net has anything to do with you not being able to give tickets away
99.99% of the reason has nothing to do with a net.
I can't believe this is even a debate.
Even if you could definitively say that the net was the sole reason you've lost money on games you haven't been able to attend, why would this matter to the Red Sox? I take it from your post that you are, in fact, still buying those season tickets every year so from the Red Sox' perspective they are still making money on those seats every game.
Now, if you were upset enough about the nets that you stopped purchasing season tickets, you'd have a point but only if the Red Sox could not then turn around and sell those tickets to someone else. And no one has yet really made a convincing case that that isn't happening. (Even if the Sox end up giving some of those seats away to "bigwigs" or sponsors for free, they presumably attach a value to inviting those "bigwigs" or sponsor reps to a game that is equivalent or greater to the money they would get from a "normal" fan for that seat.)
So I'll contact the moops, Red Averages, and OurF'ingCity the next time I have a pair come up for sale. Thanks, guys!
You know we have a face value ticket swap / sale forum on this very site, right?
First we had nets behind home
Then they got moved
Now they're going to be moved again
So why weren't they this far out in the beginning?
Why it's almost like humans have the capability to learn from things and adapt. Nah. That's just crazy talk.
Huh? None of us suggested that we or anyone else would be willing to buy your or anyone else's season tickets at face value or better. I think we all took your word that you are having trouble making a profit or breaking even on season tickets, no one is disputing that. They were arguing that your trouble is almost entirely unrelated to the nets, and I was arguing that even if your trouble IS related to the nets, the Red Sox aren't financially incentivized to do anything about it.
Put another way, this becomes an issue for the Red Sox only when they are forced to lower ticket price in the "net" seats. Until then, they aren't going to care that a minority of fans don't like them.
The issue with all of this is "how far is too far?" If the goal is we should abide no injuries that could be prevented, they should extend the netting to the foul poles. There are lots of screaming line drives and even home runs that could injure.
But of course, they didn't do that because that would have a negative effect on a lot of people's views and someone decided that the downside outweighed the upside (or vice versa, depending on how you look at it).
I posted some on this when the issue first came up:
http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/class-action-lawsuit-against-mlb-re-fan-safety.10231/#post-1290676
It doesn't seem particularly risky to attend a baseball game. MLB or someone should probably release HitFX data on where the most dangerous balls reach the stands, and then we could have a more informed debate about where to put the nets. They could even tell people when you bought a ticket. But right now one side is saying "Well, why NOT do it!" and we won't get anywhere. Or we'll just have netting everywhere.
But of course, they didn't do that because that would have a negative effect on a lot of people's views and someone decided that the downside outweighed the upside (or vice versa, depending on how you look at it).
I posted some on this when the issue first came up:
http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/class-action-lawsuit-against-mlb-re-fan-safety.10231/#post-1290676
It doesn't seem particularly risky to attend a baseball game. MLB or someone should probably release HitFX data on where the most dangerous balls reach the stands, and then we could have a more informed debate about where to put the nets. They could even tell people when you bought a ticket. But right now one side is saying "Well, why NOT do it!" and we won't get anywhere. Or we'll just have netting everywhere.
I disagree. The issue here is people using this "how far is too far" bullshit to turn something specific into some ridiculous generalized thing for the sake of argument.
The issue is whether or not they should move it further. Would moving it further be safer for the fans? Yes or no. There is no slippery slope. There is a kid that got hurt, and the potential for it to happen again.
This isn't about the sidewalks. This isn't about food safety. This isn't about traffic. That is all 100% bullshit and beneath this site.
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