Phil Castellini surprised that Opening Day tickets still unsold

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Originally Posted by Nasty_Boy

The worst part about this for me personally, is that I have an 8 year old who is ate up with sports, and 17 year old who has accompanied me on road trips to 13 different parks. We spent the winter going to PBS and made memories that will last a life time... They'll never forget the KC game. So at risk of not going full Chris Carpenter here, I have a difficult time explaining to him (8 year old) why I'm ticked off at the Reds and why they are trading players like Winker. We went to multiple games last summer, he loved it... I took the oldest to Wrigley to watch them and we had a blast (along with a ton of TV time). They both are excited about making trips to GABP, and all I want to do is not give Bob a dime. I will relent because I don't want to take something away that we enjoy so much together. But man, Phil's comments yesterday burn right through me as I prepare to spend 2-3+ hundred dollars on weekend to trip to the park this summer. I'd much rather take them to PNC just so Bob doesn't directly get my money. It's truly infuriating.

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It's not easy to explain MLB economics to young kids but small market teams have to do this from time to time

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Originally Posted by Z-Fly

I seriously doubt the county recouped the cost of the stadiums. If the county did come out ahead, we would probably here about it a bunch. I'm pretty sure stadiums are considered a net loss. It is difficulty to accurately quantify, and we'll probably never know the true numbers. If I had to guess, it's probably a 50% or more loss overall.

"FWIW Indian Hill, Hyde Park, Terrace Park, Mariemont, Madeira are all in Hamilton County, plenty of "Upper Class""

I'm well aware of those areas, as well as Wyoming. They are very small pockets in the overall county. It'd be interesting to find out, but I'm guessing the majority of the money being spent at GABP is not from Hamilton County.

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Well, the county sort of "came ahead". They got all the benefits that WestOfYou talked about. The people that got screwed were the taxpayers. I don't live in Cincy, but I think they got a sales tax increase to pay for the stadium, then when the stadium was paid off, the county never removed the additional sales tax. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.. So the people essentially gave Reds ownership a little bit of money every time they purchased something in the county. They basically took 1/2% paycut to build the GAB on the promise that it would make the Reds competitive.. Instead they got Lindner and the current group laughing all the way to the bank, and Phil telling the fans to shove it.
I hope the voters remember this when Phil C asks for a new park and claims it will make the Reds competitive, and then blames the GAB for his penny pinching.

Doc, at the Cincy Enquirer, has posted his "why can't we all just get along" OP-ED this morning.


https://www.cincinnati.com/story/spo...ns/7303047001/

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Originally Posted by Nasty_Boy

The worst part about this for me personally, is that I have an 8 year old who is ate up with sports, and 17 year old who has accompanied me on road trips to 13 different parks. We spent the winter going to PBS and made memories that will last a life time... They'll never forget the KC game. So at risk of not going full Chris Carpenter here, I have a difficult time explaining to him (8 year old) why I'm ticked off at the Reds and why they are trading players like Winker. We went to multiple games last summer, he loved it... I took the oldest to Wrigley to watch them and we had a blast (along with a ton of TV time). They both are excited about making trips to GABP, and all I want to do is not give Bob a dime. I will relent because I don't want to take something away that we enjoy so much together. But man, Phil's comments yesterday burn right through me as I prepare to spend 2-3+ hundred dollars on weekend to trip to the park this summer. I'd much rather take them to PNC just so Bob doesn't directly get my money. It's truly infuriating.

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My oldest son lost interest in the Reds when they dumped Chapman for nothing. I guess he was the smart one of the family :lol:
My second son will probably lose interest when they dump Castillo for nothing.

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Originally Posted by REDREAD

Well, the county sort of "came ahead". They got all the benefits that WestOfYou talked about. The people that got screwed were the taxpayers. I don't live in Cincy, but I think they got a sales tax increase to pay for the stadium, then when the stadium was paid off, the county never removed the additional sales tax. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.. So the people essentially gave Reds ownership a little bit of money every time they purchased something in the county. They basically took 1/2% paycut to build the GAB on the promise that it would make the Reds competitive.. Instead they got Lindner and the current group laughing all the way to the bank, and Phil telling the fans to shove it.
I hope the voters remember this when Phil C asks for a new park and claims it will make the Reds competitive, and then blames the GAB for his penny pinching.

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Also, the Reds pay $1.00 a year for rent at the stadium.

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Originally Posted by Sea Ray

It's not easy to explain MLB economics to young kids but small market teams have to do this from time to time

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That's just if you believe there's such a thing as a "small market team".

There's really isn't.

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Originally Posted by Sea Ray

It's not easy to explain MLB economics to young kids but small market teams have to do this from time to time

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I don't mind the trading aspect as much and I understand that he'll get over the players... But it's not really the small market mentality, it's comments like yesterday that prove that it isn't about winning to the ownership group, it's about them making money. As a kid or as an adult, you want to believe the team you root for is actively trying win or has a plan in place to build a competitive team. The things that were said yesterday really proved exactly what we all suspected... They don't care one flip about the fans, they only care about the fans' money.

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“It's just a classic example of ownership using organizations as profit," former Reds and current Phillies outfielder Nick Castellanos said recently. "When ... there are no consequences for losing, you're not held accountable for your performance.

"What sucks is in a great city like Cincinnati where the fan base is impeccable, it's suffocating," Castellanos said, "because of ownership.’’

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Originally Posted by Z-Fly

I seriously doubt the county recouped the cost of the stadiums. If the county did come out ahead, we would probably here about it a bunch. I'm pretty sure stadiums are considered a net loss. It is difficulty to accurately quantify, and we'll probably never know the true numbers. If I had to guess, it's probably a 50% or more loss overall.

"FWIW Indian Hill, Hyde Park, Terrace Park, Mariemont, Madeira are all in Hamilton County, plenty of "Upper Class""

I'm well aware of those areas, as well as Wyoming. They are very small pockets in the overall county. It'd be interesting to find out, but I'm guessing the majority of the money being spent at GABP is not from Hamilton County.

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Correct about the stadium part, I think a larger cut of the beef that's not mentioned is the surrounding real estate development and gentrification. That's what the City wants. But if the Reds suck and have bad marketing nobody goes down there (from all those other counties as you mentioned) and people around the stadium take the hit. After the last two summers having what happened yesterday was a kick in the face after the kick in the balls to those people and the fans.

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"Where you gonna go? Let's start there. I mean sell the team to who?" Phil Castellini told WLW. "If you want to look at what would you do with this team to have it be more profitable, make more money, compete more in the current economic system that this game exists, it would be to pick it up and move it somewhere else.

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Originally Posted by Old school 1983

Phil’s comments were salty and ridiculous for the most part. But people are ignoring what he said about building a pipeline of young talent into Cincinnati through the minors and it being the way to win. I think the Reds would have run away with the division in 2020 without the shortened season. But by 2021, they had to start selling it off. The only sustainable winning stretch in recent Reds history was accomplished by a pipeline of homegrown talent. People are more than willing to acknowledge that when they are trying to mitigate current ownerships role there. But when they say we want to get to building such a pipeline, people go off. The way he delivered the message was obscenely terrible, but that was the message. I get the sell off hurt a lot of feelings, but they dismantled a barely 500 team where the star RF was not coming back pretty much no matter what, you probably got Votto’s last great season, your best pitcher per WAR was likely never going to come close to that performance again, and the roster had considerable fat on it like Suarez, Shogo, and Barnhart to a lesser degree. All of this while multiple young great players were emerging in the minors and MLB. As much incompetence as we’ve seen in executing rebuild plans since 2015, they may have finally seen the light. However, any goodwill from the fanbase to stomach the hard decision type moves we saw this off-season is gone and Phil doesn’t understand why it is.

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Any message that was lost is 100% on Phil Castellini. I am done being told this is my fault. "We need higher attendance", "You're ignoring our message", "Your expectations are too high". DONE.

I don't care about your profit, your politics, your philosophy. Show me results

This man went on the radio and was lobbed the softest of softball questions "what do you say to fans who have lost faith after 15 years?". The first things out of his mouth were laughter and a scoff, followed by (paraphrasing) "you have no other option" and "this is what you get if you want the team to stay in Cincinnati". Any "message" that was lost after those comments is on him.

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Originally Posted by REDREAD

My oldest son lost interest in the Reds when they dumped Chapman for nothing. I guess he was the smart one of the family :lol:
My second son will probably lose interest when they dump Castillo for nothing.

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What the Reds don't understand -- and won't, until it's too late -- is that the next generation of sports fans doesn't follow teams, they follow stars. They don't sit and watch full games, they watch highlights of the players they like on TikTok and YouTube.

There has never been a worse era to "play the kids," if you want to attract the attention of a demographic that doesn't watch CBS prime-time programming.

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2022/04/red...-with-baseball

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Originally Posted by MoneyInTheBank

Any message that was lost is 100% on Phil Castellini. I am done being told this is my fault. "We need higher attendance", "You're ignoring our message", "Your expectations are too high". DONE.

I don't care about your profit, your politics, your philosophy. Show me results

This man went on the radio and was lobbed the softest of softball questions "what do you say to fans who have lost faith after 15 years?". The first things out of his mouth were laughter and a scoff, followed by (paraphrasing) "you have no other option" and "this is what you get if you want the team to stay in Cincinnati". Any "message" that was lost after those comments is on him.

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Agree. Any message was lost in the pissy whining fest yesterday. He did even say so decent stuff. But it was so overshadowed by the stupidity it wasn’t heard.

Yeah, Phil Castellini's comments pretty much cemented that I won't be going to any more games or buying any merchandise until they sell. I'll watch on tv mainly because I'm too stupid to quit. I don't root for their profitability and am not concerned by how financially affected they are, they don't have to own this team.

And as for their threat to leave, please by all means let's see how this schtick works in a market that has absolutely no emotional investment built over the course of a century.

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Originally Posted by Unassisted

Since Bob's the one being called out by name, maybe he's more irritated about it than Phil is? Hard to imagine that Phil is the only member of the family bothered by the calls for it to sell.

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Completely agreed. I am sure they feel like they have done some charity by owning a franchise that has increased in value exponentially. I just think Bob is smart enough to not let the fans know that, where as the entitled son cries poor and victim, surprised that he has no sympathizers.

Bob is at the root of this. Just like I had called for him to address the media when all of this slashing started, not way after the fact with the puff piece done with Tommy. Instead he let Krall absorb much of it, until he finally stepped in.

Bob was happy to tout promises of returns to the peak of baseball glory. Happy to stay in the background on this stuff... shameful.

Remember when we all had delusions of possibly getting a Story or a Lindor? Wild to think that wasn't too long ago, and didn't seem impossible (improbable maybe, but not out of reach.)