Would the Indians Move?

Every once and awhile I see Indians fans make remarks about the team's attendance that if they continue, the team could eventually move. While the fears are certainly justified here in NE Ohio with what happened to the Browns back in 1995, is it very realistic to think that the Cleveland Indians would move if the attendance stayed where it currently is? In short, the answer is no, and here's why:

1. Attendance

Game this past May against Seattle I went to

Professional sports teams derive their income from a variety of sources, including ticket sales, but television rights, advertising, and corporate clients (suites) are the main sources of income. Sure, it's not like ticket sales are unimportant or don't supply any money at all, but a team not doing well at the gate doesn't necessarily mean it's losing money or not doing well financially. The Indians during the 1990s are a great example of this in that they were sold out from 1995-2002, yet did not rank at the top in terms of revenue. That's not to say the sellout streak didn't help them financially, but in the end, the power of TV is what reigned supreme, followed by the major increase in suite revenue from moving into Jacobs Field from Cleveland Stadium, not attendance.

If attendance were that important of an issue, then the Tampa Bay Rays would've moved years ago. Their attendance has never been good and currently ranks LAST in the Major Leagues despite the Rays being in the chase for both the East Division title and a Wild Card spot. This is also a team that went to the World Series just a few years ago and has been in the playoff hunt for the last several years now. While the Indians are still technically in the playoff chase here, they're a long shot. The team has made the playoffs once since 2002 (2007) and the last 3 years has started out very well only to fizzle by the middle of the season and finish below .500.

2. Market size

Downtown Cleveland in May 2013

One thing people seem to overlook is the market size of existing teams and potential new markets. One post mentioned Charlotte as a place the Indians could move or San Antonio. Portland, Oregon is another city that has actively tried to get a Major League Baseball franchise. Cleveland, even with its own population loss and growth in other cities, still ranks as the country's 18th-largest media market. There are sports from 3 of the 4 major sports leagues here (no NHL team). I've noticed a lot of times people will look at actual city populations as opposed to metro and/or media market size. Yeah, Cleveland (396,000) is a smaller city by population than Charlotte (775,000), San Antonio (1.38 million), and even Portland (583,000), but in terms of market size, Cleveland is larger than all 3. Portland is the closest at #22 and is the 3rd largest market without a Major League Baseball team (after Orlando, FL at #19 and Sacramento, CA at #20). San Antonio, despite being the largest city of this group, is actually the smallest market (#36) and if it had a Major League Baseball team, would be the smallest market in all of MLB (Cincinnati is currently the smallest market at #35). Charlotte is #25 and actually isn't even the largest market in North Carolina. That would be Raleigh-Durham, which ranks 24th and is home to the NHL team. Charlotte, of course, is home to the NBA Bobcats (soon to be renamed Hornets!!) and the NFL Panthers. Both Portland and San Antonio are NBA-only markets.

In addition to market size, market saturation is another issue that has to be taken into consideration, not only for attendance, but TV viewership, something the Indians typically do very well at. If there are too many sports/entertainment options for a market, one or many of them suffer. That's why you likely won't see an NHL team in Cleveland anytime soon or an NBA team in Pittsburgh or Cincinnati. Cincinnati and Pittsburgh are smaller markets than Cleveland, plus both Cincinnati and Pittsburgh have major college athletic programs in addition to their pro sports teams. Columbus, Ohio has a similar situation because of Ohio State. Not only is Columbus between two cities with professional sports, but Ohio State controls a significant amount of attention and fan interest that would hurt a parallel professional sport like football or basketball. Hence, Columbus has an NHL team and a Major League Soccer team, neither of which are present in Cleveland or Cincinnati and don't directly have high-interest counterparts across town at Ohio State.

3. Stadium

Summer 2012 on a ballpark tour I took

If this were happening at old Cleveland Stadium, there might be cause for concern, but it isn't. Progressive Field, despite being nearly 20 years old now, is still in excellent condition and is very well-maintained and updated. Even with all the new parks that have been built since Progressive Field opened in 1994, it is still right up there with the best in terms of services, amenities, and appearance on top of a solid number of revenue-generating suites. The Indians lease at Progressive Field runs another 10 years and while a lease is no guarantee a team will stay in a city, it's a good sign. In other words, if the team got offers from other cities, they would hardly be able to give the Indians anything far ahead of what they currently have in terms of their ballpark.

When Art Modell threatened to move the Browns in 1995, his biggest grievance was that Cleveland Stadium was outdated. That meant more than it was just old; he meant it lacked a good number of suites (Cleveland Stadium had some suites, but they were added much later and there weren't that many), and it needed tons of money just to maintain it. That was on top of fan amenities and services it lacked because of the era it was built. Because of that, Modell claimed he was losing money. Attendance-wise, the Browns were doing quite well and always have. It certainly wasn't an issue of fan support here, it was a belief that the county (which owned Cleveland Stadium) wasn't supporting the team, especially in light of the Gateway Project that had opened the year prior for the Indians and Cavaliers. I could go on about how Modell was a pretty lousy businessman and him losing money was much his own fault, but those were his reasons for getting a stadium deal with Maryland and ultimately establishing the Baltimore Ravens.

Why is that important? Because the stadium did and can play a major role in a team relocating, but only when a team is faced with having an outdated stadium that lacks suite revenue and/or presents other financial liabilities. The Indians have no such complaints with Progressive Field, nor would they be able to justify in any way that they need a new ballpark for the financial health of the team, which they did when Progressive Field was built. The last MLB team to move was the Montreal Expos when they moved to Washington, DC to become the Nationals. The Expos had horrible attendance (far worse than the Indians have had even this year), had an outdated stadium (Olympic Stadium had hardly any suites and multiple maintenance issues), and Washington, DC represented a top-10 market (#8) without a baseball team (despite the objections of the Baltimore Orioles), meaning MLB could easily justify moving the Expos there because they would generate far more money in DC than Montreal, in ticket sales, suite revenue, local TV coverage, and advertising.

Fireworks in May 2013

So, the Indians moving to a market like San Antonio, Portland, or Charlotte would likely, at best, be a lateral move financially if not even lower. You might have some initial excitement about a new team, but if the team struggles for periods of time (which is more than likely for a small-market team), you'll have a team bleeding money in worse shape with a marginally newer stadium with not only low attendance, but low local TV ratings and little fan attachment. And since the Indians would remain a smaller-market team by going to an even smaller market than Cleveland, they would most likely continue to be a team that has to make smart moves and develop talent vs. just going out and spending lots of money. The Indians, while they have struggled at the gate the last several years, have a largely stable financial situation, good local TV ratings, a modern and well-maintained stadium, on top of over 110 years of history in Cleveland. While nothing is set in stone as far as any team staying in an area, and we certainly shouldn't take it for granted, it's a good bet the Tribe will be in Cleveland for generations to come. The real concerns should be the long-term health of this region. If  NE Ohio continues to lose people or stagnate in growth, these current smaller markets could become more attractive if they also continue to grow.

Passing on some info

I've discovered a few things about AT&T U-Verse the past few months in terms of aspect ratio and HD programming that I wanted to pass along.  Both of my grandparents have U-Verse and both have HD service and HD flat-screen TVs.  My Derby grandparents got U-Verse way back in 2007 when it was still new because my grandpa had an HD TV that he wanted to get more out of (i.e. HD channels).  Right off the bat, despite paying for HD channels, he wasn't happy about how they looked and it seemed they never displayed totally right on the TV.  We always had to mess with the aspect ratio and adjust the picture so it fit correctly.  The control box for U-Verse also has a little blue light on it to indicate it is getting an HD signal.  Despite several phonecalls to AT&T early on, he was never able to get that little blue light to come on.

Well, last year the original HD TV (which weighed a ton or so it seemed) up and died, so he got a new flatscreen TV to replace it.  I figured that would help some of the aspect ratio problems since the old TV was a very early HD TV (from 2002).  We got it all set up, but it still seemed to have problems.  Not only did we still have to set it at "Zoom" even on HD channels, but when we did so, the edges of the picture were cut off.  In most cases that's not a big deal, but on channels like ESPN, CNN, Fox News, etc. with a ticker on the bottom, you can't read it.  Because of that, my grandpa would leave the setting at normal, so even HD channels would be displayed with a huge black box around them.  My Ridinger grandparents, who had also gotten an HD TV and AT&T U-Verse in 2008, had the same problem with the picture being cut off along the edges.  They really didn't care, but it bothered my dad and me.

Earlier this year I was looking into getting U-Verse phone service for my Derby grandparents to combine their phone, Internet, and TV since TV and Internet were already coming from U-Verse and the landline was from AT&T anyway.  While looking into whether running 2 phone lines into the same router the TV and computers were also using would affect Internet speed, I stumbled across some U-Verse forums that talked about the settings for the AT&T control box, particularly how to change the aspect ratio.  When I had the chance a little while later (maybe a few days or so), I checked the settings at my Derby grandparents house and sure enough, it was set at 4:3 standard definition.  So, not only was the signal coming in without the HD, it was being formatted for a traditional square TV, hence the need to use "Zoom" on the TV (to eliminate the black box around the picture) and why it displayed with the full black box around the picture when in "normal" mode.  The AT&T box was putting the vertical black bars on either side of the picture (formatting it into 4:3) and the TV itself was putting the horizontal bars above and below the picture too.  I switched it to 1080i (the highest available), and boom, not only did that solve the problem of picture size, it also made that little blue HD light come on.  AT&T boxes are automatically set at 4:3, but few people seem to realize that.  As a result, people are paying for HD channels, but are getting cheated a bit because it's not as sharp as it should be and it's not displaying properly, either with edges cut off using the TV's Zoom setting or with the black box around the picture.  If you have a flatscreen TV that is HD capable, then it can handle the highest setting.

When I figured that out, I thought I had figured out the problem with my Ridinger grandparents' TV as well.  Once I was finally able to have time to "mess" with it (both my Ridinger and Derby grandparents have the TV on much of the day, so it's hard to get time to do anything with it), I discovered it was slightly more complex.  Even after switching the settings to 1080i, it still wasn't displaying correctly on the TV and was cutting off the edges.  What I found out was that the AT&T box was connected to the TV by way of a standard coaxial cable, so even though it was now properly receiving HD signals (the little blue light came on), the box had no way of relaying that to the TV because of the cable.  So I went to Walmart and bought an HDMI cable and plugged it in.  While that made a noticeable difference with the picture quality, I noticed it was still cutting off the edges on channels like CNN, ESPN, Fox News, etc., channels that use the tickers on the bottom and/or side of the screen.  Through trial and error, I discovered to correct that, I had to set the AT&T box back to 4:3 standard definition, then put it on 1080i again.  And by set, I mean totally set and confirmed it.  Once I did that, problem solved.  The other day my dad was over there and he did something to the TV or AT&T and the edges were being cut off again, so I had him set it at 4:3, then change it back to 1080i and it corrected it again.  No idea why, but it did.

SO, if you're having problems with your AT&T U-Verse not displaying correctly, make sure it's set properly!  It can be found using the AT&T menu, go to "Options", down to "setup options", and then to "aspect ratio".  When you choose a screen resolution, you select it, then the TV will "test" it, and if it displays a picture, you confirm the change.  Make sure your TV itself has the aspect ratio setting at "Set by program" or "Automatic".  This varies by TV, but it usually found in the TV Menu under video settings or Setup.  Some TV remotes have an aspect ratio button on them.  Also, make sure your AT&T box is connected to your TV with the proper cables, either HDMI or HD component video cables (has blue, green, and red ends), not the typical red, white, and yellow component cables or coaxial cable (black and round).  When your AT&T box is receiving HD, a little blue LED light should come on.  It's located on the front of the box in the middle and is labeled.