Baseball Again

As some of you know, I am a Baseball fan. I enjoy both the simplicity and the intricacies of the game. I see in Baseball – the game and the business – valuable lessons.

While this has never fundamentally changed, I was pretty disgusted with my team after the 2008 season (http://kenfarmerconsulting.com/2009/05/misc/you-forgot-about-me-didnt-you/) choosing not to renew my season tickets last year. I expected I would still go to a couple games and buy merchandise but just not with a season ticket package.

Funny thing, turns out I was more upset than I realized and never made it to one game in 2009. My wife and I didn’t spend any money at all on the Padres last year – no game tickets, no ball caps, no jerseys, not even a bag of peanuts. We always bought Padres gear for the nieces and nephews but not last year.

This year my outlook started to change in the off season. The new ownership group made roster moves, cleaned house in the front office, and actively started trying to win fans back. They assigned a new rep to my account and she was great. Young, cute, empathetic, persistent – she said all the right things without feeding us a load of crap.

I started paying attention and discovered I liked the changes. They seemed to be building a team that finally fit the ballpark. They jettisoned overt bean-counters from the front office and replaced them with smart, young, passionate baseball people – that were also good business people. They seemed to be trying hard to listen to the fans and make the right changes. They didn’t just promise change but took time to explain and admit mistakes.

(Just for the record, one mistake they haven’t fixed yet is the contract with the food concessionaire. Delaware North is absolutely horrible and a huge detriment to the fan experience. Hopefully they will be gone when the contract runs out. But I digress…)

This year, while we didn’t renew the old season tickets, we decided to purchase a small package of games. Earlier, I went to Spring Training and had a blast visiting several of the parks, attending 4 or 5 games, and spending money. It seems I am buying in to the new vision and direction.

Will the Padres win the pennant this year? Go to the playoffs? No. But the point to me is that they are trying again. The product on the field has potential and should be fun to watch. There seems to be a passion about the game in the new ownership and front office. The passion I agree with and the vision has been effectively explained.

As a business – and ultimately, Baseball is a business – the team has had to address poor customer service, upset customers, and bad press. They have been in serious recovery mode for over a year. In every business, it is more cost effective to keep customers coming back and happy instead of trying to recover them. I’m a tough customer to recover but it’s working so far.

See, a lesson…

Think Big, Start Small, Act Now.