The Rangers have always done relatively well in attendance. Since 1994 they've been above the AL attendance average 13 out of 18 years.
Yes. Because the offer was actually $680MM - the most greedy, selfish bastards on the planet agreed to give $35MM back to Crane. Enough of them wanted realignment that they were willing to push Crane out the door. And I think too many are under some false impression that Crane made a Corleone-esque offer. The Astros were valued at $470MM (IIRC) and their RSN was valued at $350MM - owning your own sports network is license to print money. So this idea that if they had rejected Crane, that the owners would have been stuck with a significnalt smaller "plan B" offer from the next prospective buyer simply isn't true. The Astros + CSN easily had a value of $600MM+.
To be fair - the owners weren't getting any of the $610 million - there was no direct benefit to them except for the theoretical appreciation of their own franchise. But assuming there is an actual market value for a team, then the Astros selling or not being sold doesn't actually affect their value - it just reinforces it a bit if they do sell. The biggest thing is that know that someone was willing to buy the Astros for $610MM.
Hillboy's argument holds no water. Look at this Comcast deal. That gives so much revenue to the Astros that if Crane had fallen through there would have been someone else. The business of baseball is VERY good right now. This isn't the NBA or the NHL where they had nasty labor fights because teams are drowning. Baseball teams are rolling in dough.
I think now, we can just look as Forbes as not being remotely accurate. The Rangers selling for almost $600M, really showed the Astros were worth more than Forbes. And since the sale, we saw the ridiculous amount paid for the Dodgers, that really shows baseball teams are just a rare commodity.
But the Astros have lost money for 5 straight years... I don't believe Crane on that, but throwing it out there.
Eh... They were above the AL attendance in 13 out of 18 years but were sub .500 9 out of 18 years, made the playoffs only 6 times in 18 years and finished 3rd or last in their division 10 out of 18 years. I don't think the Astros have a similar run of decent attendance despite sub .500 records. The Astros have been sub .500 the last 4 years and were below the NL average for 3 of those 4 years.
There's a big difference. 1st, average AL attendance is lower than the NL. 2nd, the Rangers won at least 70 games every season (not to mention had future HOFers playing during their suckage period). 3rd, the Astros haven't reached 60 wins in the past 2 seasons. In your time frame, the Astros have averaged 30,862 fans to the Rangers 31,871. The Astros have won 4 division titles and 2 WCs. The Rangers have won 5 division titles and 1 WC. The Astros have been to 1 WS, to the Rangers 2 WS. The Rangers are 1479-1419 and the Astros are 1460-1438 over the same time period. The Astros outdrew the Rangers 10 seasons out of 18. The Rangers outdrew the Astros when the Rangers had a brand new ballpark, and the Astros were in the old broken down Astrodome. Once MMP opened, the Astros started outdrawing the Rangers until the unprecedented run of the Astros suckage, and the Rangers being one of the best teams in baseball. Here are some losing seasons for you from the Astros: 2000: 72-90 we averaged 37,730 fans (2nd highest for us, would be for Rangers as well) 2007: 73-89 we averaged 37,289 fans (mind you the Rangers were 75-87, coming off a 2006 where they were only 1 game worse than us, and drew 29,060) 2009: 74-88 we averaged 31,124 2010: 76-86 we averaged 28,784 2011: 56-106 we averaged 25,519
there is no argument. historically (to draw from the annoyingly overused Internet cliche), Astros >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Rangers. the last few years, Rangers > Astros. It's an outlier. I'm telling you, the ship will right itself.
I am not arguing the Astros are a worse draw than the Rangers and I never did. I'm saying the Rangers are a good draw themselves. Baseball does well in Texas with two teams that do better than their league averages. The Rangers have proven that they can finish last in their division and still draw better than league average attendance.
I wonder how many crossover fans there were that now have to pick between the two. I can understand why one would root for both in different leagues, but I can't see anyone rooting for both now. Well, I can, I just wouldn't respect that decision.
They won the AL pennant and went to the World Series two years in a row. 3 million is an expectation for a franchise putting together that kind of run. And that's in a park that seats about 8-9K more than MMP does. It's more surprising that it took them making the second WS appearance to finally get over the 3 million mark, frankly. My closest personal (and admittedly antecdotal) experience with the Rangers was living in Waco in the early to mid 90's....when you literally couldn't find a Ranger fan to talk baseball with. They didn't exist.
I don't that this really helps argue for the Astros' attendance. Basically, over an 18 year period, the Rangers outdrew the Astros with similar overall levels of success, despite being in a league that has lower attendance. And also despite the level of hell Rangers fans have go through in the summertime in that ballpark. The other way to look at this is that the Astros outdrew the Rangers when they had the newer ballpark and/or more success; and the Rangers outdraw the Astros when they had the newer ballpark and/or more success. That seems pretty much to-be-expected on both sides.
Important to remember we're looking at overall attendance numbers..."cumulative stats"....when the Astros have about 8-9K tickets less to sell over the course of 81 home games... in the raw numbers game, available tickets alone inherently put the Astros down roughly 70K or so. That's where the league argument fails too...because the Red Sox sell out 100% of their tickets nearly every year...but of course their ballpark is tiny.
Certainly true - we're also not looking at ticket prices and stuff like that, I guess. I don't even know what we're all arguing about anyway!
The league having lower attendance is meaningless. The AL actually has the better visitor draws in NYY and Boston, but they are dragged down by less popular teams. Why are you talking like I'm arguing Astros attendance > Rangers? He said the rangers draw pretty well, which I responded that they did the same as most teams. He then said the Rangers were bad and that they wouldn't go through similar fan withdrawal, and then I provided the facts that pretty much show the Rangers and Astros have very similar attendance trends given their records and new ballpark.
