Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
This.
This is one of the topics mentioned in Moneyball (the book, not the movie). Billy Beane spent years analyzing the value of stars in selling tickets. He concluded that, in baseball at least, they basically have none.
If you have a winning team, fans will take interest, and your top players will be recognized as stars. If you bring in a bunch of expensive stars and then have a losing team, fans will lose interest, and your stars will be regarded as has-beens.
In his earlier days as GM, before other teams caught on, Beane accumulated a lot of assets by pumping and dumping. By having a no-name team that won a lot of games, the A's turned nobodies into stars. Then Beane traded those stars for more than they were worth because other teams thought their names would sell tickets.
What sells is winning.
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To take this back to the Flames...
In 20/21 the Flames had a off year and missed the playoffs. Many fans were saying that the Flames had no stars, no talented players. Then in 21/22, the same group of players played well and won the division, and as a result, they were rewarded with finalist positions for hardware (i.e. they had stars again). And now in 22/23, they are struggling out of the gate and many posters have gone right back to the 'we have no talented players' mantra.
Fans think they want stars, and to be entertained. But the most entertaining thing is winning. that's what fans
really want, and what sells tickets.