Fixing a hole: Concerts aside, are the Orioles going to bring fans back when the team is good?
Paul McCartney's reported appearance at Camden Yards, and music in general, are a big part of the Orioles' plans to win back fans. Will it be enough?
I was just a spectator at the meeting that led to this story in the fall of 2019, with the new business heads of the Orioles pitching their vision for filling Camden Yards in 2020 and beyond, and think about it often.
The Orioles being terrible for the previous two seasons – in 2018 by accident and then in 2019 most decidedly on purpose – meant attendance had cratered at the ballpark, and the leadership team was staking its efforts to change that on Camden Yards itself and the concerts they hoped would highlight it.
One pandemic-impacted season and one much less so later, and there’s absolutely no telling whether that is going to work or not. With the announcement by Orioles Entertainment tomorrow being, according to 105.7 The Fan and The Baltimore Sun, a Paul McCartney concert scheduled for this summer, what’s clear is they’re going to keep trying.
Two confessions here: the first is I’ve very much enjoyed the major musical experiences at this or any ballpark I’ve been a part of. Cole Swindell on the field in Sarasota was a blast, and the Avett Brothers concert was great despite the delays. The other is that I spend a lot of time making fun of the rest of the musical endeavors at the ballpark. I was never sure who they were for, and seeing an act like the Avett Brothers fill the place with sound helped me realize a chief reason for my disinterest was how small the singer-songwriter types sounded by comparison.
(Most reporters’ gripes with post-game concerts, fireworks, or concerts followed by fireworks, are the part where it’s really loud when you’re trying to work and get out of the ballpark as fast as possible, and the delayed departure of the crowd means traffic when you did finish and head off for home. This is not that.)
The scale isn’t the issue here, and certainly not with a Paul McCartney show presumably while the team is on the road. This will be a fantastic experience for those who go, and as far as the headline game-day concerts, the Avett Brothers’ attendance dwarfed a typical weekday attendance, so that checks out as well.
The obvious question is whether this plan is going to be enough to make Camden Yards a destination until, and through, the time when this team is good again.
Whenever that’s the case, attendance will climb as it is. But pandemic or no pandemic, this has been a blank canvas to test out fresh fan-drawing ideas for the Orioles. They’ve revamped their Birdland Membership program, and experimented with monthly ballpark passes, both cool ideas. They’ve also announced then gone back on 6:35 p.m. starts on weekdays before Memorial Day and after Labor Day two years running, banned fans from bringing food into the ballpark without an explanation, and moved on from popular members of the broadcast team.
I’m not privy to any of the brainstorming or decision-making on the business side of the club. I have a general familiarity with that on the baseball side, and know they’ve used this fallow period to re-examine every aspect of their operation and make it so there’s as little as possible holding things back once the talent arrives to make the Orioles competitive again. I hope that’s been the case in other departments in the Warehouse, and assume it has. Perhaps their data indicates that not a lot will move the needle when a 100-loss team calls the ballpark home, and they’re banking their best ideas for when there can be an impact.
For now, much like the baseball side, there’s not a lot of consequences if they’re punting to a year or two down the line. This ongoing rebuild is cover for most everything it touches, and the promise of a team of homegrown stars to market and build around should be the stuff of a marketing department’s dreams. Compare that to now, when the Orioles would be insane to schedule a current player promotion for the second half of the season given the risk that they could be traded, and the waiting game makes sense.
The Orioles know things have to change. Their hopes and dreams for improvements that could come with a new lease at Camden Yards, including social spaces and a sports book according to The Sun, read as a wishlist to cater to a much younger generation than that of The Beatles. That incongruity won’t matter if they’re able to capitalize on concerts like this now and recapturing a new generation at Camden Yards later. But the long-term goals seem more meaningful to get the ballpark to come alive again.
If McCartney has a Google alert set up for himself, that would be insane, but he’d probably be wondering what this has to do with him if he made it this far. Here goes, Sir. The Orioles billed this as a major announcement for a reason: bringing live music on any scale to Camden Yards is a pillar of their business plan going forward.
They’ll no doubt make money on this concert, which will make it a net positive for the city and the organization, so it’s a success before they even step up to the podium Friday morning. They may bring people back to the ballpark who for one reason or another haven’t been in a while, another success.
Home runs are good, but so are doubles. Before I covered the team, it took a good draw – whether a promotion or a baseball attraction – to get me to the ballpark, but the threshold wasn’t very high for that. Those are what are going to make a bigger difference going forward, if I had to guess, and look no further than the last such occasion to prove that point.
The Orioles had lost 19 straight games in late August when Shohei Ohtani came to town to pitch for the Los Angeles Angels, and as was my custom around that time, I was at the ballpark for pregame availability before going home for daycare pick-up and the like.
Around 6:30, I hopped on a scooter to go back to the park, and what was usually a very lonely trek through Federal Hill felt quite different. The stadium parking lots were full, and there were hundreds of fans strolling through the neighborhood on the way to the game simply because they had a reason to. The Orioles ended up winning, too.
Snagging an actual Beatle to come play your venue and give fans that experience is a no-brainer. I just hope when the time comes and they’re actually good, all the rest of that falls in place for the Orioles as well.
Can you get me tix for McCartney
“The obvious question is whether this plan is going to be enough to make Camden Yards a destination until, and through, the time when this team is good again.”
No “if” correct?