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by least three. They're never really for the number four. And then I'm got Cleveland at the top because it's been 70 plus years. So let's let them hit get one. I would also, by the way, love to see Cleveland versus the Metz where you've got Lindor who used to play for Cleveland, trying to compete for a world series for the team he left. I mean, I don't want to I find Francisco Lindor incredibly likeable as superstars go and Jose Ramirez
has been one of my favorite players always. I mean, I don't think I've I've praised a opposing player more consistently over the lowest life this podcast. You're correct. Then Jose Ramirez. And so I'm not suggesting that. But I mean, it's it's fun to watch. Show O'Connie. I like the idea of the best player. And I also like the idea maybe of his first year getting away from right now. That is the Los Angeles Angels winning a world series, winning MVP after
not even making a damn playoffs with the Angels. So that's where we have number two. I've got the Dodgers and I and they just outrank the Metz because I would live in Philadelphia. Yeah, I mean, I have no problem with the Metz. I'd certainly for the Metz over the Yankees. Yes. I mean, I would root for right. I don't want to say anything. But I was going to say something ridiculous. But over the Yankees, fill in the blank terrible thing over the Yankees.
I would root for a stub toe in the morning over the Yankees. I would root for a deep paper cut between your fingers over the Yankees. I would root for, I don't know, a nosebleed when you're up in front of a room making a presentation over the Yankees, etc. You get that idea. So that's how it'll be final four. So let's talk through some of this stuff as we often do. We did immediate reactions to a couple of these topics over on the Patreon side to our beloved Patreon
subscribe join the party. There's 4,100 others. There are already at the party. You are not at the party. Go get go join the party. Yeah. Who doesn't want a party with two cool guys like me and Jean Bonne? Who's going to be at the party? Gleamon and bonus. I'm washing my hair that night actually. We did like a the the Polette announcement. We did within an hour. Yes. Just sort of off the cuff
emotional. Yeah. Emotional dump. Yeah. Which I think people generally liked. And then a couple days before that we did kind of a next morning reaction to the TV situation and tried to walk through that. We're going to go through all that stuff obviously. But it's going to be a condensed version. And we've had some time to let it breathe a little bit. So it won't quite be as rant-filled. That probably won't have as many curses as I did in the last one. Who knows? You never know. But
if you enjoyed this show. But also if you in general have enjoyed what I would describe as sort of more critical than most places coverage of this collapse and of ownership and of the state of the television situation over the last year or 18 months or especially over the last several months. You can we would love to have you help support it. And it's inexpensive and you get commercial free twins talk once or twice a week more than this free episode. And you don't get us
bothering you to go join the Patreon because you're already on the Patreon. That's true. Hey, that's me. I'm one of those below the Patreon. So P-A-T-R-E-O-N Patreon.com slash gleaming. You can go the whole back catalog is free as soon as you sign up. So you can go listen. We did an hour on the the Polette situation. We did an hour plus on the TV situation, etc, etc. So let's talk through some of this stuff. Big picture. You know, oh and within that they also announced they're
going back to CCO or staying with CCO. All right. Yeah. That's a radio entity. That didn't really make much news because it's just business as usual. No change really. But they're back on CCO after as I reported a month and a half ago they talked to KFAN. They talked to score North. You know, it's hard to characterize how close they were to leaving. I think staying at CCO was always the default option at least with the the people or persons able to actually make that
decision with the hammer in that room basically. But they certainly were in talks with those two plays that multiple meetings with both of those other places. They those places laid out their vision for it. They pitched ideas. That sort of thing. But they'll be back on on CCO radio. Okay. So let's talk about obviously the big story. After 40 years since Carl Polette bought the twins in 1984 from Calvin Griffith for 44 million bucks they are announcing that the team is intent to
sell the team. You know, there's some possibility obviously that they don't sell. The Washington Nationals were on the market for two years pretty recently in Dinsale. The Los Angeles Angels were sort of on the market and then the owner basically said, now I forget that. A lot of it depends on what the asking price is. I mean, we've seen estimates from like Forbes and SpoteTrack and stuff like that where you know, 1.5, 1.7 million something. Larger Trotage, what age were four
Forbes estimated it was worth 1.46 billion dollars. We've also seen, you know, the royals sold recent for like 1.2 or 1.3. The Orioles sold last year for 1.7 or 1.8. You know, you have some more expensive sales to the Marlins going back a decade plus sold for 1.2. I think something like that. That's the range. I don't think 1.4, 1.5 is outlandish, but that also doesn't guarantee that that's what they're asking for. I mean, that's just an estimate. Sure. I'm a magazine. I think what I
would say is if their asking price is similar to the public estimates, they'll sell it. If it's not, if they want 2.5 billion or something like that, then you know, different story than what we're assuming here. I mean, there's also evidence just suggests they're sort of motivated sellers. They have the pollets have now sold for businesses since the COVID epidemic. You know,
which is when the pollets have a fair amount invested in commercial real estate. That's an industry that you know, you need to continue to pump money into and it's an industry that's struggling right now. We've seen them go and sell, let's see, a couple radio stations in 2020. Then JB Hudson Jewelers in 2021 and nine car dealerships last year. This is sort of the gem and the crown of the poll at Empire. So I think they've been working their way up to this.
Well, and also it represents, if you look at any sort of estimates of their familial, is that how you'd say wealth, it's like, you know, four bill, something like that, right? Would it be, well, if the twins are worth 1.5 bill, right? Out of four bill. They can't have a whole lot more. Well, I mean, 2.5 of other stuff is a lot. Like, for instance, I'm not up to even one billion of other stuff. Really? I don't know where you're at on this. But you don't want to break.
No, you wouldn't want it. But yeah, I mean, if they're looking to, I guess, liquidize their portfolio, liquidate, liquidate. But doesn't liquidate mean sell at a discount? Not necessarily. Okay. Liquidify. Maybe, okay. Yeah. Why not? Turn into liquid. They're, they're capital. I mean, some of the stuff is they just built the four seasons tower basically right out by target fields in the back of center field basically. That's going to be tough to get out of a year later.
But yeah, so I think that's the situation. And you wouldn't want to sell your commercial real estate right now because the market for commercial real estate sucks. Well, yeah. I don't know if you both don't like to sell stuff, but sometimes they're, they have to. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. That's how. But my point is if you've got a choice of selling this thing that right now, you're going to take a huge hit on or sell something like,
you know, a baseball team, right? You're not going to take a big hit. I think the sense that I've gotten both through their actions and the limited words that they've given. But also just talking to some people, I think as often happens, there's like some, there's like some old proverb. It's like the third generation thing where it's like the first generation gets the wealth. The second generation builds the wealth, the third generation, either the second generation manages and the
third generation liquidify. Yeah. I don't necessarily know that that's the case. But I think in the case here, I should say, but in general, I think that's a decent way to look at it. But it never seemed to me that, I mean, you can argue, I suppose, people who are older than me, like you have a better mindset on this, probably how emotionally attached to the actual baseball team itself, Carl Polette, ever was. Yeah. I know his wife, Eloise, was always touted as the one
in the family who loved baseball, basically, mostly by said Harbin. You would think that is the case. I remember that was a constant narrative of sins. I'm not sure if that's really the case or not, but that was a constant. Since you've been there, but regardless of that, then since 09, when Carl passed away, Jim Polette took over the team. I don't really got a great sense of what his kind of emotional attachment to baseball itself or the team itself was. I think he didn't
give a lot of interviews when he did give interviews. He seemed like a manager, but a somewhat distant, fairly even handed, except for the total system failure thing. But even that was said in very even handed, direct kind of way. That was true. It reads more shocking than it was said, probably. I should ask Chip Skoggins because it was a Chip Skoggins column that I remember reading that in 16, I guess. What the tone of it was. Yeah, what the tone of it was.
I don't know what to say, I guess it's just a total system failure. I think that's all right. They're not a family that ran so much, at least publicly that I've seen. But now Joe took over day to day operations, the executive chair from Jim,
less than two years ago, like almost exactly two years ago, but less than two years ago. And the sense I've gotten is that whatever emotional attachment, the third generation of this billionaire family, Carl being kind of the patriarch, and then his son is Jim, and he also believed two other sons. I don't say Bob and, no, I forget. Bob is right, but I can't really. I can't really remember. They're all very simple American names, whatever they are. I should shirt this out once
about a time. But it's an interesting family tree. And then you get to the third generation and ask things go. There's many more of them, but it's kind of diluted a little bit in terms of like the strength of it, I guess. I always got the sense that of the third generation, which is basically the grandchildren of Carl, in this case, you know, Joe is Carl's grandchild and Jim's nephew. Right. They didn't really care. Like they're in the other stuff. I thought Joe did. Right. No,
I, I, here's what I think, I think of the third generation. Joe was by far or is by far the one who has the strongest emotional attachment to the baseball team itself, to baseball itself. But I don't know that that's real. That's a little bar is what I'm saying. I think the, and I'm not saying this is like a moral failing or something. Sure. Sure. Sure. If your grandpa owns something, right. You don't need to care about it. My dad loved my grandpa built a car out of spare parts.
My dad loved cars. I want nothing to do with figuring out how to do figure out. Right. I don't want to change my own oil. I mean, it also happens, by the way, my grandpa owned a bar in Duluth. Long before I was born called the Metro pole bar. Actually, several of our listeners have sent me pictures or remembrances or somebody sent me. They had a, um, a matchbook from there. Wow. And it was really cool. Anyway, he sold that long before I was even, you know, sure.
My mom won't even marry at that point. I don't even know if my mom was out of college at that point. His kids couldn't care less about the bar business. None of them wanted to be in the bar business. Me, if he'd still had the bar when I was born, I would, I'd be running a bar in Duluth right now. Do you know what I mean? That's what we can skip generations too. So I'm not mocking or criticizing
anything. The fact that your grandpa did something and made a billions of dollars off it. And now you're being handed the keys to it. Right. I gave him some level of credit for stepping forward if it's possible that no one else wanted that responsibility and saying, I'll take it. But what I'm getting at is it never seemed to me that they were or are attached to it beyond just what we got to run it. It's
ours. Right. And as we've said investment, right. As we've said over the years, and it's a lot more fun investment than I want in a bank or something like that. Or commercial real estate. It's fun. You go there, you watch a baseball game. Hey, we own this. This is amazing, right? Everyone here paid money that goes to us. That's amazing. But I feel like over the years when we've kind of gone down the rabbit hole that we've done a lot recently talking about, they're claiming
tens of millions of dollars of losses every year. And they're cutting payroll and we're saying, how can you realistically lose money running a professional baseball team with all the national TV contracts and doesn't this mean they aren't running their business all that well. And yet they're refusing to not run it in a strictly, but we talk about all that stuff. You guys have heard a million times. And at the end of all of it, a lot of times I will say something
like, well, if they don't like it so much, why don't they just sell the damn thing? Right. And it's weird because it has seemed to me over the last decade or so. And again, maybe this was the case with Carl too. Because by the way, it's worth noting that in the mid 90s, like five years after they won their second world series, Carl Polett's agreed to sell the twins to a guy in
North Carolina. And the only reason that didn't happen in like 96, I want to say or 97, the only reason that didn't happen is because the voters in North Carolina voted no to finance a new ballpark that would have been the home to the North Carolina twins or whatever. So that gets next. And at the I went back this weekend or read some of Carl's quotes at the time. I mean, I've never read worst quotes from the owner of it. Yeah. He's like, these ungrateful fans, they haven't supported it.
Why would I keep losing money here? Sell it. And he couldn't sell it four or five years later in 01 or oh, 2000, 2001. They then agreed to be bought out essentially by Major League Baseball itself for 250 million. And then the team was going to be contracted killed. It was 250, right? Yeah. Okay. I mean, there's some, okay. It was never like, there's no document, but it, okay. As far as I've seen, it was 250. I thought I remember it as 250, but I saw it.
There were stories like 150. I thought it was 250. I think that's okay. They tried to sell the damn thing in the mid 90s. They tried to kill the damn thing for profit in 01. And the only, again, the only thing that stopped that, that was agreed to. The only thing that stopped that was a judge in Minnesota saying, you can't kill the team. You got X number
a year's left on the lease with the metronome. They had one year left. And then what really killed it is when they negotiated the CBA at the end of the 2002 season, that's one of the things the players insisted on as you can't contract teams. Yes. It's not totally clear. And there's still debate to this day as to whether or not Polette was absolutely serious about this. Or this was yet
one more negotiating leverage tactic to try to get a new stadium, right? And whether or not, whether or not Major League Baseball bought in, because they went in the middle of negotiating with the players union for a new contract. And they wanted it as leverage as well. But ultimately, yeah, it was between like basically from 1994 to 2006, 2008, it was terrible ownership. You skipped also the one where they cut payroll down to basically Brad Radkin, a bunch of guys
making minimums. They had like a $9 million payroll. That's the era, by the way, I became a fan in. Like I vaguely remember I was eight in 1991. I was four in 87. I have no memory of that whatsoever. I'm sure I watched it. But I have some memory of sitting on my couch in my living room, at my house in in Highland Park, growing up, watching in 91. But you know, not really. I've
turned it into a memory I think in my head. But when I started going to games regularly and my friends would go and you know, watching on TV, that was, you know, 95 probably when I was 12, 95 to 2000 basically is my teenage years. You could not drop a worse team on the field or a less, you know, kind of in support of ownership off the field. You toss in the metronome. I mean, I went to day games there when I was a kid. You could you could talk to somebody in left field.
If you move back here in 1995, we bought season tickets. The season tickets was $99 for the entire year. Yeah. And you got a free bat signed by Kirby Puckett as part of that. So anyway, that's all to say that while Carl, I don't know that he wanted the TV. They're really after a while. But the third generation, I think in terms of just, and even to some extent, the second generation, because it's before the last two years, I just got the sense that they
thought they had been like sentenced to owning the twins. Like some court had said, your punishment for being this rich is to own this baseball team that you won't fully invest in and everyone will loathe you for it. And it was like, you know, you see in like a prison movie, the guys crossing days off on the wall, like left in his sentence. That's what you think. And I always wondered like, why own something like that? There's really only one reason, right? Well, there's two. One is,
you feel like my grandfather or my father own this thing. And I have to be responsible for it. Or you're making money. Yeah. Or both. And what's funny now is something we've talked about year after year after year, even if they are correct in their claims of losing tens of millions of dollars in certain seasons of late, especially. Well, they bought it for 44 million in 1984. And as we just talked about when they sell it, it's going to sell for, I believe, closer to two billion
than one billion. But let's call it 1.5. If you sell something for 1.5, and by the way, part of that 1.5 is the publicly funded ballpark that is an asset in the idea that they get to sell essentially to the next person. That's basically a profit of 40 million dollars a year for 40 years. Slightly less than that, but you get the idea. You bought it for 40. And then you made 40 million a year in appreciation of your luxury item asset. And I know people go, well, they could have invested
that money in the bubble. Yeah. But all of that time then, they got to be the face of a beloved thing in Minnesota. And if you don't think that ownership of the twins, being the people who own the baseball team in Minnesota, help them with other deals and get other opportunities. It sports washing, right? I mean, it's, we've seen this in all cases. It made them a name that
people wanted to deal with. And so to come out of that at the end and be able to sell it for a billion and a half in profit is the reason why the penny pension year after year after year and decade after decade was so manning. And okay, before we get into some of the details of it, but let's first talk about our first couple of months. Let's talk about a different family on business. Yes. Blacks, Dan, they're business. They have much better pizza than the target field.
That is correct. Black stack brewing. Black stack beer is a fantastic local brewery that has been, you know, I think a little bit of an underground hit. It's definitely something that people in the brewery community know because they want to collaborate it. They want to, they want to say you're an honorary member of the brewery committee. I would say I have an honorary member. Yeah, because you're
supporting all of them. Basically, go on. Sorry, that's right. That's right. And now they have recently signed it with a distributor that allows them to distribute their award-winning beers all over the state of Minnesota. Right. Basically, everywhere you can look and if they don't, if the one by your house doesn't have it yet, mention it to them because they can get it in stores. That's right. If you're looking for a place, you can just go to their Wear to Buy page on their website
and check out where you can buy your favorite beer, T-T-G-C. Black stack beer. Just Google that, you can look it up. They also have a location that you can go drink the beer. Yeah, right over at 94 or 280. That's a cool location as well. They've got, I think they're especially well-known for their Haze-E-IPAs or their IPAs, but they've also got a French, Slobps French Pilsner,
Pulltabs Pale Ale or Uncut Jams, their Strawberry Rubarb Sour, Black Stack Brewing. They're representing the sponsor and they could not be more excited about being associated with them. Our next sponsor is Harry's, a long time sponsor. The way Harry's works, Harry's Razors, is that they've sort of caught the middleman out of the entire process, buying a razor. And direct to consumer. Yes, direct to consumer. That's right. And when we talk about that with TV,
we started it with razors back 10 years ago. That's right. That's right. They were proof of concept for the Minnesota Twin. That has two benefits. One, it just eliminates a big cost of this whole thing. Right. And so then that allows them to offer quality razors that are as good or better than other razors available and they just send them directly to you at a price point that is lower. And these are really good razors. I mean, these are five blade razors.
They are in fact about half the price of the normal. But the other nice part is you don't have to go to a store and track someone down and have them annoying, annoyingly open up a case and give it to you. And so what happens there is people just stick with their worn down razors and are shaving with a razor. You should have tossed because it's annoying to have to go get a new one. Well, this is just two clicks on Harry's.com slash gleam and they'll just send it right to your
house. That's right. So you can get the edge on your shave with hair as you get started with with a $13 trial set, but you're paying just three bucks. Just three bucks at Harry's.com slash gleam and again, you get a $13 trial set for just three bucks at Harry's.com slash gleam and that's Harry's.com slash gleam and for a $3 trial set. Okay. So just to run through a few more of these things, I think why I like in terms of why now, I guess we talked about some of the reasons
in terms of like ancillary business. Maybe there's some. Yeah. I also think it's two years after Joe pull that took over. And if you remember, six weeks after he took over for his uncle, they signed Carlos Corea. Right. And I remember being at that press conference and Joe was up there on the stage and he didn't talk a lot, but around that time, he talked a very big game. I thought he talked about having a higher tolerance for risk than his predecessor. He talked about
wanting to push for world series. I mean, you can go read quotes. There's quotes. There are articles written at the time. Oh, a new era of twins ownership and everybody was getting all excited. They were eating it up. And why wouldn't they fans were desperate for it? And he was talking about, well, maybe we'll raise the payroll to 180 some years or 200 some years or whatever. And they they had a hundred and sixty million dollar payroll in 2023 and they won the division and they won
their first playoff series in 20 years. Perfect time to do exactly that. And then they shave 30 mill off the payroll. They had the worst collapse in twins history. They added nothing at the trade deadline. They finished in fourth place. And now the team's up for sale. And so that is an incredible 23 month journey there. From start to finish. But I think the reality of it is this passage and that just ended. Their payroll was 24% below the MLB average payroll. And in their final five years
at the metronome collectively, their payroll was 23% below the average MLB perl. They are truly back to MLB or a metronome level spending relative to the rest of the league. And if that's where you're at as a third generation owner and people are rightfully furious and you're getting asked questions from jerks like me that you don't want to answer obviously. And people are
chanting sell the team and all that. Why keep it right? Like if it doesn't matter that much to you and I would argue that well, I'm sure they will all say it matters a lot to them. Their actions speak a lot louder than their words certainly here. And so in the 23 seasons since the contraction threat. So the last 23 seasons they had an above average payroll twice. Do you want to guess the years twice in 23 seasons 2010. Don't overthink it.
2011. Yeah. The first two years of the new ballpark. They've had a below average payroll. 21 of the last 23 seasons collectively over that span of 23 seasons since the contraction thing was stopped. They've been almost 20% below the MLB average over the course of 23 seasons for a total I guess shortfall relative to average not relative to top 10 or what average of almost 400 million dollars in payroll that they're short of average over the including 41 million
dollars short of average this passage. And it is it's sad but I get it that so many fans and I've even said seen media members write this. React to this news after a solid 30 plus years of the entire fan base disliking the twin zone of ship and feeling that they're you know cheap pole ads, pension Chinese unhappy with all of it. And that's I'm saying aside from trying to sell the team trying to contract the team trying to all this other stuff that would make you not like an
ownership group. And yet after 40 years of that ownership and at least 30 years where people have not liked the ownership and not felt they've done right by the team because I can tell you that because when I was growing up it was the same thing. It was just about a different generation of pole ads. I was growing up it was about different older Calvin Griffith. Yeah exactly right. Yeah
this goes to what I'm saying. So and then they announced we're going to sell the thing and the reaction by so many especially I'm weirded out by how many people in the media reacted this way. But I get that it makes sort of a devil's advocate column or whatever maybe but I'm also saddened but I get it. How why so many fans have reacted this way too and we could talk about it. But the
reaction is well I don't know if that'll be that'll be better it could be way worse. Yeah right it's like 40 years of this ownership and 30 plus years where unequivocally the fanbase as a whole has been unhappy with their investment in the team. The vibes how they go about things their public stances on things all this stuff the fact that they tried to sell or contract the team twice etc etc etc and certainly of late it says bad as it's ever been and yet they finally go we'll sell
it and there's a not small chunk of the fanbase and I feel for them who go I don't know maybe we should have stuck with our captors like the next you know it's like Stockholm syndrome it really is yeah and when I say I get it I get that that's a natural reaction to change I personally hate change
like yes you do I was living in a 800 square foot apartment in uptown when I met the Dutchist Marshfield right I'd still be living there with her if it was up to me but she was like after she moved in there yeah there's no closet space it's a warm bedroom we barely got a bathroom here
right why don't what are we doing we got a cat now we got you know so I begrudgingly I was like I don't know if this new place is gonna be better I don't know if the and we're on like our eighth new our place and stuff but my point is you can talk yourself into should you see me try to
talk it into the patreon folks right exactly I get it but at some point you got to look at your circumstances as a fanbase and say I get that you can't really detach from the emotion of it but try to look at it logical and just think where have the poleads ranked in your mind as an
ownership group for the last 40 years or especially last 30 years or if you want to just say last year and what's the like logically what's the likelihood that the next owner or owners whoever they end up being picked out of a hat of billionaires is worth like legitimately worse than that sure
and even if they are okay how much worse how much worse right now I will say the one caveat I'll give to all that is if they move to Dan team right well that's the worst of all that's right that's right but I just don't see that happening I don't think it's I'm not not even enough to say that
it couldn't happen sure and I'm not not even enough to say that the fact that they got 15 years left on a lead is gonna stop any of this if someone truly wants to buy a team and move it I just find that really unlikely and the truth is if that looks like it's gonna happen we'll have
all the time in the world to talk about that because it'll be the last twins thing we talk about basically that's you know Defcon is one worse or five worse Defcon five my military background I don't know if one or five is worse I think five is the worst whatever but more realistically if
you're kind of glass half-empty is someone will come in and buy the thing and they'll run it just like the bullets did they'll say we're not making enough profit maybe even lower payroll and all that stuff in which case you're just basically in the same spot with different captors
you know what I mean maybe and I don't know that that's better I don't know that it's worse but after 40 years I'm I'm willing to I wrote this this morning I'm willing to open door number two yes sure and see what we got close my eyes and I'll turn that knob and let's just walk through
it together and if there's something worse behind there then shame on us don't we feel silly but what if there's something better behind there even slightly better and what if there's something a lot better what if someone buys this team and just wants to own a winning baseball team and
wants to be beloved in their community and wants to just win and has or has big ideas for what it can turn into or just look at this market and said why does this have to be a bottom third market right why can't we have a well-funded winning baseball team like it's a baseball talent right
exactly that's the hope obviously and there there's another possibility that it just doesn't sell right in which case we're just back to where we started and it's just laid bare that they don't even want to own the damn thing that they own yeah right and I'm getting pulled aside in the hallway
I target field more than I already am and saying those columns you wrote when they thought we were gonna sell but that's fine too I mean I just I think on a scale of one to 100 the likelihood of this thing being significantly worse is either relocation obviously right or in an ownership
group that just kind of tries to take it down to the studs basically right yeah I just feel like that's much less than a coin flip do you know what I mean I did too I mean I it's been bad enough that I'm willing to just flip a coin I'm willing to open a door and walk into what's behind door number
two I think there is a yeah I think the flip a coin is I think it's a weighted coin for yeah it being better ownership you know it is a I don't know I don't know how much more but I'd say there's it's it's I mean the the one that would worry me is a group from the outside
correct the twincities wanting a baseball team which by the way is the most likely scenario right I mean I know people can Google richest people in Minnesota and all right you know the will for somebody try to buy it but the most likely thing is the majority owner will not be a
lifelong minnesota correct I mean we saw that by the way the will for from New York right a ride in Lori who just bought the wolves or trying to buy the wolves are not minnesota z they uphold as it uh I don't think from here yeah yeah I don't even know where the wild owners but yes so obviously
be great if a lifelong twins fan bought the twins that'd be amazing but to your point even if it was just a regular coin and I agree that the odds are weighted in favor of optimism on there I'd still flip a regular coin right if it was just 50 50 50 percent chance it's going to be
better 50 percent chance it's going to be the same or worse I'm ready to flip a coin okay I mean 40 years of this uh and not it's enough yeah like the idea that anybody at this point regardless it could be the 50th generation of the pole ads we've seen all we need to see I think at this
point and you know I think it's worth noting that with all these ownership groups that are from outside minnesota uh having a part of franchises that are still within minnesota right there's good reason for that it's because there's not a better market out that right correct right you you can say
oh what if the now what if they really want to have a team in national what if they really want to have a team in Portland or something like or North Carolina which they tried to sell to North Carolina which I tried 20 years ago um none of those markets are as big as the
Trinity's market like that they are now maybe they're okay with losing a ton of money or maybe they are okay losing a ton of money because they've got a different kind of stadium deal that is a different business model then they've got here with uh you know the downtown located uh target field but
I mean the truth is is that that that does provide an incentive to say you know or we could just keep it in Minneapolis and St. Paul run it competently and continue to make money hand over fist right that seems like a pretty good plan yes and the other thing is if you're a prospective owner
for so if you're listening to this and your prospective owner that wants to let us know sure gotta be a billionaire listening to this right we got thousands of absolutely there's a lot of billionaires right if you're one of you know what even if you have like 500 million sure
drop me an email we can you know we will help we will yeah I don't know we're interested sure I'm in to buy the twins I just want to know a rich person okay great okay really the only rich people I know don't like me that much because I rate columns about how everyone should be glad
there's so much to do I'm worried about our friendship we'll have to build you there so many a time it is funny what people are like are you worried you're gonna lose access to the I'm like are you high what are you talking about anyway uh but here's the beauty of it if you're a prospective owner
the bar is on the floor to clear as a new owner right people are gonna want to not only give you a clean slate which I think by the way in and of itself given the vitriol surrounding the pole ads last 30 years of ownership and certainly this year and just the name association that fan you know
if you say pole ads to someone I don't think I'm being hyperbod to say the immediate reaction is you know cheap or yeah just all bad owners or whatever even if the new which by the way you think about the other teams that is not the case for the case for some but yeah the hope is I mean the
local goal goal is right yeah I agree we said authors of wolves right authors leave like Lee a pole right but the new person coming in even if long term they don't plan to be that different than the pole ads all they got to do is buy the team say you know what we say the same thing we
just said we think this can be a great market I'm committed to keeping it here yes I'm from New York yes I'm from my west whatever it is I just think that this can be a good team we got a good core I'm gonna raise payroll to league average league average oh my god my pearls league average
and maybe we'll make a couple of playoff runs here not just one every 20 years and maybe we'll and if you do that regardless of what the payroll looks like in 10 years people are gonna love that people are gonna eat that up because I can tell you that for fact because Joe Polet had like two
months of saying that before it all fell apart and he completely went back to business as usual and people were eating it up they're desperate they're hungry they're it's a starving fanbase right and I don't just mean on the field sure there's some of that obviously but I just mean
there's a there's a desire from any fanbase but certainly one that's been through the last 30 plus years of the pull-ins to feel like the person actually in charge of the thing cares as much as you do right or any fraction of what you do and I just think that has been so lacking right
fully wrong you know don't don't tell you it's wrong but whatever I would argue the proof is in your actions more than your words or all that stuff but I think that is really the underrated part of this team as an item for sale you could swoop in nobody's asking you to have a top 10
payroll is a real easy marketing opportunity to rank 16th out of 30 just commit to that level every year and this team will win a lot this team can greatly expand its fanbase especially when combined with the new television situation and maybe you know new broom sweeps clean on a lot of
fronts if they have ideas for how they can expand that yeah I mean we forget that like the state of this team from a business standpoint and you have the poll that side claiming they're losing money well it's your business right like well okay you get what you deserve on that front and so
a new person has such an opportunity with a small level of tweaking yeah a little bit of cap but only the thing you give a few good press conferences we need to go all right let's do it differently blah blah blah I'm not asking for Mark Cuban I'm not asking I'm asking for someone who
wants to come in and spend a slightly larger fraction of their ridiculous level of wealth to have a little more fun and get a fanbase into it and be the owner of a luxurate them that succeeds instead of one that oh we're losing too much money that's right that's right so I think
it really is an opportunity and I'm speaking on behalf of billionaires out there for someone to just go you know what why can't this be the number of 14 baseball market why can't this be closer to San Diego or St. Louis or some of those other markets yes they can get 2.5 million 3 million
fans why can't that be now this isn't a new franchise anymore this is a franchise has been here for 60 years and it's got a fair amount of tradition behind it it's got let's let's play this thing up let's have it be a you know significant asset of the community that people want to talk
about and get excited about I mean listen I have to just take a look at what happened to the wolves over the last two years I think I mean when an ownership group comes in there and is like let's let's try to make this something really really great you know what I mean let's invest in
it a little bit and see what if we can get I mean that is a franchise that has been here since the 90s not since the 60s it was a franchise that was I mean kind of similar in that for decades it was it was the losingest franchise of any franchise ever for 30 years exactly or more than that right
and you know all it took was you know well great player yeah as a whole trades absolutely an ownership group that came in and they did they did exactly by the way what I'm saying and they still don't own fully so I'll give a grunt glantaylor I suppose some credit here
but and by the way this is an example of maybe 10 years from now people will look back and go yeah he riding the lorry kind of over oversold what they were actually going to do right but you see by just coming in and being a fresh voice and putting some money into it and saying we're not
trying to save every penny we can save go and try and buy season tickets now right can't do it right right man yeah I mean you imagine you imagine at the twins at that probably boy we we've got a waiting list for season tickets the target bill can you imagine they got right there for season ticket
basically I know sad so that's where we're at on the payroll front we you may have thought the last segment was very emotional we got a lot more emotional on it on the patreon if you really want to see us kind of get deeper into the weeds on it and go on fund some more rants and everything but
I guess my big picture of you I think you probably agree but is that this is reason for celebration or excitement yeah right for twins fans but the uncertainty certainly looms as we understand the uncertainty absolutely and the big I get that I guess I don't I don't truly
understand having lived through the last 30 something years of pull out ownership I don't really get the reaction of I wish the pull-outs would just stick around because the next one could be worse unless you really think the team is going to be moved because the reality is if the team is
relocated and they're no longer in Minnesota the owner is by definition significantly worse than the pole ads and so I get that there there is the doomsday option that comes with or the doomsday outcome sure that comes with selling the team that was not going to come with the pole ads although
I will say that 30 years ago the pole ads tried twice the doomsday outcome so before we talk about the television and payroll situation yeah which took a backseat to this stuff but really was to promise you're talking all about all about all about it so talk about our last couple of
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h-e-l-p betterhelp.com slash gleam in our final sponsor of the day game time it's an app not a website it's it's a app that you download it's be gonna wolf season yeah I'm excited yeah I'm excited about the links games I've got you going to a Wednesday and Friday one of our friends just off
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off download game time today what time is it game time okay uh it's enough pull I'd talk for a while I wrote this today like I have a calm up this morning about all a lot of stuff we've been talking about and in part of it I just said I'm just sick of talking about it you know what I mean
I'm sick like even if it's just I know this sounds stupid a different name to say a different you know avatar of ownership sure I'll take it even if it's not any different like I'm just sick of the same we actually we talked about this on the patreon I remember back in 2017 when the two
decade Terry Ryan regime right was let go finally and the fall V regime started and he brought in that Levine and they started to remake the front office and analytics department and we had to relearn everything that we know about what we thought do about the twit right because after 20
years of the same front office you know how they work right I mean you can complete each other sentences basically like we knew how Terry Ryan approached trades we knew his willingness to risk or not risk we knew what type of starting pictures he liked we knew what type of you know coaches
he liked to hire all that stuff we could almost fill in the blanks at the start of an offseason before he even started and we had to first of all forget all that and then relearn with another front office and I personally after the decade plus of covering or writing about or talking about
Terry Ryan's regime almost 15 years of it at that point I found that exciting sure and it wasn't because I thought necessarily the new front office would be 10 times better just gonna be different gonna be different just a little different we I mean how many different times would be the offseason
that Carlos career signed with the twins how many times do we talk about Carlos career immediately as I we don't have to worry about Carlos career because we had learned that was learned behavior that's right even Donaldson we don't we have not learned a lot of stuff now this doesn't mean all
those moons were good right but it means what seemed impossible right with a previous setup you can kind of relearn what is possible and they have flaws too believe me sure and they have blind spots and they have weird stuff that they like that they shouldn't like and all and all the above but
I think you can apply that same thing to the ownership perspective which even if the new owners are the same essentially they'll be it'll be different in that there will be certain things they do differently maybe they're better in front of a microphone sure maybe they maybe there'd be
stuff on the game experience that they were best to be the push marketing with a different TV radio ticket price I mean we're trying to think of there's an unlimited possibilities here and so I I would find just that alone exciting to just sort of learn along as it's happening so but let's
talk about one of the key things here for a new ownership group is the television deal right the twins are leaving Valley sports which was under the diamond sports umbrella basically they've been on Fox Sports which turned into Valley Sports
for well over a decade well I mean they were on MSC when I was a kid right I mean those but that became that was bought by Fox for as it has been 20 years since the early 90s I think I mean been 30 years I think had Midwest sports channel well yeah but I mean I'm saying that was like a
I don't got bought out but that I viewed as a little bit different they used to run the the Roycee Sid show yeah I mean that was a little bit more local feeling I guess sort of but Fox Sports and Valley Sports were just one of 15 identical properties there was a Fox Sports Midwest
in a Fox Sports Northeast in a Fox Sports Arizona and a fight you know same thing right they are now done with them and they they essentially did the same deal they could have done last year at this exact time right which is they were free agents on a TV front last year and I think
it's pretty clear that they were planning to take this new setup last year at this time because they started talking about Port Corey Provis came on our show and just repeated what he had been told from the upper management which is blackouts are over and while he didn't say we're going
under the MLB and bro it was easy to read that read between those lines because the diamond backs the Rockies and the Padres had already done that right so we thought okay there's precedent for that the twins are free agents they're going to be done with Valley they're going to probably
lose even more money in the short term but they're going to greatly expand their reach they're going to get rid of blackouts all the stuff they talked up and even Dave St. Peter talked up at the time well then Valley came back to them and said we'll give you half basically what we used
to give you and that's still 25 million more probably than they thought they'd make on their own or going under MLB's umbrella and so they said you know all that talk of blackouts and expanded reach and a new era and all that stuff now we'll take the 25 million we'll go back to the same
setup that we had we don't know it was 25 million or if it was whatever it was but I was told it was around half okay and what was originally 54 million per year was there was no difference now if that's true not true that's just what I've been told so now you get a chance to
and I don't think that worked out particularly well for any on any level first of all it pissed off the fans because you over-promised and under-delivered second of all then you cut the payroll and tried to play it off as part of that basically then not only did you go back to a setup that
limited your audience in the first place but then at around mid-season Comcast dropped the channel so like 40% of then your already smaller audience was shed there was a point in the season where no but like 20% of the possible audience was able to watch the twins essentially and then when
they finally got back on Comcast like in what August 1st the first week of August then the team went to 12 and 27 on this fresh so I can't imagine really like playing out in a worse like a one-year re-op they managed to mess it up about every yes and as Chrissy would like to say they have to
have so much you just make sure you want to cry does she say that about you oh yeah okay feeling just effort up so much makes you want to cry yeah okay so now the opportunity to essentially write those wrongs I guess or make the decision that they were for
whatever reason scared to make or unwilling to make last year now the difference this time around is Valley sports diamond sports is even in worship they're they're shedding teams they're in bankruptcy court all this stuff my guesses or my senses they could have re-upped with Valley
sports for another year but it would have been for even less money last money and at this point and I mean Valley sports is also not getting paid the same way they were being paid by Comcast of the past it used to be that they were being paid for every subscriber like it was part of
the basic channel now they're only getting paid based on the fact that they're a premium tier or so you know they've got much fewer people subscribing to it then so if you're cynical you say well why did they choose to leave this year when they didn't choose to leave last year and it could be
as simple as instead of getting 30 million dollars they were only gonna get 15 or 10 or 12 right that's probably a large part of that I think another thing is I would argue that this time last year the mask was off already with the bali situation and agreed go listen to when they re-upped
with Valley go listen to our reaction at the time which was you're getting back into bed with somebody you know is no good and he's gonna screw you over and it's in bankruptcy and it's not gonna pay you and it's not gonna but you're you're getting back knowingly so I have no sympathy for
that well now if the mask wasn't off then I mean it's off now like yes if you're not looking at the bali situation and saying who would willingly crawl into bed with them at this point not even the twins would be willing to do that setting aside the reasoning I do think that the television component
the change that we're gonna see here is unequivocally good news for twins fans in the short term sure and by that I mean at least for the two thousand twenty five C's right because we should not mention like there's nothing tying the twins to MLB media correct forwards same Pino is asked
about this uh the day of the announcement of the day yeah the the night of the announcement and he basically said we would love for this to be a 20 year arrangement right but we're gonna evaluate it day by year by year right and majorly baseball is part of that evaluation process it's not just
the twins as part of that I mean the whole point one of the ideas that one of the things we heard last year at this time was that part of what was handcuffing the twins was they couldn't they didn't majorly baseball was encouraging them not to get into a long term deal with anybody right because
everybody we've got you know thirteen teams that might be free agents at the end of this year right right about now clearly majorly baseball would like to be able to offer sort of a nation wide but local streaming package to apple or amazon or their own umbrella whatever it is
and to sell it as kind of a souped up version of MLB TV which is their product now right and yeah by this time next year if things kind of play out as they're set now they would have like thirteen to fifteen teams free agents or able to go under their umbrella basically now they have six
podres diamond max rocky's last year and or this year that just ended and now the twins brewers and guardians have joined them so they have six it's possible there's more coming this offseason yet yeah in fact a bank in a bankruptcy filing or bankruptcy hearing I should say a couple weeks ago
diamond sports or the ballet sports north regional networks said they want to drop like twelve all twelve of the twelve of the thirteen teams they have under contract they have existing contracts with a lot of these teams as part of the bankruptcy court
they're trying to get out from underneath those contracts they're trying to break those contracts so and so i'm skeptical of MLB's ability to put that together in a meaningful way not because I think the sheer number of teams won't equal roughly half of the league but because I think
the viability of that type of product yeah kind of nationwide but local streaming product it doesn't work if you don't have the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Metz and the Dodgers and the Cubs and the Bill and the Blanks and those are all the teams at the top of the spending list
and not coincidentally thenally those are the teams that have the most lucrative local television deals several of those teams like the Yankees just own their own network and are making hundreds of millions of dollars that way they have no motivation to abandon those setups and go under
an umbrella so they can split evenly with 29 other teams however if the entire and cable industry dies which is clearly headed that way there may not be a choice so it's possible sometime in the future but I just don't see that being but in the meantime who cares about MLB as a whole I'm looking
at the Minnesota students and people who are listeners and fans of the team who want to watch the damn team and it's been it's been made so difficult to do that over the years well here's the setup that you're going to have for this season there's going to be a roughly one hundred dollar per season
direct to consumer streaming option that you can just watch as you watch Apple TV or Amazon or anything on your television you sign up for the MLB TV app you click the kind of twins bonus content or whatever you would call it not John bonus bonus bonus it's like a hundred it'll be like
twenty dollars a month or a hundred dollars a year a season something like that roughly in that range they haven't come from that well that's in itself with no local blackouts that's a massive change I mean that's what people have been begging for for five years basically I mean that there's been
absolutely unavailable to people who are trying to stream it who I who wanted to cut the cord with cable was a direct to consumer streaming option right if there was a streaming option you had to go through a different provider that would just like your cable provider like Fubo or something now
they're also freed if they would like to to attach themselves to places like that YouTube TV Fubo whatever they can still do that now they've unburdened themselves from all obligations from a streaming front right it's just they can offer it to whoever they want now because be prior to
this before as part of their part of their deal with Valley Sports North or with the Diamond Sports Crypto and Valley Sports North they were not allowed to offer a direct to consumer streaming option that was built by signing the cable contract that they had they could not go and do direct
to consumer streaming so now for the people who hear that and go well I just want to watch my TV like TV like I've been doing for 50 years that is also going to be an option as well so the way it'll work most likely is that it will follow the Diamondbacks Padres model from this past season
which is the twins will basically create a twins TV channel it might even be called twins tv or something and they'll they'll negotiate placement on Comcast Direct TV dish network right they seem pretty confident spectrum whatever to the point that my guess is that's already sort of
worked out on a bigger logistical front that there to have the terms in place for that but we'll see and the way to work let's say for Direct TV I have Direct TV I've had it for 20 some years channel 668 under Direct TV was Valley Sports North 24 seven content right Ron shares outdoors
and replays the stuff and who knows the way the twins channel will differ is it'll be a different channel will be like seven ten or whatever it is and it will most likely only like go live like only be kind of an active channel like during the game right now it might include a half hour pregame
and a half hour postgame but even that is kind of up in the air at this point it really could be a simple as for a seven ten game if you turn into that channel at 6.59 it's a screensaver right and at seven o'clock here we go twins broadcast now the actual broadcast itself we should just say they
haven't announced exactly how any of this is going to we're deducing this from what we saw last year with the Padres and and St Peter did indicate that that would be the most likely now the details within that in terms of post game show and all that sure and they have the ability if they would
like to have ancillary content on there sure they want to put gliman and the geek on there for three hours a day go for it I'm sure that's what they got yeah yeah oh I got the good story on the radio front maybe I'll tell it one day along those lines but I won't okay um
they can put as much kind of extra padding of content on there as they want but my guess is they're going to keep a pretty streamlined on that front or MLB will but the actual presentation of the game itself should be pretty similar like you don't have a different graphics and all that
stuff but you know the score bug will be different but presentationally I can tell you I watched a lot of Padres games in the second half of this year because they were very exciting interesting team sure you could tell no difference from you know whatever Fox Sports San Diego or whatever it was
versus what this current setup under MLB was so they will have kind of a twins channel on however you get your normal cable or satellite most likely right and it will be active during games maybe active for some career post game who knows I don't want to guarantee that that's all anybody wanted
right I mean right like I know I'm sure people watch belly sports during the day and there's other content on there you know they got Trevor Ploof playing softball in a warehouse during the day they got a lot of talking heads yelling at each other about gambling during the day whatever it
is a 24 seven channel is a nice thing sure but if it ditching that means more people can just watch the damn baseball team right I'll take that every time Chris so that's why I'm optimistic for fans in the short term because the reality is for all the people who have said I checked out a twins
because I haven't been able to watch him or it's been so difficult and I've had to spend I'm not saying it's gonna be cheap I'm not saying it's gonna be cheaper I'm not saying but it's available to you it would be it will be available to you and as stupid as it sounds that like making a product
available to everyone who wants it is a major step in the right direction right that's undeniably true yes and so that is now that that same reasoning doesn't necessarily make me optimistic from the twin standpoint in terms of revenue well no it's absolutely because it's a disaster for the
twins in terms of revenue but it's gonna be a disaster for all of the teams in terms of right this one is sinking it that matters little if you jump off the head or next year right this bubble has burst and so jump off now because you can grab one of the few life rafts available that's
right even even the teams that own their own networks it's a disaster right there's more more incentivized to say a little more insulated to go down with the ship that's because they got more money for it that's right and the reason for that and I know people go well if they're expanding
their reach and you know in their press release they said you know we only had a potential reach of 1.08 million this year because they were off so many outlets they couldn't write and this year we think it'll be your next year we think it'll be 4.4 million well yeah that's fine
but any channel can say that you know the reality is the reason the cable net the cable and satellite system of the past 20 years let's say or 30 years was so successful as a money maker and you know was that taking let's say belly sports for example every Comcast subscriber or every direct
Tb subscriber fill in the blank with every one they all had that channel on their bill because it was just part of the overall channel collection that they were paying for and so if you were paying a hundred and something dollars a month for all the channels seven dollars let's say per month
of that money basically being divvied up between all of the channels that you've got whether you watched it or not and the reality is even it on the most popular channels which I'm sure belly sports was a lot more popular than you know the third history channel or maybe I don't know
that I mean it was it was on Tuesday nights at the summer well regardless of whether people watched it or not 100% of people who paid a cable bill right were paying x dollars per month out of that bill essentially directly to and it wasn't out and it wasn't like I mean a lot of these channels will be charging you know less than a dollar for them to be on the cable.
Some are free yeah right they just want to be on that's right uh belly sports north indications are they were getting eight to ten dollars per person life sports king right still is that can be more so now than ever that's right that happened whether or not you were ever
off twins fan or wild fan or wolf fan you're still paying that eight to ten dollars a month so think about how many millions of people are on direct TV dish concast whatever paying a hundred something dollars a month and of that a eight dollar slice was being taken out and given to
belly and by way of belly the twins think of how many millions of people I mean even if it's a million people right that's eight million dollars a month right times 12 months a year you're at a hundred million dollars already and it's probably more than that and that's how you get with a
fifty four million dollar that's how belly could take that money give let's say a quarter of it or a third of it or whatever to the twins in the form of fifty four million dollars a year so then you say well why can't they just make that now on their own well here's the math that falls apart
now as a direct to consumer streaming product it's not everyone who has cable is paying us eight dollars a month it's who's willing to give us a hundred dollars a year specifically two us specifically to watch our channel right and I will tell you that the Padres are currently viewed
as the leader of the pack here they are the positive example given by teams right and my understanding is that they're subscriber base this season which by the way they made the playoffs and want to play off series right this is not a bad tape right and they sold out I mean they got a
fan base that's rabid at this point was about forty thousand we'll do the math on that yeah if all the paid a hundred dollars a season forty thousand that's four million dollars now there's additional money from that they can take control of some or all add money which is going to be other
other millions but it's not going to be tens of millions yeah just or clear you can you're so an add to my knowledge a lot of the time it's money but it's not you know and there's also they're going to be able to now get some money for placing this channel on direct TV comcast but it's not
going to be eight dollars a month because you have no other programming correct all you have is the twins game right so maybe it might be a dollar per customer or something like that maybe whatever this the the case is even on the optimistic side you're at a fraction of the fifty four million
you made two years ago and probably a fraction of the twenty five to thirty five million that you made this past season that's the reality and the math doesn't necessarily start to work out any better even if you got to sixty thousand which is very optimistic sixty thousand people paying
money directly basically to the twins to watch the month TV is very optimistic and maybe you build up the audience and you get more ad revenue and you can charge more to place your channel on various places but the real upside of this I think eventually is some type of
local streaming sale to amazon apple fill in the blank where they start to play kind of the comcast role where somebody is trying to get subscribers to their system and as a result they're willing to overpay for the sports TV rights for something which I think would be smart on their
behalf because the goal of streaming services there's so many of them now right I pay for all of them because I'm an idiot I did too there's a million of them I came and keep track and they're struggling to kind of build up an audience because there's so many of them and content
now is so spread thin yes and good shows come and go and nobody even knows about them because they're on oh it's on whatever streaming well how can they get people to sign up they either need a hit show like Ted Lasso did huge for Apple sure because people had to go to Apple to watch it
I'm just using that it isn't it's a good example though but sports is king and I can tell you that because I've worked for NBC and you know and sure beyond that the athletic and stuff and we've started a thing where we charge people directly to listen it's one of the few remaining things that
people will pay directly for to watch and it's one of the few remaining things because it's live right that people cannot just skip over the commercials that's right so you can get a higher ad revenue or ad-based per commercial and so if you're amazon or apple or whatever it is who do whatever it is
some new place well how do you get 40,000 minnesotans right to sign up for apple or hulu or whatever maybe it's because you got some good that's what that's what that is what the twins are hoping and what major league baseball in general and all of these teams in major league baseball are hoping is
that a new business model comes along that's close enough to the old one that's what these kind of replicates the key elements of the old one now I don't think that's going to happen you know this summer or this offseason I talked to someone in that industry a few days ago and they that
conversation turned me from pessimistic to sort of neutral on this like overall picture of the distribution or broadcast or streaming because their point was five years from now their point actually to me was think five years ago what the streaming universe looked like and it was it
existed but I mean it's grown it was Netflix right now they said you know think five or 10 years ahead where the cable and satellite model is completely crashed everything is streaming right there's a kind of a renewed fight for content in the same way there was previously and for a
lot of things that we just laid out and so it did make me think okay if you're a new owner buying into the twins particularly if you're a new owner who either a has some experience in that realm which is possible or be you're coming in with a fresh eyes and you're not beholden to
place like WCCL because you've been there forever the old cable model or whatever and you're just coming in saying all right who wants the party here like who wants to give me money let's get this out let's stream the hell of it whatever I do think five or 10 years down the road there will be
an opportunity to make as much or more than you used to but you're counting on the industry as the whole as a whole growing in the way that people are hoping and you have to make the right decisions within that too but now they are free to do that they are not locked into some contract which
I mean not only was it not only locked into the sort of the old business model but locked into the old business model where in that contract it was said you can't stream you can't do direct to the stream streaming so yeah it was ridiculous right I mean it was anybody who's tried to watch
the twins and been able to and you get infuriated and I don't blame you and we've heard from tons of people who don't need contact they have what the twins is listening to the podcast right and while that I we appreciate that like that that's pretty good that's sad like I mean just here's
one thing I'll say and then we can talk about a few other things all of that stuff that we just talked about in terms of a future outlook relies upon having a product that people want and yeah the big difference between making this jump last year when they could have and chose not
to and making it this year when the boat had sunk even further and it was more obvious right it's the enthusiasm of the fan base or us right if you would have made this jump exactly 12 months ago well maybe not because they were like just eliminated from the playoffs so maybe you know
uh 12 months give or take a week or two yeah baby yeah but coming off that playoff run as it were and I will count it as a run because we haven't seen anything like in 20 years right fan the fan base was ready if you said jump they said how high right and if you would have
said at that point not only are you guys loving life as a twins fan right now we had 160 million dollar payroll we got Carlos Craig we just want to playoff series things are looking up everybody's got euphoria from being at winning playoff games for the first time right a lot of
people's life and if you were to say not only that but this TV mess we've been deal with done gone here's what we got all the things we just laid out direct to consumer hundred bucks a year sign up here it is they would have had a rush of subscribers first yeah
I mean certainly more than they're gonna get now at least yeah right now you pissed everyone off for an entire year on and off the field right you finished in fourth place TV deal and with the right with uh by cutting payroll and by uh every one of the most disappointing endings of a season
and now you're going uh we need you to sign up and pay a hundred bucks a month right and there's gonna people go please a hundred dollars for that right you pay me a hundred dollars not a month the season uh and so they really have put themselves in a tricky spot just by making the same decision
a year later right and it's better late than never I give them some level of credit for not pushing this off kicking this can down the road again because I think that would have only led to a worse outcome of course but it's undeniable that they have kind of
waited to launch this product which has a huge impact on their future until the worst possible time or at least they significantly worse time than 12 years prior would have been I mean I have an honestly I would guess that the difference between launching it
coming off last season and coming off this season is 50% of the sign ups I would bet maybe when you say like maybe and I don't I don't know I mean I'm saying if it would have been 25,000 then yeah you might get 13,000 now yeah I just don't sense a a push or a motivation from this fan base
right to invest anything now maybe the ownership situation now potentially changing has at least given people reason enough to potentially that things could be different right but the reality is this ownership situation if it does ever happen is it's not going to happen quick no I don't think
I wonder the questions we talked about on the page and we're like what's the timeline look like for this and I don't think the timeline is particularly quick I don't think it's going to affect the 2025 offseason no and I are the 2024 2025 offseason place by opening day in terms of agreement
I'll be very surprised I mean I think it's a year not months right and as we've seen from the wolves now that's a different situation they've basically tried to rent on but we that's dragging out years and years and years even beyond what they thought it was going to be so the other thing
I'll say in just the end on this is you know well I guess two things one is Saint Peter when talking about the television deal in the middle last week specifically mentioned Cory Provost who's there play by play guy and Justin Morno who's the primary analyst but when asked about everything
else about the broadcast right in terms of pre-conjures post-camera man right I was going to work is it MLB running the show is it the twins running the show are they just gonna hire all the same bali people and just move them over to MLB which I would love to see right because I don't think
people realize like and I certainly didn't realize this until I started going to the ballpark every day and getting to know some of these people to see the dozens and dozens of people who behind the scenes do a job that puts the twins on the air basically let alone the pre-imposed game
host the announcers the sideline reporters the audio all the stuff that's like obvious to people and these are people who have had their jobs in flux sure for now two plus years they don't know what's gonna happen they don't know when this is gonna end and now they're in the ultimate you
know middle ground where it's like we don't know who our employer would be or if they're even gonna keep these jobs and ballet sports north has you still has wild and wolves for at least one more year and they don't have the twins so now they've got basically a winter job but not a summer job
right like you know it's a it's a really tough spot for a lot of good people a lot of lifelong minisotans a lot of people who are not rich these are just jobs these are just your cameraman or your segment producer a lot of marty even really employees a lot of our freelance you know
they're right so and so it puts them in a really difficult spot after a couple years of being in a difficult spot and all St. Peter would say on that front is you know we recognize that this is a tricky situation we're gonna do all we can to keep as many people as possible but I think
unfortunately the reality is it's not gonna be the twins decision to make you go under the MLB in brella and I guess my fear on that front for these individual people is that if MLB's running six teams or eight teams or thirteen teams they can kind of streamline a lot of the components so
that someone's doing more than one job solidate a lot of that stuff yeah so there's maybe redundancies as I like to say in England and that would be a shame I think because then you lose a lot of kind of the local aspect of it the last thing I want to say on this front in terms of like a domino
effect is St. Peter was asked last ones there whatever what effect this TV change will have on the payroll and he said I don't expect it to have any change on the 2025 payroll and that is despite him saying we expect to make significantly less revenue next year which for all the reasons
we just discussed and I know people are skeptical of that they go well if they're admitting they're gonna make a lot less revenue isn't it just very twins like or very pole-ed like or very Dave St. Peter like to then use that as a reason to further lower the payroll and I agree but
a week earlier right I sat in a room with Joe Polad and I asked him a billion questions seemingly about the payroll and he side stepped every one and then I was told from twin sources afterward that payroll is not going down further after being 130 this year and that's not
reason to celebrate as we pointed out we that's just a positive spin to say hey payroll is not dropping any further that's just a positive way to spin hey you know the big slash of payroll that's the new normal however what I will say is and it's not going up by the way and so I'm not
positioning that as a positive thing however I do think it's relevant compared to then a week later when when Dave St. Peter is talking about it and says we don't expect it to impact payroll because here's the reality they knew this television situation was in place maybe there
were you know a couple of teas to cross and an eye to dot or whatever but it was in place by the time the last game of the season when people were talking about the payroll you would have to be and I'm I don't put anything past the twins from from bungling a situation sure believe me
but you would have to just be out of your mind to have a television situation coming a week later right and go we're not going to change the payroll and then go up actually television's going to be worse we're going to lower the pay I mean that would just be unthinkable bad PR basically and
the other thing he said specifically was when Joe Polad talked in the thing we've read the quotes for he he knew the television situation I'll take that a step further he knew they were going to put the team up for say I think it probably you can not convince me that that was a decision made in the
future I agree between the last Sunday of the season I think there's indications that it's been in the works for a long time I'll tell you one of a couple things that you do prior to putting something up for sale one of the things you often do is cut your expenses by a lot because that
increases the EBITDA for for how much you know from an investment perspective you can get for it and that might be part of what played into the 30 million dollar payroll cut and I'll give you another one another thing you often do you rebrand a lot of times you rebrand a business before you
do that and they did that over two years ago right that was like his first thing essentially that actually that was before he was would made actually they positioned that as like this was the big test for him if he handles this rebrand brand well we'll put him in the big chair yes right although
the argument I make and I'm sure that's true about if you're going to sell something you get it bare bones so that the books look better you know the profits and losses but the the thing about that is you cannot tell me with 20-20 hindsight obviously sure that the 30 million dollars they saved
in costs was not cancel out three percent by the team being bad attendance tanking you know fan morale being bad so if you're a potential owner coming in you got to be looking at those books they might not have lost 30 to million dollars with the revenue they might have lost 15 million
dollars with the road still a extra 15 million dollars of I just mean big picture this thing declined in value short term value by more than the 30 million they cut now when you're selling it for two billion who cares I mean not ultimately so that's the and then again the reason I bring up
the payroll is and we talked a lot about this on the patreon side we kind of went through the roster yes remove the free really good it's a really good conversation yeah yeah we'll just leave you with that the summary of it because if it stays at 130 which at this point is optimistic right
that means it's not going down that's taking them at their word right which I know people are hesitant to do they're already over 130 right in terms of projected money with the current roster and that's with eliminating Kepler and Santana and other free agents right all that's doing is
looking at the guaranteed contracts which they have six of totaling like 93 million and then the 12 or 13 arbitration eligible players were all getting raises to the three to six million dollar rate the no brainer arbitration was actually not going to cut I mean Joe Ryan goes for making a
minimum salary to make in three and a half million well he's obviously worth three and a half million but that's still a three million more than you spent on him that's right last year so you add all that up and you're already at like 130 to 135 and if you have a 130 million dollar payroll
just logically some things got to give and we kind of debated what we each individually think will that will be this will be the primary topic of the offseason but it's well worth going and we may we'll go into it next time we have a free podcast which I think there'll be about two
weeks I mean a week for Friday I think is our next step for one sign up for the patreon t-a-t-r-e-o and patreon.com slash gleam and we do mailbags we're going to have guests we'll start to kind of break down trade possibilities roster moves who from the twins but they meant move to
free up some payroll space or to improve the team or to just shake up the team we had a long debate about whether or not we think they're going to really shake up the team or just kind of make some changes around the edges it'll cost you basically during the offseason a buckle week
that's right at most so we would have the joint in the meantime thanks to our sponsors for keeping this one free that includes better help game time herries and special thank you to our presenting sponsor blackstack brewing now being distributed all of greater minutes so to stop by your favorite liquor store or the blackstack tab room grab your favorite brew or try something new and we'll talk to you again two weeks