BloombergBusiness Cubs Article

[David]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-01/the-chicago-cubs-finally-have-a-winning-business-plan

 

Lester’s a Cub now. In December he signed a contract for $155 million over six years. Lester, Epstein recalls, kept repeating “over and over that if we win here they will burn the city down again.” It was that possibility more than any new clubhouse that landed the pitcher.

His signing was a loud announcement that the Cubs, coming out of one of the most thorough demolition jobs in baseball history, are ready to compete again. Since the team hired Epstein in October 2011, they’ve won 200 games and lost 286. In 2012 they lost 101 times—their worst season since 1966. “I don’t think you can ever succeed lying to your fans,” Epstein says of the lost seasons. “So we told them, ‘Right now we are in a mode where we are trying to do everything we can to acquire young talent. And we are doing it because we want to create a perennial contender.’ ”

The overhaul was not only on the field. In the past five years, the team has doubled the size of its front office and updated almost everything about its operations, from ticketing to media deals. It’s built new training facilities in the Dominican Republic and Arizona and begun the largest renovation in Wrigley Field’s 101-year history. The reboot started when the bankrupt Tribune Co. sold the bankrupt Cubs to the Ricketts family in October 2009. Tom Ricketts—with his parents, Joe and Marlene, and three siblings, Pete, Laura, and Todd—paid $845 million for the team.

In the Tribune media empire, the Cubs were programming for cable superstation WGN-TV. The company bought the team and the ballpark from cash-strapped William Wrigley III for $20.5 million in 1981 and paid them both about as much attention as it did to reruns of Cheers. William had been the third generation of Wrigleys to own the team. Like his father, P.K., he treated the Cubs as a vehicle for selling afternoons of beer and sunshine. “The grass would be so green, and the ivy so lush, and the sun so bright, and the Old Style lager so cold, that people wouldn’t care what the scoreboard said,” says George Will, the Washington Post columnist, who’s been a Cubs fan for more than 60 years. The Rickettses are trying to run the Cubs like a modern baseball team. It’s a novel approach for the Lovable Losers, who now have the chance to contend year after year, and maybe even win a World Series.

 

The Cubs spent just $10 million a year maintaining Wrigley Field. Nets kept chunks of concrete from falling onto fans from the upper-deck roof. Trailers housed media relations, information technology, and human resources. The team’s servers were protected from water leaks by a “rain hat,” Kenney says, recalling a tinfoil bonnet devised by a co-worker. Group ticket sales were recorded in triplicate using carbon paper. Season ticket renewals were done by fax. The staff tracked progress by how many times they refilled the fax machine.

In 2010, Kenney presented Tom Ricketts with a list of 12 projects that would all cost a lot of money and make enemies. It included the stadium rebuild and a large turnover of staff. “My hope was that he would say, ‘I’m OK with one, five, eight, and eleven,’ ” Kenney recalls. “Instead he said, ‘Let’s do them all.’ ”

 

Looking at the numbers in 2006, Kenney saw the broken business and the model for fixing it. The Boston Red Sox looked a lot like the Cubs, except richer. “Why is it they’re producing so much more revenue than we are, in the same cramped little ballpark, in the same-size market, with the same fan base?” he recalls asking himself. He set out to create the Red Sox of the Midwest. “The road map in many ways has already been paved,” Kenney says. “The Red Sox have done it by renovating their old ballpark, redoing their media rights, putting a better product on the field, and bringing more marketing into the ballpark.” Tribune, however, was in no rush to fix the team. And the rooftop owners were happy with the way things were.

 

Much more at the link. It's definitely a Ricketts fluff piece but still an interesting read.

[Guest]

Paul Sullivan ‏@PWSullivan 4m4 minutes ago

Better Just Jump

 

 

Is he attempting to quote Van Halen?

[Banedon]

Kenney told the magazine: “Basically, my job is fill a wheelbarrow with money, take it to Theo’s office, and dump it.”

 

Kenney admits to making a mistake when he authorized "the Noodle," the giant Kraft macaroni noodle display that stood next to the Ernie Banks statue a few years ago.

 

“That was one where I made the call at the end of the day, and I was wrong,” Kenney said. “So my threshold is: ‘Is this a noodle?’”

[Guest]

So this did happen.

 

During the ownership limbo, Kenney had made several failed bids at public financing for a major Wrigley renovation. Now, with backing from Ricketts, he tried again. In 2010 the Cubs asked the state to put up $200 million by drawing from city and county amusement taxes already levied on the team’s ticket sales. Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff who was elected mayor of Chicago the following year, was central to the proposed deal. But in May 2012 the New York Times got hold of a copy of a document called The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good. The proposal, commissioned by Joe Ricketts, an active Republican, called for spending $10 million in PAC money to rehash the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy. While Tom tried to distance the family from the proposal, Emanuel, according to the local newspapers, wasn’t amused. Tax money was off the table. “That one ended poorly for us,” Kenney says.

[ctcf]

So this did happen.

 

During the ownership limbo, Kenney had made several failed bids at public financing for a major Wrigley renovation. Now, with backing from Ricketts, he tried again. In 2010 the Cubs asked the state to put up $200 million by drawing from city and county amusement taxes already levied on the team’s ticket sales. Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff who was elected mayor of Chicago the following year, was central to the proposed deal. But in May 2012 the New York Times got hold of a copy of a document called The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good. The proposal, commissioned by Joe Ricketts, an active Republican, called for spending $10 million in PAC money to rehash the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy. While Tom tried to distance the family from the proposal, Emanuel, according to the local newspapers, wasn’t amused. Tax money was off the table. “That one ended poorly for us,” Kenney says.

 

Certainly explains Rahm's seemingly complete lack of desire to help the time at all (ie: denying increasing work hours on Wrigley pretty quickly)

[Guest]

So this did happen.

 

During the ownership limbo, Kenney had made several failed bids at public financing for a major Wrigley renovation. Now, with backing from Ricketts, he tried again. In 2010 the Cubs asked the state to put up $200 million by drawing from city and county amusement taxes already levied on the team’s ticket sales. Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff who was elected mayor of Chicago the following year, was central to the proposed deal. But in May 2012 the New York Times got hold of a copy of a document called The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good. The proposal, commissioned by Joe Ricketts, an active Republican, called for spending $10 million in PAC money to rehash the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy. While Tom tried to distance the family from the proposal, Emanuel, according to the local newspapers, wasn’t amused. Tax money was off the table. “That one ended poorly for us,” Kenney says.

 

Certainly explains Rahm's seemingly complete lack of desire to help the time at all (ie: denying increasing work hours on Wrigley pretty quickly)

 

Nah. That was years ago. Rahm saw the privately funded renovation as a win for him and was definitely supportive of it... and I suspect that if he wasn't involved in a run off election he might have at least allowed extension of the work hours.

[SouthSideRyan]

Rahm should've shot down the request.