Despite losing, Cubs still a valuable asset

The Sun-Times business writer Mary Wisniewski writes that despite the Chicago Cubs’ losing record, they still have a strong market value. She says analysts have estimated the team’s value at between $500 million and $650 million. The Chicago Tribune bought the franchise in 1981 for $20.5 million, an increase of 2000 percent. By comparison, the value of the White Sox after winning the 2005 World Series was estimated at $300 million.

The team’s value is important as the Tribune Company is considering selling off many of its assets, including the Cubs. Being free of the Tribune Company may be the best thing to happen to the Cubs organization, according to Andrew Zimbalist, an economist and author of The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on the Sports Business who was quoted in Wisniewski’s article. “The record of the Tribune has been woeful. They’ve neither assembled the best front office people nor given them the resources they need to build a consistently winning club. It’s not simply bad luck the Cubs never win. If you don’t win and you don’t win and you don’t win, after a while, you say there’s something more systematic going on here, and the management isn’t doing its job.”

Zimbalist hits the nail on the head. When your perennial losing team is selling out home games, drawing three million fans a year to the ball park and earning millions in TV revenue, there’s no incentive by management to put a good baseball team on the field. Why bother? They’re already making money with a losing team.

I don’t know who is more stupid – the Cubs organization for mismanaging resources and not being able to put together a consistent winning team, or their fans for continuing to pay top dollar for an inferior product on the field. If you got a defective product at the store, you’d take it back and request a refund, wouldn’t you? Or if you didn’t like the service at a restaurant, hotel or airline, would you go back to the same place? Probably not.

If you don’t like what the Cubs are doing on the field, you have to do more than boo the players. Just stay home. The empty seats will speak for themselves.