They may be called the Green Bay Packers and the Milwaukee Brewers, but the degree to which major sports teams in Wisconsin are embraced by fans everywhere else in the state is not common in the sports world. These are “our teams” even if they play 100 or 200 miles away.
That’s on exhibit for all the world to see this week with the Packers’ appearance coming up Sunday in the Super Bowl. Fan loyalty to the Packers in Milwaukee, for example, often seems to know little limit, even though the team stopped playing in Milwaukee in the mid-1990s and (dare I say this) from Milwaukee, it is just about the same distance to Soldier Field in Chicago as it is to Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
Much less noted is the degree to which the Brewers are a Wisconsin team.
In an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session last week at Eckstein Hall, Rick Schlesinger, the Brewers’ executive vice president for business operations, talked about how important it is for the team to give people who attend games a good experience, and how important out-state fans are to the Brewers.
“We have to draw from not just Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin, we have to draw from the entire state,” Schlesinger told Gousha, the Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy. “Our group business is usually in the top five in terms of total tickets sold to groups in baseball.”
Schlesinger said a key to that was the retractable roof at Miller Park. It means people can organize large group outings from places such as La Crosse or Eau Claire without worrying that the game won’t start on time and with confidence that the conditions in the stadium will be good. He said the roof was a large factor in keeping Brewer attendance strong, even in an unsatisfying season such as 2010, when about 2.8 million attended games. He said teams in other Midwest cities that do not have roofs have “roof envy.”
Schlesinger said that in comparatively small markets such as Milwaukee and Wisconsin, attendance at games is a bigger factor in keeping the team competitive on the field than in larger markets, where local television and radio contracts and revenue from other sources is much greater.
“Fans are the most important thing that we have,” Schlesinger said. He said the Brewers focus heavily on “making sure the fan experience from the time they get there to the time leave is first rate.” That means assuring that “the place is clean, the people are friendly, the brats are warm, the beer is cold” – the team is playing competitive baseball.
“We spend more money cleaning and maintaining Miller Park per square foot than any other ballpark in America,” Schlesinger said.
He said internal discussions among Brewers executives focus strongly on keeping games affordable for fans. On the one hand, the team wants to raise enough money to pay good players – its payroll last year was around $90 million. On the other hand, going to a game is a discretionary matter for people at a time when many people feel pinched by their personal financial situations.
“If we’re going to be asking people to spend their money and their time in a discretionary entertainment vehicle like the Brewers, we have to promote how cheap and affordable it is and how great an experience it is,” Schlesinger said . “At the same time, we have to tell people we have a product which is going to be a superlative product.”
Schlesinger grew up in Milwaukee and is a Harvard Law School graduate. He worked as a lawyer for the Disney organization and the Angels baseball team in Anaheim, Calif., before joining the Brewers. He told Gousha that, although his current job does not require a law degree, his training as a lawyer prepared him well for his current job and is valuable to him in his work.
Schlesinger said Brewer fans are far more loyal than the fans he dealt with in Los Angeles. He said the Angels had to work to get over 2 million in attendance when he worked for them, even though they were a team competing for the post-season most years and even though the Los Angeles area has more than six times as many people as the Milwaukee area. And people there were much more likely to be eager about the team only when it was doing well.
Brewer fans stick with the team even when the going isn’t so good (although they sure prefer good seasons). And Packer fans? Anyone who goes out in public from about 5 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday, while the Super Bowl is on and the streets and stores are quiet, will get a vivid reminder of how much Wisconsin fans feel connected to their teams.
Don Walker, sports business reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, wrote a story and a blog item about Schlesinger’s Law School interview. A video of the “On the Issues” session can be found here.