The Royals Should Not Cancel the 2012 Fanfest

Butler and Gordon both did appearances, as well as others.

and anonymous scouts

At this point in it’s (FanFest as it’s own event) and in the team’s development, I think it’s reasonable to expect to lose money on it. At this point they shouldn’t look at it as a revenue generator but as a marketing and brand building expense. Having said that, I obviously don’t know the figures involved so may just be totally talking out my ass here.

I think part of their problem with it being slow to turn from a loyalty-building expense into a revenue generator on it’s own can at least partly be traced to their 1 (maybe 2) dimensionally planning of it. I think you and I were discussing last year how attendance seemed to be down. Without any market research at my fingertips, I would put forth the theory that it is related to the weak programming the do. If you’ve got kids under the age of 10 or if you like spending two days waiting in autograph lines, this event is designed for you. If not, you’re kind of left out (unless you’re somewhat sadomasochistic like me and keep going back year after year and throwing tantrums when you find out you can’t). Also, they haven’t changed the format really at all since the first year. Maybe tweaked a few things here and there, but basically it’s the same event, so there is even less incentive to go unless you have a kid to run around. I think (and have offered suggestions in my fan survey each year) that there are low cost activities that could easily be added to broaden the appeal of the event. And naturally once you broaden the appeal and deliver a better product, you get a better attendance which means more money at the gate, but also more money from sponsorship deals/tables.

I call shenanigans on reason 2 simply because I used to do event planning so I think I am somewhat familiar with the logistics involved. But again, I never planned an event exactly like this, so I’m willing to concede that I may be wrong there. I will add, though, that I don’t think I am. I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what goes into it. What I don’t have is a good idea of what kind of resources the Royals are willing to commit to this – do they have an event planner who does the majority of the planning, drawing in the appropriate people from other departments as time draws near or do they delegate it hodge podge out to marketing/travel people as additional duties on top of what they already have so you have people who aren’t experts in it and whose priorities are divided trying to pull it together? Obviously you can tell by my snippy question there what I think is the better way to do it.

And finally, I might be willing to buy reason 3 if it weren’t freaking 8 days into November with no word from them at all on what’s going on with it. They should have committed one way or another earlier in the year and then executed their plan with authority. Instead, they’re not announcing it, they’re not explaining it. They’re letting people find out about it through rumors, willing to think the worst because the Royals have screwed up so many things like this in the past, so that no matter what decision they’ve come to, people are going to be pissed just because of The Process of how we found out. The only reason I freaking looked into this was because to attend I need to work it out with my work schedule and so went digging.

They just suck so bad at communication with their fans! I don’t get why they are so bad at it. I mean, I get why they’re so bad at it, but I don’t get why they are STILL so bad at it. Why don’t they get that this a problem worth addressing and a skill worth improving? Don’t they get how it would help the entire franchise? I thought they had made such good strides this year with all the blog events, but obviously they’ve still got a lot of the same dumb-shit problems in this area that they have had for at least a freaking decade.