"But there are thousands of baseball fans in those big cities who would come out to see free games (since we make nearly nothing from the ACC baseball tournament as it is currently structured). ****, we got almost 10,000 to come out in Orlando for a football scrimmage."
Florida is a Football Centric State, so getting those numbers is not particularly surprising. But lets face facts. Baseball in Florida, whether you are talking College or pro is not a crowd inducing sport. Almost every school in Fla has a baseball team, but go to any of their games and you only see sparse crowds. The only exceptions are when one of the big 3 are playing each other. Even then, there are empty seats. I live in Fla and would love to see them move the ACC tourney to someplace in the state, but I am realistic enough to know it would not be a financial success.
There are minor league teams all over Florida. There are kids who play baseball, and coaches who would bring those kids out to games.
It's the same half-dozen "oh, there's nothing we can do" crybabies who whine about this, while acting as if Durham, NC is the only place that 5,000 people can come out for a mid-week college baseball game.
At one point, nobody gave a ****e about the NFL draft. Now look at the crowds (even mid-week on a Thursday) who will line the streets to see, basically, a handful of college students putting on nice suits.
Look at what dipsh!tes like Jagr are arguing. That, somehow, there is NOOOOO way to exceed 5,000 in attendance by putting an ACC baseball tournament in a Florida MLB stadium...that there's NOOOOO way that the 4th largest state in the country, with one of the highest number of retirees on the planet, with a bunch of spring training sites, with a bunch of minor league baseball teams, and with our state being one of the top tourist destinations in the country...there is NOOOO way we can cobble together more than 5,000 attendees for a 6-day baseball tournament.
Good lord, they have more than 5,000 people EVERY DAY who go to some sort of mid-week sporting event at Disney's Wide World of Sports in Orlando. Doesn't matter what it is. Cheerleading? Yep. Volleyball? Yep. Quidditch. Yep. Every single day of the year. Even MID-WEEK.
It's always funny to hear know-nothings tell you how something could "never work".
And I'm still waiting to hear about this massive money machine that the ACC baseball tournament represents. Even if you sold 5,000 tickets for the entire tournament at $150 each, that is a whopping $750,000 if you had ZERO expenses. Or about $50K per school (again, pre-expenses, and the reality is that we are lucky to break even).
So, yeah, the whole "give away 25,000 tickets for free and hope to make it up on merch and concessions" is not such a crazy idea.
