Chicago Cubs: An Open Letter to Sam Zell

Mr. Zell:

What you really need to understand is that renaming Wrigley Field is a business decision. That's right, I said you need to understand this is a business decision. While I could make all the impassioned arguments in the world about nostalgia and tradition purely from the emotional point of view, I know that you will not listen to or be swayed by such illogical statements.

So here is the logical one. You are providing me a service and I am your customer. The first rule of business is to keep the customer happy. Now, your decision to sell the naming rights irks me because it tells me that while you are head of a business out to make money, you do not care about even pretending that this organization is about pride, tradition, and by golly, providing fathers and sons something to talk about to show they care without saying those three silly words, "I love you." 

If you rename Wrigley Field, how long will it be before somebody explores the option of renaming the “Cubs.” That’s the next step, so I’m drawing my line in the sand here, and now before it becomes the Chicago National City Bankers (hey, at least it’d be Ryno’s bank) playing at historical Monster.com Park, as brought to you by Viagra.

To you there is only money, greed, and the bottom line, and I don't know about you, but when somebody I do business with is not passionate about what they do, I avoid doing business with them. Can you imagine an uninspired architect designing your building? How about a casually indifferent lawyer representing you in court? A cop who doesn't give a damn about people and doesn't respond to an amber alert quickly?

If all these people do is put in time for a paycheck, they oftentimes aren't doing their job to the fullest. There are people out there like this, we all know it when we meet them, and we all know they are the last people we want to do business with.

Mr. Zell, if you sell the naming rights to Wrigley Field, I, your client, will walk away and stop doing business with you because you have shown me that you are not interested in this team as a passion, but only as a gimmick to make money.

I did it once after the 1994 players' strike because the greed between owners and the players union disgusted me so. It’s a miracle I made it back at all almost a decade later, but if you do this I'm done. I can cheer for the Bears or take up other summer hobbies.  You provide a luxury to me, a form of entertainment, and I DO NOT NEED YOU, YOU NEED ME (as in the millions out there like me).

So let me lay out the dollars and cents for you Mr. Zell.  The New York Mets received $400 million dollars for the rights to their new ball park from Citi Bank for 20 years of naming rights. That comes out to $20 million-dollars a year, and for purposes of the remainder of this essay, I will assume that's a "ballpark" estimate of what you'll get even though there are so many potential complications to this situation that could make that number higher or lower.

So you bring in $20 million dollars a year in revenue, but what you lose is $100 a year from me in lost purchases of Cubs tickets, memorabilia, apparel, and $20 Old-Styles at Wrigley. Advertisers of Cubs games on television and radio are also losing one viewer to whom they can pitch their goods and services to. Now, while you only make say 10 percent profit from that $100 when I buy your products, somebody takes a 100 percent loss if that stuff sits there unpurchased and eventually that comes back to you.

So if the average Cubs fan spends what I do, $100 a year (some are a lot more I'm sure i.e. season ticket holders, and some a lot less) it would only take 200,000 irate Cub fans not spending $100 to wipe out the gains from that $20 million.    

You will also see a reduction in interest and purchases from your other, oh, how many Cub fans are there? Over three-million fans came through the Wrigley Field gates last year, but who knows how many of us there are in rural Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and scattered across the country. Maybe 10 million? (The Census Beauru should track us like they do race, just so we can have an estimate.) So if 200,000 fans stop purchasing your product, and 4,000,000 of the remaining 9,800,000 fans see a reduction in interest in your product because of this issue, you have just lost money and made a poor business decision, and I know enough about you to know that you would never make a poor business decision Mr. Zell. 

That is unless this whole thing is motivated by a desire to destroy the Cubs because you are part owner of the White Sox, and to that I would write a completely different essay about how Chicago benefits from having two thriving baseball franchises, and to lose either would be catastrophic.  So let me just say, you’re a smart man Mr. Zell, and I’m sure you’ll see things my way.

Sincerely,

A Cub Fan