Plus the risk/reward. Our fan base literally only shows up after long periods of winning. It's the very definition of a bandwagon fanbase, like it or not. What we did for the past 35 years absolutely, unequivocally did not work. The franchise did nothing to build a new and expanding fanbase at 35th and Shields, despite all of the plentiful parking. We see the 2025 model out there. This isn't like 1989 when we were literally the first franchise to build a new park in a long period of time, and couldn't have foreseen the shift.
Today we can see the model for a getting fans to show up to the park even when the team is bad. It's right there in front of us. This isn't the Boomer era where 3 hours of baseball is enough. People want to make a day/evening experience out of this. They want dinner before hand, and drinks afterwards, with some entertainment in the middle. We see it all over baseball. At the absolute very least, even if they go back to the historic neighborhood, they have GOT to plow over some of these lots and do more than build a single game day bar. The answer is right in front of us. Something has to give, or what we have seen for the past few years will become more common place. Either you have a revenue base, or you serve as a minor league franchise for the Have's of MLB.