By Joey Menz

 

ALBANY, NY – New York’s Capital District has been the home of several professional sports teams over the last few decades. Currently the Albany River Rats, Albany Conquest, Albany Patroons and Tri-City ValleyCats all call the Albany area home.

            In the past few decades the failure rate for teams of this sort has been astonishingly high. The capital area has seen the Albany Capitals, Albany Attack, Albany Firebirds, the Adirondack Red Wings, as well as the Albany-Colonie A’s, and the Diamond Dogs fail to survive in the business. Even the Albany-Colonie Yankees, the minor league baseball team that served as a stepping stone for Major League stars Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Bernie Williams was unable to survive in the Capital District.

            Despite the success of some of the players from Albany’s professional teams, the Capital District has been somewhat of a revolving door for these organizations to come and go as they work to earn a consistent attendance and a winning formula to create a long-lasting stay in the area.

            “Minor league baseball is a tough deal. There are many teams in this country, not many at all that make money,” said Rip Rowan, former Vice-President of Public Relations for the Albany-Colonie Yankees and a current Senior Advisor for the Tri-City ValleyCats.

            While Rowan referred to minor league baseball, it appears to be a tough deal across the minor league sports spectrum. The Albany River Rats, a minor league hockey team affiliated with the Carolina Hurricanes came to the Capital District in 1993, winning the Calder Cup in 1995 and averaging 6,100 fans each game. Today the River Rats’ average attendance is down to 4,000 people each game.

            The Albany Patroons of the Continental Basketball Association have had similar problems. The team came to Albany in 1981 and was so successful at filling the seats while playing its games at the Washington Avenue Armory from up to 1990 that it attempted to move to the 15,000 seat Pepsi Arena. This move proved to be so unsuccessful that the team left town in 1992 to become the Hartford Hellcats, only to return to Albany and the Washington Avenue Armory with its original name, original colors and greatly decreased attendance numbers in 2005.

It is hard to pinpoint the reason that teams have difficulty surviving in this area. “I think this community got so wrapped up into watching and supporting their major league teams that once we brought minor league teams back here, I don’t think the appetite was the same as it is in some of the other mid-markets in the rest of the country,” said Joe Hennessy, former Albany Firebirds General Manager.

The Tri-City ValleyCats, a class A minor league baseball team based in Troy are entering their sixth season, with gains in attendance in all but one season. The ValleyCats play their home games at the state of the art Joseph L. Bruno Stadium on the campus of Hudson Valley Community College. ValleyCats Vice-President of Operations/General Manager Rick Murphy attributes the success of the team to its stadium.

“Part of our mission statement is fun filled affordable family entertainment, and if you don’t have the facility to be able to do that, then you’re handcuffed,” Murphy said.

Given the recent attendance numbers of this kind of team, getting fans to come to the games is proving to be a challenge. But what is the reason for the failure of these teams to stay afloat in this market?

“This is a cheap market; a lot of people around here wouldn’t pay to see the pope take a piss in the Hudson River. People aren’t going to pay for something unless they know they’ll get their moneys worth out of it. Teams have to find out how to give the people their money’s worth without losing money themselves,” Rowan said.

The failed teams never figured out the formula to make this work in the present and the ones still in existence are still working on perfecting the formula in the always evolving world of sports entertainment.

In the past, the game was the only entertainment; games today have mascot races, cheerleaders, and jumbo screens. According to Rowan, the nights with the largest audiences for the ValleyCats are when they offer giveaways to the fans who attend the game or fireworks shows following the game, both of which need corporate sponsors in order for the team to afford the costs.

Not only do these teams have to offer several forms of entertainment at the same time, they also have to give back to the community around them. The River Rats are known for offering a “Reading with Rowdy” program where Rowdy the mascot goes to local schools and encourages the students to read. In five of the six years of the ValleyCats existence, the front office has renovated a different little league field, this year improving the conditions of the Little League Youth Baseball Field in Watervliet.

Minor league teams don’t have the same budgets as their major league counterparts do and have trouble getting back what they have spent. So although they are giving back to the community it isn’t easy to get back what they put in.