It's pretty sad when the locals prefer a free $5 Hot N Ready Pizza from Little Caesars (where the box tastes better than the pizza) over free Marlins tickets:
Miami Fans Would Rather Have $5 Little Caesars Pizza Than Marlins Tickets (Video)
Read more at: http://nesn.com/2013/04/miami-fans-would-rather-have-5-little-caesars-pizza-than-marlins-tickets-video/
That is dire. The Marlins have passed beyond the phase of
passive avoidance (people not turning up for the club's matches simply because the team keeps losing) to
active avoidance (people not turning up for the matches because the organisation has openly antagonised them, and many people won't go now, no matter what).
It's happened elsewhere - see the NBA's former Charlotte Hornets. They debuted in 1988 and were enthusiastically welcomed at first (one Knicks player said the old Coliseum was the loudest building he'd ever played in)...but then owner George Shinn got into one scrape after another with drink-driving arrests, sexual-harassment cases by two employees, and more...and then came the
piece de resistance when, a little over a decade after the club's formation and the nice Charlotte Coliseum, he went before the county board whimpering about not having enough skyboxes and such and could the nice county board give him a new arena with the skyboxes he needs so he doesn't have to move the team out of town (meanwhile attendance was tanking, largely due to Shinn's shenanigans)...the county board told him to get stuffed and so in 2003 he loaded up the moving vans and headed to New Orleans. (The subsequent replacement team, the Bobcats, remain an NBA franchise in theory only with abysmal turn-outs.)
If North Carolinians can be un-sold on basketball, certainly Floridians can be un-sold on MLB.
