Maverick said:
Well why are some places non-sports towns? Why don't people from Pittsburgh care about the Pirates but live and die with the Steelers? Why don't people fron Arizona care about the Cardinals? I say it's because they know their teams won't compete. If you know your team sucks and will continue to suck, then why care? If the owners spent more, and spent more wisely, then their fan base would grow in most cases.
I am aware that you could turn my agrument around and it could make the same amount of sense. If teams like the Pirates, Cardinals, Jaguars, Devil Rays, etc. has more dedicated fans then maybe the owners would spend more. The problem with that is the owners are too greedy. They'll just pocket the extra money like they already do in baseball. Case-in-point: Didn't either Florida or Arizona spend their money on a big World Series party instead of on the team a few years ago?
That isn't always the case, though. If you look at some teams like the Angels, when they won the world series, they didn't even have sellout crowds until the actual World Series, while the nearby Raiders are pretty well-known for their insane fans. Cities like Los Angeles chew through teams, successful or not. They had the LA Kings in hockey, who even had Wayne Gretzky, and the locals didn't react. They went through the Raiders, Rams, Chargers, and they all left. On the other hand, you have teams like the Boston Red Sox, and the Celtics, who have their streaks of crappy seasons where they aren't even in the postseason contention, but always manage to sell out.
But I don't think that all the owners are really insanely money-grubbing and stingy. Sure, there'll always be the occasional Devil Rays, where the team fought their way to the top, won the World Series, then had all their contracts sold off, but that's pretty rare because they really can't anger the fans by doing something like that, they'll draw bad press, and they'll have a difficult time signing players if they keep scalping them to other teams. But just because you spend money on the team is no sure-fire way to win, or make money. This is a pretty big destroyer of teams. If you look at the Pittsbugh Penguins, they were a top-tier team in the early 90s, then in the mid 90s they spent loads on picking up great players like Peter Nedved, and withholding their guys like Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. But the fans simply didn't respond, and the team didn't win, and because of that, the owners ended up owing tens of millions of dollars to players, as well as the league, and other people. And even now, they're still monstrously in debt, and I can't tell you how many time Lemieux (who now owns the team, because the team was so far behind on his salary) has had money troubles because of the team.