You can look at market size in two ways. One is by revenue brought in, that's not really a market thing, there are other factors that can inflate or deflate that, like TV deals. The TV deal obviously is a big point of contention here. First, MLB is actively trying to change the current set up to make the Nationals a more appealing purchase option, that will reduce the revenue that Angelos gets. Notice I said Angelos there, because HE owns MASN, not the O's, that is important. (Really, I should tag Matt Krem in on this, he and a few other people do a really good job on staying up on details of this more than I). Now back to revenue-market. In that term ANY MLB could be considered large market, but it's not really sustainable or they'd be doing it every year. One of the key issues to that sustainability part kind of ties into the second market view, that's distance to another franchise. Die hard fans will show up, thick and thin and support their team. Casual and bandwagon fans will disappear during the hard times, but will probably show up again when they win and things get exciting. When you've got another team in close proximity, that can pull a lot of the latter fans, so you can't really count on them when considering market size because you never REALLY know what they are going to do. These are the people that have both Nats and O's hats hanging in their closet but will act like they've always been a fan of whichever they are supporting at the time. Right now it looks like we are on the upswing and the Nats are rebuilding, so in theory their numbers should drop and ours should spike for a while, but still, that whole chunk of fans affects our market share and revenue and we can't really count on it because they are fluid.
The other way to view market size is actual home area, which is what the above is referencing when talking about it being the 4th largest market. That would be true if the Nats didn't exist, because the O's would have the entire DMV market. But with having one in each, they only get the Baltimore market which is actually about the same size as Cincinnati and in the bottom 3rd, it's not the combined market even though like mentioned before there is some bleed over with fans.
All that being said, Angelos has def been a tightwad and has been trying to only spend the money the team brings in but that's not how an owner should operate, when things are down they should have to put their own money in and recoup when things are good. I just wanted to nitpick about calling it a large market cause it's really not anymore, it's a split market and it operates differently than say NY or LA. But that's minor chirping because it's no excuse for not spending as an owner should.
