Royals Chair & CEO John Sherman "faced the biggest test in major-league sports in a century" just four months after paying more than $1B to buy the franchise with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but he has maintained "focus on developing young talent, addressing financial challenges and delivering a consistent winner," according to a Q&A with James Dornbrook of the K.C. BUSINESS JOURNAL. Below are excerpts from the Q&A, some of which have been edited for clarity and brevity:
Q: How freaked out was the new ownership group?
Sherman: We didn’t put together an ownership group for a pandemic, and I don’t think anyone anticipated this for our first year, but they’ve all just been great. There are a lot of people in the ownership group with experience dealing with a crisis. So no one blinked.
Q: How about on the business side? How do you prepare, not knowing how long fans will be absent from games?
Sherman: We’ve found different ways to get them exposure, either through social media or images during broadcasts. We’ve just been working real hard keeping the local revenue up the best we can. We don’t have fans buying tickets, hot dogs, beer and game-day merchandise, although the team store is open, and we’re getting some activity there. ... Our view is that we’re very hopeful about 2021 and coming out of this. But we’re ready to pivot if there is a need before we get the stadium to full capacity.
Q: The Royals signed new TV and radio deals. How huge was that, given the loss of in-game revenue?
Sherman: Since the season didn’t start on time, we took some extra time to finalize those deals, but they came together as expected. It’s a meaningful improvement over our previous deal. These are multiyear deals, and we have kind of a standard regional sports deal that will work for us for years to come (BIZJOURNALS.com, 10/2).
