Viva Los Dodgers: Hispanicization and Culture

Diversity has its price. Giants fan Bryan Stow was beaten by two Latino gang members, in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium, on Opening Day. He remains in a coma in critical condition with permanent brain damage, if he survives. Stow, a paramedic, had saved for over a year to attend Opening Day at Dodger Stadium. Dodger Stadium, under the original owners, the O'Malleys, was the jewel of West Coast ballparks. Clean, orderly, affordable, and filled with middle class White baseball fans as late as the mid 1990's, with little advertising plastered around the stadium, Dodger Stadium was representative of "old Los Angeles." Staid, White, and very middle class. Now, Dodger Stadium is a gang-filled war-zone, considered by fans to be more dangerous than attending an Oakland Raiders game in Oakland. In part this transition was understandable, but the Hispanicization of America will not turn out to be Brazil or Mexico. Something more akin to the Balkans is in the works, and in particular entertainment will be the first casualty of this Hispanicization. Everyone in media and entertainment will have to adjust to radically different shifts (and less money) as culture finally reflects the undeniable changes adding half the population of Mexico has wrought.


A short history of the Dodgers. There have been many owners, but the O'Malley family (the owners who moved the Dodgers West from Brooklyn in 1958) has been the most famous group of owners. From 1950 till 1998, when the team was sold to Fox Group/News Corp. for $311 million, the O'Malleys ran the Dodgers as, well a family oriented, White middle class baseball tradition. During the Fox Ownership era, from 1998 to 2004, investment in the Dodgers declined, and the stadium was filled with ads on every available surface. Fox was so desperate to unload the Dodgers that they loaned $145 million. McCourt is estimated to be $430 million in debt, according to CBS Sports, and the Dodgers have marketed heavily towards the Latino market, and the young Latino (read: gang member) segment inside Latinos generally.

2010 saw "Viva Los Dodgers with celebrations of Hispanic Heritage.


In addition to Viva Los Dodgers Day, the Dodgers will celebrate the Hispanic community throughout the 2010 season: Cinco de Mayo (May 5), Dodgertown Venezuela (May 25), Dodgertown Cuba (June 6), Dodgertown Fernando Valley celebrating Dodger Legend Fernando Valenzuela (June 13), Dodgertown Puerto Rico (July 25), Dodgertown Dominican Republic (September 5), Dodgertown Mexico (September 19), and the 13th annual La Gran Fiesta Viva Los Dodgers festival (September 19).

Since 1958, the Dodgers have championed Hispanic market outreach. More than 40 percent of Dodger fans are of Hispanic descent and more than 7 million Hispanics call Los Angeles home. Each season the Dodgers attract more than 1 million Hispanic fans. Fifty-two years ago, the Dodgers instituted the first and now longest-running Spanish language radio broadcast. Currently it runs on KHJ/LA Ranchera 930 AM and features Hall of Famer Jaime Jarrín, Pepe Yñiguez and Dodger legend Fernando Valenzuela.

Doyer Dogs (so named for the Mexican pronunciation of "Dodger Dogs") catering to Latino fans are a new addition to ballpark fare. All in all, the Dodgers have been quite successful in attracting lots of Latino fans.

In part this is necessity. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, in 1960 Whites were 80% of the population, now only 40%. From 2000, to 2010, Whites declined to 40% from 47%. Meanwhile Hispanics make up 38% of the population. Hispanics are surging in number in California, while Whites are fleeing.

This is significant, because as the Freakonomics blog points out, Baseball is not the NFL. Whereas 80% of NFL revenue is shared among the owners, less than 25% of MLB revenue is shared among baseball team owners. Team revenue depends not upon national TV contracts, mostly, but local attendance, local TV deals, and local team luxury boxes.

As such, about 80 percent of the nearly $7 billion of the N.F.L.’s annual revenues are divided evenly among all 32 teams. Before the New York Giants or Kansas City Chiefs ever play a game, they’re each entitled to about $150 million in annual revenue. According to a Forbes estimate, all but one N.F.L. team brought in between $182 and $255 million in 2006 (only the Redskins exceeded $300 million). With the Jets and Giants in the middle of the pack, earning less revenue than Tampa Bay, Carolina, or Denver, it is clear that market size has little impact on the revenue base of an N.F.L. club.

By contrast, an M.L.B. team is essentially a local business. Less than 25 percent of all revenues are distributed evenly among the 30 teams. More than three-quarters of the $6 billion in annual revenues are earned and kept at the local level, with a disproportionate share going to teams in large markets with strong team brands and greater on-field success. Unlike the stable, “money-in-the-bank” revenues of an N.F.L. team, the primary revenues of a baseball team – attendance, ticket price increases, luxury suite rentals, and local broadcast ratings and subsequent rights fees — can rise and fall with winning and losing seasons. (I discuss these nuances in depth in my book, Diamond Dollars.) I’d estimate the 2007 Yankees generated nearly $400 million in annual revenue, while the Tampa Bay Devil Rays barely generated $100 million.

We need only to look at broadcast ratings of the two leagues’ respective championships to underscore this local-national dichotomy between baseball and football. The Super Bowl’s broadcast ratings have virtually no connection to the participating teams, while World Series ratings rise and fall with the size of the market of the N.L. and A.L. champs. Whereas both leagues have seen solid appreciation in franchise values in recent years, the lower variability associated with N.F.L. revenues and costs yield a more favorable risk adjusted return than the up-and-down fortunes of an M.L.B. owner.

Under first Fox, and then Frank McCourt, the Dodgers were hammered, revenue-wise, by the demographic tide hitting Los Angeles. White, middle class fans were leaving. Those entering Los Angeles and largely replacing them, were mostly working class or lower Mexican immigrants. Desperate to keep up revenues, and likely blinded by PC nostrums, the Dodgers made an appeal to the Latino community, over and above what the O'Malleys had done. The appeal to Latino fans was amplified by what amounted to, ethnic cleansing of Whites by Latinos. Not by armed Balkan militias, grim men with AK-47s, but the relentless tide of illegal immigration making Los Angeles a very pricey place to live a middle class lifestyle.

What is notable about LA, is how little cross-cultural adoption has occurred between the declining White population and the surging Mexican one. Hip neighborhoods remain the same as in the 1980s: Santa Monica, West Los Angeles, and parts of Venice. Gentrification even of places like Echo Park are now fading away, as the real estate bubble turned to dust, and Echo Park has come under gang-related assault. Meanwhile, despite the huge population of Mexican immigrants, Los Angeles film-makers and writers live in a separate cultural universe. There are more famous Spanish film-makers working in Hollywood than Mexican ones. Steve Sailer noted that in popular music, Mexican influence seems to have peaked with Los Lobos in the 1980s. Mexican culture remains, for the most part, relentlessly lower class. Cock fighting has become a major problem in Southern California. Shows such as "Sabado Gigante" not Spanish language versions of "Nurse Jackie" are popular among Hispanic audiences.

The Hispanic fan base that the LA Dodgers transitioned to from the late 1990s to today, is radically different from the old, White middle class fans the Dodgers used to draw. They are significantly lower income, far more inclined to fight, and tend towards harassment of anyone deemed "weak." Bryan Stow texted his wife that he was afraid in Dodger Stadium. Stow, a fit paramedic, did not use that term lightly. Hispanic fans, particularly older ones complaining about abusive behavior, have been attacked in the same pattern: security did nothing, and the abusive fans, young with gang tattoos and attire, follow the complainers out to the parking lot where they are beaten. One unfortunate elderly Latino man, suffering from leukemia, was attacked in this manner. His leg was broken, and never healed, requiring amputation. The assailants were never arrested. Callers to local radio stations covering the story report that women, children, the elderly, and especially White fans are routinely harassed, and sometimes beaten, in the parking lots. [Anti-White racial slurs shouted by groups of Latino men at any White fan foolish enough to sit in most seats save the field level were reported as routine, and something security did nothing about.]

Stow himself was visiting with friends, fellow firemen, all fit and tall. They tried to save him, to no avail. Stow was hit from behind, in the head, and pitched face first onto the pavement, likely unconscious. His friends tried to shield him with their bodies, throwing themselves in front of the two gang members (out of a crowd of nearly a dozen) who were kicking the prone, likely unconscious Stow in the head. I cannot emphasize how shocking this is, a fit, robust White man attacked and possibly killed, while with a group of friends. In Dodger Stadium!

All of this flowed inevitably from the changing demographics of Los Angeles County.

Fox had found that the Dodgers, far from being a sports-centered "synergy" that would add to the bottom line, was a drag on revenues. The corporation did something unheard of, they lent the buyer (McCourt) the money to purchase the team, they wanted to unload the Dodgers that much. Revenues were matched to the local fanbase. Which was in transition from a White, middle class population able to pay top dollar for tickets, and souvenirs, and food/beverage, to one largely unable and unwilling to pay anything close to top dollar. Advertising rates on local TV dropped, as the middle class population was replaced by one largely speaking Spanish, significantly poorer, and unwilling to watch much English language TV at any rate. Thus, local TV revenues were dropping. Demographic changes have consequences, the Dodgers unlike the Yankees, are in a revenue trap. The team's fanbase is essentially that of Tijuana, with the disposable income to match. No wonder McCourt did everything he could to court the Latino fanbase, hoping to make up in volume what he lost in every transaction. A fallacy common to those entranced by the "New Latino Dawn."

It is quite true that Hispanics are now an increasing part of the population. But, marketers and in particular, sports teams must realize that this population is and remains, generation after generation, significantly poorer than Whites. Which means less disposable income, meaning lower margins for everyone. The population growth of Latinos does not offset the revenue advantage of a declining White middle class. For example, Hispanics are major users of pre-paid cellphones, and often don't have bank accounts. Less than 25% of Mexicans in Mexico have bank accounts, so this is not surprising.

Or, put it this way. Yankee Stadium, with high prices (main level seating for a Monday, 7:05 start time against the White Sox, is running $150 per ticket plus a $10 convenience charge on the Yankees Website), can generate a lot more revenue from fans in the ballpark or watching at home, than can the Dodgers. The Dodgers charge $90 for an equivalent ticket (Loge Box) plus a $7.35 convenience fee. That amounts to about $62.65 for the equivalent (second row from the field, before first/third base) seat. Or nearly 70% on a per-game ticket basis for the equivalent seat. TV revenue is likely higher as well. New York City has become Whiter (and richer) while Los Angeles has become more Mexican and poorer.

This has profound implications. Major League Baseball is likely to collapse significantly, with a number of franchises in major Metro areas simply unable to draw a middle class fanbase needed to create winners. Meanwhile, supposedly "minor market" teams like the Seattle Mariners have the revenue potential to compete, as do the Washington Nationals (the DC area is also being gentrified, with Whites pushing out Blacks). Teams in places like Detroit, or even Miami, are likely doomed. Everyone can see Detroit's decline, but Miami lacks a middle class foundation for a long-term path to financial success. Unless baseball's owners embrace revenue sharing, teams in "diverse" (read: poorer, transitioning to majority non-White) areas are likely to suffer the harvest of replacing a middle class White population with one largely non-White and significantly poorer. Which is lower margin with the same high operating cost. Losing money, in simple terms.

Revenue-sharing sports like the NFL, apart from their thug issue, are better positioned to survive longer in their current form, because most of their revenue derives from a national TV audience, and is shared relatively equally, among teams. The NBA (with the Maloof family wanting to move from Latino majority Sacramento to Latino majority Anaheim), Major League Baseball has the same problem, while the NHL (a revenue sharing sports league) does not. College football, to a large degree, generates revenue from national TV audiences, not local ones.

And it is on the local level that cultural change will be felt first. The Dodgers are unlikely to be the only team to slide into irrelevancy and perhaps dissolution. The Angels, the Padres, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros, are all on a path to destruction, because of their fanbase demographic changes. It's All Over in Texas for Anglos, or so it goes.

The gang banger based thuggery that has driven the remaining Anglo fanbase in Los Angeles away from attending (along with high ticket prices) is the fruit of diversity. To Whites who were long-time fans of the team, diversity means in effect one more public institution they've been ethnically cleansed from. It is not likely to generate positive feelings or goodwill regarding the population shift. The same is true, in the end, for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, of Southern California, of the Western Hemisphere. Or the LA Lakers. Or the Clippers, Kings, and Ducks. Indeed the arc of the Anaheim Ducks, originally owned by Disney, and sold off when the team could not generate money, despite the synergy (of ABC-ESPN), goes directly to middle class Whites being replaced by poor Latinos. Who knew, poor people don't have much money?

This has happened with shopping malls (in Orange County, the Block and Mainplace come to mind). It is happening with baseball, and basketball teams. [Hockey has not appealed much to Latinos, rather the cleansing of the White fan base erodes ticket/food-drink revenue.] The "deal" offered the average White person is ... ethnic replacement and a whole lot of "no-go" areas and institutions that are "taken over" by a Mexican underclass. Accompanied by a relentless need to secure good housing in good (read: non-Minority) school districts. In the Los Angeles metro area, that requirement is quite expensive. LA being constrained by both mountains and the sea.

California is about $26 billion dollars in the red, with the current budget. Jerry Brown, the new governor, seeks to impose about $14 billion in new taxes, by referendum, and about $12 billion in cuts. Brown is basically asking an aging, ethnically cleansed out of Dodger Stadium (and elsewhere) White middle class to fund schools for Mexican kids, welfare for Mexican kids and their mothers, and so on. The spending won't be on people like the (bare) majority White taxpayer. The spending will be on people who've just put the boot on their proxy, a White paramedic who saved up for nearly a year to attend opening day at Dodger Stadium.

The tax revolt is about who pays, for whom. Coercive taxes are always evaded, and the legitimacy of government itself is in question once ethnic cleansing becomes routine. This is why, after being AWOL on the whole issue, for days, the LAPD has decided to swarm Dodger Stadium (and bill the Dodgers for the cost) during the next home stand. The issue is too explosive for those developers foolish enough to have sunk money into Downtown, which risks becoming a White no-go zone itself (as Lakers championship riots, almost exclusively Mexican, have shown). Some money can always be extracted from the remaining White population, but human nature and history suggests that any tax that can be evaded, will be evaded or minimized, if the taxpayers feel they are being victimized and targeted. Robert Putnam's work on diversity shows the results: an angry, isolated and distrustful populace that avoids anything to do with public life.

The Hispanicization of Dodger Stadium, has been accompanied by the cleansing of historically White communities by a tidal wave of Mexican immigrants. A "hunkering down" effect means a more tribal, "White Zionist" attitude among Whites both cleansed to other areas, and those remaining. This does NOT mean a White Supremacist, or White Nationalist attitude. Whites ethnically cleansed or remaining in areas that switched to Hispanic dominance (with former White public institutions like baseball teams or Universities) are NOT in the mood for cross burning or street fights. They merely wish to be left alone, are angry and resentful, see no meaningful place for themselves in society, and avoid any and all civic engagement. Volunteering in America ranks ultra-White Utah as the #1 volunteering State, and California #42. The top 15 states are all ultra-White. The bottom 15 all heavily non-White.

And culture, both sporting and entertainment, are part of public life. A White population subject to constant no-go areas, and relentlessly ethnically cleansed, is already exhibiting tribal behavior. In the 1980's, alternative music fans embraced groups like Los Lobos or artists Tish Hinojosa. Now alternative music is pretty much exclusively White, both ethnically and musically. Latinos might be the dominant ethnic group in California, but on TV and in movies, they are invisible. Even Black actors and actresses have found the largely White audience, indifferent. Black lead "Undercovers" on NBC was canceled, and "the Event" seems fated to follow. TV commercials seem to depict a 70% Black majority population (instead of the actual 12%), but then TV commercials are made not to sell products and services, but win advertising creators awards. Meanwhile Hollywood suffers fewer and fewer people buying tickets (and limited ability to charge premium prices to an increasingly poorer Latino audience wanting endless Fast and Furious sequels), and TV fewer and fewer viewers.

The "winners" are likely to be those sports that fully embrace a White tribal identity, a "Zionism for Gentiles." Beleaguered Whites are unlikely to embrace (save educated White women) non-White dominated institutions or mediums. The losers will be those sports that retain high operating costs while deluding themselves that they can make a profit based on lots of poor fans who are non-White coming through the turnstiles. The same is true for entertainment, particularly given the move away from communal spaces (where some Latino Gang member may decide to kick your head in, even if you are a fit and active 41 year old paramedic). Instead, diversity implies lonely consumption of video, and books, in electronic format. Social isolation is the fruit of diversity. As is tribalism and the longing for a "space of our own" articulated by Theodore Herzl. This process is likely to be organic, and although informed by inflection points, driven largely by interactions on the personal level, multiplied by a million. As Yogi Berra once pointed out, people don't wanna come out to the ballpark, how ya gonna stop em?

That doesn't mean a call to hatred, or even violence. Rather, the social landscape is likely to be smaller, more intense (where it exists in Whitopia, places like Seattle, or NYC, or New Hampshire) or moved away from public spaces entirely, which makes it incidentally free from the PC censors and pressures. Most White people take a dim view of being ethnically cleansed out of their own country, and the notion of collective racial punishment, for sins past. White people are likely to respond to a White fan getting his head kicked in by Latino Gang Bangers, because the fan was White, with a simple response. Not going to Dodger games, or even watching them. Even, abandoning baseball altogether. In favor of something else.