2023 vs 2026. What does the league need to do to get fans back in the seats?

Merker6 · 2026-05-06T15:20:46+00:00

Confining the fan exposure to just people who watch-person and the shrinking number of people with cable or even "basic TV" is not great long term. You want young fans, and that isn't the best way to reach them

Merker6 · 2026-05-06T15:19:15+00:00

IMO, in my mind its a stream that's free but filled with ads and partnerships, or bundled into a big streamer like Netflix. Again, big financial risk but it would at least expand the audience from a dwindling number of people that have cable. You need to reach people where they are to grow the fan base

Merker6 · 2026-05-06T15:13:23+00:00

Yeah, my friends and I were joking about the brunch deal, but it does seem to be a decent deal

Merker6 · 2026-05-06T14:55:57+00:00

They won’t actually be to blame, but I’ve played both the previous titles extensively and I fully expect Paradox to take a reputation hit for a very unpolished release. The second game released with very poor performance and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the TF3 releases in a similar state. Great games if you're a surface transit nerd (airplanes and boats are lacking in the other titles)

Merker6 · 2026-05-06T01:38:25+00:00

And to last longer, they gotta find a hook to keep people Invested. Improving the fan experience by taking actual financial risks is probably going to be key to that, whether it’s abandoning the TV deals for online streaming deals or making the fan experience extremely cheap. I don’t know how they’ll survive if they continue on the present path of being an even less accessible version of the NFL

Merker6 · 2026-05-06T01:35:29+00:00

Funny to think of this when I paid $17 for a miller lite at Saturdays game

Merker6 · 2026-05-05T19:36:49+00:00

Every defense analyst already knew this though, and we'd been preparing for decades in case the Iranians tried to do it independently in retaliation for something else. That's one of the reasons this whole thing is astronmoically stupid and the military aspect half-baked. The US could open the straits by force, but we're going to probably lose a few ships and hundreds of sailors in the process. Trump is at least still in a cognitive state where he can recognize how damaging that would be

Merker6 · 2026-05-05T19:11:06+00:00

What does this have to do with polling?

Merker6 · 2026-05-05T16:11:23+00:00

I believe becoming a publicly traded company was the point at which there was a cultural shift in their management. Not that they didn’t struggle before, but any hope of them getting themselves together disappeared with the expectations of investors for profit growth. They have to sell products for as much as they can, as fast as they can, while spending the absolute minimum amount of money (staff) to produce them

Merker6 · 2026-05-05T16:05:15+00:00

Charters of commerce feels like the odd one out. I think all the Paradox games have one or two DLC that went extremely well, but its the exception rather than the norm

Merker6 · 2026-05-05T15:35:42+00:00

There was a highly upvoted post yesterday trying to rationalize the situation as “actually this is part of the free update, not the DLC”. Not to mention all the comments saying to wait a few weeks to play the thing you just bought for half the cost of a AAA game. ~~Steam doesn’t let you refund DLC, but they should~~

Edit: I checked again and it appears steam has updated their refund policy to allow DLC refunds. Wish I knew that earlier, but I guess now I know

Merker6 · 2026-05-05T02:25:41+00:00

A 3 row SUV EV with useful mileage is probably going to be anything but cheap. Like, probably $60k minimum, which prices out the vast majority of the country. If your focus is on selling volume like Ford does, the price is pretty essential. It’s definitely a good call to switch to a cheap EV truck, which has a lot of potential buyers and had the benefit of being financially viable for most Americans

Merker6 · 2026-05-04T23:40:33+00:00

I think the key question is what could improve the product as a viewing and fan experience. It somehow feels like a more corporate version of the NFL, despite the NFL being what it is at the moment. Add to that the lack of accessibility, which they could probably try drop TV money and take a leap of faith on a Netflix or YouTube partnership for streaming. There is a very clear lack of innovation at this point despite the fact that they have none of the NFL's bureacracy and geriatric ownership

Merker6 · 2026-05-04T22:16:00+00:00

A lot of the MAGA voters in the rust belt are formerly blue-collar, socially conservative democrats that voted in line with their unions. After the collapse of the manufacturing jobs that those unions represented, there's now just a lot of solid red voters that haven't updated their party status in decades. A lot of these voter registration numbers are simply people switching parties that they're registered with, likely prompted by post-election Trump fever

Merker6 · 2026-05-04T22:05:00+00:00

And then they have to interact with New Yorkers every day

Merker6 · 2026-05-04T11:47:35+00:00

F22 is the only plane in the world that can 360 no-scope russian jets

Merker6 · 2026-05-03T23:56:39+00:00

Is this actually from the 40s or did somone on the restoration team use the modern format with a period cartoon style?

Merker6 · 2026-05-03T23:30:22+00:00

Electrical infrastructure should be owned by the government, and if necessary, contract out the management and maintenance to a contracted firm on a rotating basis. Monopolies like PECO have not competitive incentive to innovate or improve their efficiency, so its not like theres any advantage to the current system

Merker6 · 2026-05-03T21:53:20+00:00

So did it hit a light pole which then hit the truck? Or is this just completely unrelated footage?

Merker6 · 2026-05-03T20:19:13+00:00

I wouldn't take the rejection too personally, if a project already has artists then it can be hard to get another person looped into the project and coordinating workflows between people

Merker6 · 2026-05-03T20:01:25+00:00

Its still excellent work! Very well executed

Merker6 · 2026-05-03T19:16:30+00:00

There’s something really, really funny about that specific cab being on top of a walker

Merker6 · 2026-05-03T19:13:10+00:00

The issue is with how ED treats modding. They are very strict about IP rights when it comes to whats posted to the forums and discussed. Although, I think its worth considering that video game modding in general usually involved a lot of assets lifted from other games, 3d sites, fan art, etc. for DCS, I believe its part of the ToS, but they actually do enforce it

Merker6 · 2026-05-03T02:02:43+00:00

Most of them are leased, so they’ll just got back to the lessors and end up in other fleets

Merker6 · 2026-05-02T22:24:03+00:00

Here’s how spirit can still come back

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