Pirates Nutting Thinks ‘Customers’ Will Love McKechnie

Pittsburgh Pirates majority owner Bob Nutting got to show off the upgrades made at McKechnie Field yesterday. The entire scene must have been incredible.   The changes are extensive.  New bleacher seats, a new tiki bar, a boardwalk, new bullpens for the players puts them safely off the field of play and all of the concessions have been improved as well.

All the fans who come to the ballpark are going to love it.  And there should be a lot of them.  The number of seats at McKechnie Field have grown the once tiny park to a now sizable 8,500 seats.

And then Nutting spoke…

“It is going to be a brand-new experience for our customers. …The 360 field, it was driven by making sure that the fans come not only to McKechnie, but come to Bradenton and walk away feeling like this is the place to celebrate baseball, this is the place to celebrate spring training.”

We find it intriguing that Nutting uses the word customers rather than fans.  We aren’t surprised, just intrigued.   Bob Nutting has a large number of customers, I trust one day he has a large number of fans again.

Nutting always says stupid shit.  But we’ve always thought there were differences in the words.

Often times, customers need to be lured.  Fans come on their own.

Customers can live without your product.   Fans are addicted to it.

Customers give money.  Fans give their hearts.

When you have fans you succeed, but you can’t buy them, you have to win them.

This video is pretty cool and touches on some of the distinction between fans and customers.  Hit it Tina.