Category Archives: Tampa Bay Rays

Globe reporter says Rays could move to Montreal, because he’s in Canada and what else is there to talk about?

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I didn’t report here on the news a few weeks back that former Montreal Expos outfielder Warren Cromartie was leading a campaign to bring major-league baseball back to Montreal, even though 1) Montreal is by far the largest vacant baseball market in the U.S. or Canada and 2) Warren Cromartie, people. Because it was pretty clear that nobody was going to take this seriously, even at the rumor level, not after MLB effectively salted the earth in Montreal by running a bare-bones team there for several years and then yanking it away to Washington, D.C.

But now it looks like I underestimated the North American sports media’s appetite for rumor, especially around opening day of a new sports season, when there’s nothing much else to talk about and tons of airtime to fill. So we have the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo saying on NESN before yesterday’s Red Sox-Blue Jays game:

There’s a lot of money behind this group, and they’re certainly undergoing exhaustive surveys and polls and research… Major League Baseball has been very good about going back to cities that have had teams taken away from them in the past… Montreal just figures that the economics of this is just a lot different from what it was eight or nine years ago when they lost the team, especially with the dollar being about of equal value now, revenue sharing, big TV deals…

Yeah, well, maybe. The Canadian dollar is indeed stronger, and TV deals are bigger now — though they’re bigger in other cities, too, so it’s not like that gives Montreal a big advantage over existing MLB sites. And it’s worth remembering that before MLB was “very good” about going back to Washington, D.C., it spent 33 years using that city as a threat to get other cities to build new stadiums, because Washington was just waiting out there, doncha know.

MLB has lacked that potent threat since the Nationals were created in 2005, but it sounds like Cafardo (or whoever he’s been talking to) is psyched to get Montreal on the map as Washington’s replacement as move threat boogeyman:

Obviously, you look at a team like Tampa Bay, would they move to Montreal? … If Montreal could build a new stadium with a retractable roof and guarantee some income there, would that be a viable possibility?

Then Cafardo immediately called the possibility of MLB returning to Montreal a “longshot” and said it “probably won’t happen anytime soon.” But not before his words got back to Tampa Bay. Before everyone freaks out too much: Just remember that not only doesn’t Montreal have a usable baseball stadium (or any plan for paying for one), but Cafardo has a certain weakness for defending lost causes.

Using tax money for Rays stadium is only thing less popular in Florida than Jeffrey Loria

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The last time we had a poll about the Tampa Bay Rays‘ never-ending stadium quest, residents were opposed (50-41%) to using any public money even if it didn’t affect their own taxes, and their favorite site for the Rays was for them to stay put at Tropicana Field rather than building anything new. That was way back in December, though, and since then feline prognosticators have the Rays the favorite to go to the World Series. So how do people in the Tampa area feel about spending tax dollars on a Rays stadium now?

An overwhelming majority of registered Pinellas voters oppose using tax dollars to construct a new stadium for the Rays. 63% of those surveyed oppose using public funds to build a new Rays baseball stadium in Pinellas County, while only 27% support the idea.

Even when asked if they would support using EXISTING bed tax income to build a new Rays baseball stadium, build a new Clearwater Aquarium, or for Gulf Beach Renourishment, only 24% of respondents support dedicating this money to a new Rays stadium. 41% of voters say they would prefer the bed tax money to go to beach renourishment.

That’s pretty overwhelming. Not that it’s going to stop Rays owner Stuart Sternberg from doing it anyway, though, because after all, he believes in baseball.

Nine out of ten economists agree: Sports stadium subsidies are dumb

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The Tampa Bay Times ran a story on Saturday headlined “How much do the Tampa Bay Rays boost the local economy?“, and for once, this one talked to actual economists. The result was an article that provides an excellent primer on how it is exactly that despite all the people you see attending games and spending money, study after study shows that sports teams have minimal economic impact.

Do local economies see increased activity when a sports team is playing?

In 2008, [Holy Cross economist Victor] Matheson studied sports projects from across the country to see if taxable sales rose after stadiums were built. The study also examined whether tax collections dipped when sports leagues shut down for strikes or lockouts.

“There was simply not any bump at all,” Matheson said.

But what happens to all that money that fans are spending, then?

When a couple spends $100 for dinner and a movie, much of that money goes to waiters, ticket takers and other local workers and suppliers. Those people, in turn, spend their paychecks on rent, food and other sectors of the local economy.

Each dollar of original spending can contribute $3 to $4 to economic activity and job creation.

Professional sports mute this ripple effect.

“Spending that goes on inside a stadium tends to flow into the pockets of a relatively few, high-income individuals who live a large portion of the year outside the city,” [University of Maryland economist Dennis] Coates said. “Much of that money flows out.”

What about all those economic impact studies released by the teams that show massive tourism revenues as the result of sports spending?

One, commissioned by the Rays, noted that 160,000 tickets were bought via credit cards with out-of-state addresses — presumably tourists. Since the average Florida tourist spent $775 on their visit, the study estimated that the Rays added $122 million to the economy. The actual impact could be higher, the study suggested, because the credit card count did not capture cash-paying tourists.

However, this methodology failed to distinguish between tourists coming specifically for Rays games and tourists who came for other reasons and just happened to take in a ball game.

“A person in town to visit relatives or attend a business meeting or conference is already in town,” said Matheson, the Holy Cross professor. “That visitor would have stayed in a hotel room, gone out to dinner, even if the Rays had not had a game.”

The economists note other reasons why sports spending is overblown (some studies could be double-counting fans for each game that they attend even if they’re in town for an entire series, among other things); the whole article is worth reading. And when you’re done with that, check out Shadow of the Stadium’s rundown of other reports on how economists nearly unanimously agree that stadium subsidies are a really, really bad idea. Not that economists are always right, but it should if nothing else put the burden of proof on team owners to show why the heck they should be getting hundreds of millions of dollars in public cash, when nobody can spot any significant public benefits.

Forbes: MLB franchise values soar 23%, thanks to TV riches

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The Forbes baseball team value estimates are out, and they’re a doozy:

The average baseball team is now worth $744 million, 23% more than a year ago and the largest increase since we began tracking MLB finances in 1998. During the 2012 season, revenue (net of stadium debt service) rose 7%, to an average of $227 million per team. Operating income (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) per team fell 9%, to $13.1 million, mainly due to higher player costs and stadium expenses.

Yeah, you read that right: Baseball teams are less profitable, but worth more. How’s that work? Forbes doesn’t exactly explain, but does note that both TV rights fees and revenue for MLB Advanced Media (baseball’s online arm) have been soaring, so presumably prospective team buyers are expecting that those revenue streams will keep growing in coming years, enough to outpace increased payroll costs. Though the way things are going there, player costs might just eat up any new revenues faster than owners are anticipating.

More likely is that last year’s sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers for $2 billion and the San Diego Padres for $800 million forced Forbes to recalibrate its entire scale upwards. Which is fine enough — new data points should be incorporated into the calculation — but it still doesn’t exactly explain why team values are soaring this much when profits are essentially flat.

The one thing that the Forbes numbers make even more clear is that TV and internet broadcast money is king right now: MLB is starting to become more like football, where a larger share of money is generated by people watching at home, rather than the more stadium-revenues-based model it’s traditionally been. How this will affect the business of the sport is complicated: Does it dilute the advantage of teams like the Yankees because everyone now has TV riches at their disposal, or give them more of an advantage because they can expect their cable contracts to outpace their competitors by an even greater margin? Does a team like the Oakland A’s (third to last in team value, but 5th in the league in profits at an estimated $27.5 million) or the Tampa Bay Rays (dead last in value, 19th in profits at $10 million) reconsider its stadium plans if access to eyeballs outweighs ability to put fannies in the seats? If nothing else, one thing should be clear: No teams are moving to San Antonio or Las Vegas anytime soon.

St. Pete council rejects bill to sell Rays the right to think about stadiums

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A St. Petersburg city councilmember came up with a novel twist to resolve the Tampa Bay Rays‘ lease battle with the city: Let the team explore stadium sites outside of St. Petersburg in exchange for an annual $1.42 million “exploration fee,” which would be enough to pay that year’s city operating costs on Tropicana Field. Novel, but not successful: The bill was rejected in a 4-4 vote yesterday. (Why does the St. Pete city council have an even number of members, exactly? Is deadlock just one of their quaint local customs?)

One reason the proposal may have failed was the testimony of city attorney John Wolfe, who warned that the amendment could weaken the city’s case if the Rays ever tried to break their lease. But according to Noah Pransky’s Shadow of the Stadium, which live-tweeted the council hearing, there were other objections as well:

It looks like Rays owner Stuart Sternberg will next go and testify before the St. Pete council, as he did previously with the Hillsborough and Pinellas county commissions. It’ll be interesting to see if this time he gets some tougher questions from the likes of Danner and Kennedy that make it less of a soapbox for his stadium demands.

Lease be damned, Rays still pushing for regional stadium talks

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More Tampa Bay Rays stadium developments in the wake of team owner Stuart Sternberg’s tour of county commissions this past week:

  • Hillsborough County Commission chair Ken Hagan called for regional discussions of a new Rays stadium — which is no surprise, since he’s been trying to talk about this stuff for years — and St. Petersburg council chair Karl Nurse and Pinellas County Commission chair Ken Welch both said they’d be up for it, which is somewhat new. St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster remains opposed to regional discussions, though, which he can do since the Rays’ lease says they can only talk to his city through 2027.
  • Rays president Matt Silverman told the St. Pete council yesterday that the team will consider a stadium proposal in the Carillon section near the city’s northern border, if it can then consider proposals on the Tampa side of the bay as well.
  • Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn insisted (again) that he won’t open stadium negotiations with the Rays unless Foster agrees to let the Rays talk to other cities, while Foster said, “I think the economy, certainly, is hindering anyone’s desire to publicly finance a new stadium.” Well, maybe not anyone’s.

While this may all be posturing so long as Foster and his lawyers have that lease in their pocket, it’s a reminder of why Foster has been so hard-assed about not letting the Rays owners so much as talk to other local government groups about building stadiums outside of St. Pete — here all Sternberg does is testify before a couple of county commissions, and it turns into a soapbox to get everyone talking about how if the Rays don’t get a new stadium, they’ll be contracted out of existence. (Note to those just tuning in: No, they won’t be. Really.) Sternberg may not have a legal leg to stand on, but he does have more momentum than he did last week, and in the leverage game that can be just as important.

Sternberg on new Rays stadium: You gotta belieeeeeeeve!

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Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg completed his tour of the region’s county commissions yesterday, following up Thursday’s “Don’t make Bud mad” performance with an appearance at the Pinellas County Commission in which he said he needs to draw 30,000 fans a year, and that can only happen if he gets a new stadium not in downtown St. Petersburg.

Rays owner Stuart Sternberg told commissioners that fewer than 300 St. Pete residents have season-ticket accounts, accounting for just shy of 1,000 season tickets. Sternberg pointed out a lack of business support in St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay’s fourth-biggest business center.

Sternberg mentioned North St. Pete’s Carillon/Gateway region, Tampa’s Westshore, and Tampa’s downtown as more viable locations, indicating a new stadium in the right place could draw 30,000 fans a game.

And how does Sternberg know this?

10 News also questioned Sternberg about the likelihood of drawing 30,000 fans regularly when several playoff teams with new stadiums failed to draw 30,000 fans per game this year.

“I believe in baseball,” Sternberg responded, before looking for the next question.

Okay, but seriously, Sternberg has done marketing studies or something that show that his team would bring in more money in another location, right?

Basically, Sternberg’s performance was meant to reiterate the same arguments he’s been hammering for years now: He wants a new stadium somewhere other than downtown St. Pete, but he’s not going to even think about where until he’s allowed to look everywhere in the region. Commission chair Ken Welch said he agreed with Sternberg — “I don’t see another way forward” — but with St. Pete Mayor Bill Foster still insisting on holding the Rays to their lease running through 2027, all this really amounted to was a PR campaign to paint Foster as obstructionist.

And, of course, to get people focused on the “where” of building a stadium, not the “how.” In fact, Sternberg said the question of how to pay for it, like the question of how much money he’d make from it, is the furthest thing from his mind:

“We are not asking for a nickel,” he told the commission. “It’s like going out to buy a car. I’m not asking how it is going to be financed. I just want to look around and see what kind of car we can drive.”

Wait, he doesn’t ask who’s paying for a car before deciding which one to test drive? The rich really are different from you and me.

Zimbalist’s “Rays need stadium” statement made while under contract with MLB

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It’s been a while since I picked on sports economist Andrew Zimbalist in this space for his habit of changing his tune on stadium subsidies depending on who’s proposing them — I even gave it a pass when he reused a report he’d written for the city of Anaheim as a report for the city of Seattle, changing “Angels” to “Sonics” and rewriting the conclusion to say that instead of the Angels’ miniscule $8 million economic impact, the Sonics leaving could have a potentially huge $2 billion one. (Zimbalist was a paid consultant for the city of Seattle at the time, which was trying to prove in court that it would be harmed if the team left.)

Now, though, it appears that Zimbalist’s penchant for getting hired by the same people whose projects he’s asked to comment on as a sports economics expert has landed him in hot water again. Last Monday, Zimbalist gave a long interview to the Tampa Bay Times in which he asserted that the Rays need a new stadium, that it should be built in downtown Tampa, and that MLB could either contract the team or let it go into bankruptcy (notwithstanding that the Rays actually turn a sizable profit each year, according to Forbes) and be moved if no new stadium is built.

Noah Pransky of the indispensible Shadow of the Stadium blog (and also WTSP-TV reporter) was skeptical of some of these assertions, and after some digging made an interesting discovery:

Andrew Zimbalist is currently paid as an MLB consultant.

Zimbalist confirmed in an email he has worked off-and-on for the league over the years (including now).  He said he has also worked for the player’s association, various teams, and numerous municipalities, but never directly for the Rays.

This isn’t to question the validity of what Zimbalist was saying; merely to point out his realtionship with MLB.  It’s an important disclosure that was omitted from the Times article; especially significant given the “MLB has lost faith in Tampa” statements made just days later.

Now, it’s not that unusual for sports economists to get hired as consultants or to write reports or testimony for one side or another in stadium conflicts — most of the economists I know have done it at least a couple of times. But it’s indeed a major omission for Zimbalist not to tell the Times that he was employed by MLB at a time when the league is actively trying to get the Rays a new stadium. That may or may not have influenced Zimbalist’s statements, but it’s something that readers should know so they can judge for themselves. (After Pransky pointed it out, the Times updated its story to include a mention that Zimbalist is an MLB consultant.)

There’s also the question of just what exactly Zimbalist is doing for MLB, since so far as I know no sports economist has ever taken a gig with a central league office before. Maybe he’s doing some bulk economic-impact number crunching for the Rays and any other teams that are pursuing stadium projects (though that’s a short list: the Oakland A’s, Chicago Cubs, um…), or maybe he’s working on something completely unrelated to stadiums, like how to tweak the league’s revenue-sharing system or something like that. Either way, it’s a far cry from the days when Zimbalist was threatening to form a rogue baseball league featuring player ownership.

Sternberg: I believe in Tampa Bay, but my partner Bud, he don’t believe you

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Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg gave his long-awaited testimony before the Hillsborough County Commission on Thursday, and while sadly nobody filed any lawsuits over it, there was still plenty of drama: Sternberg came out in full stop-Bud-Selig-before-he-shoots-this-team mode, declaring that “Major League Baseball doesn’t believe anymore in the Tampa Bay area” while intimating that MLB might change its mind if somebody coughed up a new stadium.

Selig, meanwhile, played bad cop via press release, releasing a statement that read:

“The status quo is simply not sustainable,” the release stated. “The Rays have been a model organization, averaging nearly 92 wins per year since 2008 and participating in the postseason three times, including their inaugural World Series in 2008. Their .565 winning percentage over the last five years is second among all American League clubs and third in all of Major League Baseball.

“Last year, the 30 major league clubs averaged nearly 2.5 million in total attendance; the Rays, who finished with a 90-72 record, drew 1,559,681, which ranked last in the game.

“We are hopeful that the market will respond in kind to a club that has done a marvelous job on and off the field.”

As Tampa Tribune columnist Joe Henderson points out, that’s actually extremely sustainable — the Rays have managed to field a winning team year after year despite low attendance and revenues — but the other MLB teams would be a lot happier if the Rays were bringing in more money instead of using revenue-sharing funds to boost their player payroll, like they’re, um, actually required to be. But anyway, this is more about Sternberg creating a bogeyman that will threaten to evaporate (or “consolidate,” as Sternberg put it) the team if he doesn’t get a new stadium, so he can get all the benefits of a move threat without having to be all, you know, threatening. Back to Henderson:

I asked Sternberg: If MLB no longer believes in the market, doesn’t that make any stadium talk academic?

Well, let’s not get carried away.

“I said to them, ‘Look, let’s see if we can get the market to work. I believe in the market,’ ” Sternberg said.

It’s just that mean ol’ Bud Selig who doesn’t believe. Help Stuart Sternberg teach Selig how to believe, people of Tampa Bay! Clap your hands if you believe! But put your wallets in your hands first! No, open, so that the money flies out! Faster! Faster!

Rays to meet with Pinellas, Hillsborough commissions, sky to not fall

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The Tampa Bay Rays have scheduled meetings with both the Hillsborough County Commission (Jan. 24) and the Pinellas County Commission (Jan. 29) to discuss their stadium demands, and despite all that talk of how St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster would sue if this happened, apparently now he thinks it’s just fine and dandy so long as no immediate plans are discussed:

Foster declined to say how he would respond to such talks, but St. Petersburg officials have previously said any meddling by other regional governments could result in lawsuits.

“As long as the first pitch isn’t before 2028,” he said, “they can talk about anything they want.”

This is really disappointing for anyone who hoped the standoff over the Rays stadium plans (current status: the Rays owners want somebody to build them a stadium, nobody else is leaping to do it, and their lease has them stuck in St. Pete until 2027 regardless) would at least devolve into an existing series of lawsuits over who could even breathe the word “stadium.” Now we’re just going to have to watch the Rays play baseball, jeez.