June 08, 2007

Tiger Stadium, cheap Nats tickets marked for death

Catching up on some news items over the past few days:

• The board of the Detroit Economic Development Corporation voted to demolish Tiger Stadium by September 2008, with the plan next going to the city council for approval in July. A nonprofit group called The Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy is working on a plan to preserve part of the grandstand behind home plate, but if it can't figure out how to finance it, the whole stadium would come down. "The site would be used as a mixed-use site for retail and residential project, with new construction to begin in April 2009," reports the Detroit News, neatly ignoring that the city still hasn't found a developer interested in doing so.
• The last-place Washington Nationals announced that the top ticket price at their new stadium opening in 2008 will be $400, up from $140 at RFK Stadium. The average season ticket, meanwhile, will rise from $21 a game to $30 a game. The Nats president Stan Kasten claimed the pricier high-end seats will allow the team to keep low-end seats cheaper, telling the Washington Post that, in the paper's words, "tickets farthest away from the action, in the outfield and upper deck, will cost between $5 and $20." By comparison, seats in RFK's much more spacious - and closer to the action - upper deck top out for most games at $16.
• A poll of Edmonton residents found that 56% oppose a new downtown arena for the Oilers, with about two-thirds saying no public money should be used on the project. Arena advocate Mayor Stephen Mandel insisted the city could find "a creative way to do it" without tax money, then suggested using both property taxes and provincial and federal infrastructure money - all of which were public sources last I checked.
• Canada's National Post reports that the nation's Competition Bureau is reportedly studying whether the NHL is illegally blocking a move of the Nashville Predators to Hamilton, Ontario, in violation of Canadian antitrust laws. It's not quite that NAFTA lawsuit we were waiting for, but it's something.