April 12, 2011
Today's Vikings stadium news, in 13 words or less
I was about to sum up the last 24 hours of reaction to the hot-off-the-presses Minnesota Vikings stadium bill, but really, the headlines alone tell the story just fine:
Steep hills for Vikings stadium
Vikings' new stadium bid could need a Hail Mary
Vikings stadium bill is introduced at legislature and is headed to back burner
Viking Quest: Stadium Debacle 2011
No hearings scheduled for Vikings stadium bill
You can read the articles for yourself, but in a nutshell: There's limited time to pass a bill this session, and the legislature is busy with the state's $5.1 billion budget deficit and is showing no interest in moving on a Vikings bill. Not mentioned but also relevant: Um, there's an NFL lockout, people? This is sounding more and more like running stuff up the flagpole in anticipation of a real stadium push in 2012 — conveniently just in time for the Vikes' Metrodome lease to expire, as well as for the league to resume playing football, maybe.
October 11, 2010
Forbes: Twins earned extra $70m at Target Field
The first guesstimates are in on how much additional money the Minnesota Twins raked in from Target Field, and they're pretty substantial: Sports economist Andy Zimbalist ballparks it at $50 million, while Forbes magazine — which has a pretty good track record in these matters — says it's more like $70 million.
Where's the money coming from? Team Marketing Report estimates that the average expense per ticket at Target Field, including concessions purchases, is about $51.75, vs about $41.40 at the Metrodome last year. (TMR's estimates are pretty fudgy — does every family of four really buy two team caps? — but are close enough for this kind of comparison.) The Twins drew 3,223,640 fans this year, vs. 2,416,237 last year. That'd be enough to bring in about $64 million in new spending, and that's before accounting for things like increased ad signage and not having to share money with its state landlords, like it had to do under its old lease.
Now, at this point your first thought might be: If the Twins are raking in so much money, couldn't they have built the damn thing themselves, instead of sticking local shoppers with a sales tax hike? Maybe, but keep in mind that stadium honeymoons typically don't last that long these days — 5-7 years at best, two or three if your team is lousy — and most of that new money (almost two-thirds, by my reckoning) comes from increased attendance, not increased ticket prices, so the bottom line might look very different a decade from now. Also, it's not clear whether the Forbes and Zimbalist numbers include the extra cash the Twins will have to kick into the league's revenue-sharing plan, which could knock down their windfall by about a third.
To really establish whether Target Field could have paid for itself, we'd need to see the Twins' books. Anybody have any friends at the Twins' insurance company?
March 30, 2010
First Target Field reviews: "Incredible," "mall-like"
The Minnesota Twins' new Target Field held a baseball game on Saturday — albeit with college teams, since the Twins are still at spring training — which means lots of people chiming in with their first impressions:
- Jay Weiner of MinnPost says that it's easy to get there by public transit, the concession stands feel like you're in a mall, and it's not too cold to play baseball outside in Minnesota. And it could be good for the Vikings' stadium push if fans get new-stadium fever, but bad if they notice how much more money the Vikes' stadium would cost.
- The Downtown Journal, which actually snuck in a couple of weeks ago, notes the myriad sculpture (including 1.25:1 scale statues of Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew, and Kirby Puckett), the five full-service restaurants, and a roof deck by the top of the left-field foul pole with a "10-foot-long gas fire pit."
- Sid Hartman, predictably, called it "unbelievable" and "fantastic."
- The Associated Press reports that a Twins spokesman says fans are describing it as "incredible." And he'd know, right?