Now that Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg has his get-out-of-St.-Petersburg-cheap card, he’s focusing on the more important things: arm-twisting local businesses into buying more tickets.
“We can canvas everything over a period of time with the assistance of Hillsborough and Pinellas. It’s going to be up to them in a lot of ways to bring out the business and show us that there’s some support,” he said.
Sternberg said it won’t take millions of dollars from area businesses, but he would like to see support in the form of season-ticket sales and luxury suites.
“We’re going to have to first, most importantly, say, ‘What’s it going to take for you to support us?’ ” Sternberg said. “Does it matter where we are? My sense is the answer is yes, it does matter. And OK, why does it matter? And if so, where should we be? And we’ll triangulate it in, and some will say here, and some will say Bradenton, and somebody will say Clearwater and somebody will say Derby Lane, and eventually it’s sort of like we’re going to have a caucus.”
This isn’t a terrible idea — if you’re going to build a new stadium, it does make sense to first figure out whether where you build it is going to affect how many tickets you can sell. (Though this is really something Sternberg might have wanted to look into before spending years insisting that his current stadium location was the reason he wasn’t selling enough tickets, but whatever.) Still, there’s an element here of “show us the money, and then we’ll consider building a new stadium,” which doesn’t make much sense as an ultimatum given that it’s Sternberg who wants the new stadium so he can make more money — if businesses don’t want to support the team regardless, then maybe the stadium isn’t the problem? Just a thought.
Regrettably, Sternberg is being aided and abetted by Jeff Vinik – owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning who mindlessly said this at a 2/29/2016 meeting that included Bryan Glazer of the Bucs as well as Sternberg:
‘Vinik, who has owned the Lightning for six years, was asked about the viability of building a facility without public assistance.
“The fact of the matter is if you look at the financial models, if you want to privately finance 100 percent a new ballpark or arena, the economics are not going to work,” he said. “You can’t finance the whole thing privately and then run the business. It’s just not financially feasible.”’
See http://www.tbo.com/sports/rare-joint-appearance-for-area-pro-team-owners-draws-crowd-20160229/
If the product & in stadium experience was any good , you wouldn’t need ball park village and corporate extortion.
Stu might have noticed recently that, despite some reasonably good news for the Tampa regional economy, it isn’t chock full of the kinds of firms that typically see the need to spend big money on premium sports tickets.
Not sure giving Clearwater a sniff will change that much.
The should re-brand and become the Clearwater Thetans. The official team of the Church of Scientology.
Batting at 8th level Thetan is David Miscavige!
Juvenal, you might be on to something…. That should take care of the Rays corporate needs, since the church doesn’t have to pay taxes.
Solving the attendance problems of the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Devil Rays:
1. A’s move to Sacramento
2. Devil Rays move to Charlotte
If moving to markets that are about half the size cures attendance woes, then stand back when Sacramento and Charlotte then move to Buffalo and Little Rock.
Also, Miami and Cleveland drew fewer fans than Oakland last year. Guess they can move to West Palm Beach and Harrisburg.
Aren’t Miami and Cleveland locked into long term leases? The A’s just signed a new lease agreement that provides them with an out clause. They would have no problem filling a 32,000 seat stadium in Sacramento. Hell! The Rivercats average attendance nearly matches what the A’s drew last year.
JC, if CALPERS and CALTRANS have funds in their budgets to buy season tickets to a major league team, Sacramento will be a great major league city.
Sacramento River Cats: 672,354 (9,338 average)
Oakland A’s: 1,768,175 (21,829 average)
Although I will say that averaging 9,000 isn’t bad for a minor league team. It’s really too bad that MLB are such honks for corporate dollars or else Sacramento would make a pretty good MLB market but being such a government town with no corporate presence makes it a tough sell to Manfred and co.
Funny thing about the moving to a Tampa Bay area city other than St. Petersburg is that there was corporate support for the Devil Rays the first couple of years they played. Vince Naimoli, the Managing General Partner at the time took it upon himself to piss off so many of them that they quit buying tickets. He so annoyed a local department store (sorry, I can remember which one) over some petty incident that the store refused to stock D-Rays apparel after the incident. During the remaining years of the Naimoli group those sponsors never came back, many citing the bad economy as an excuse. The Sternberg ownership group took over and immediately went to work mending fences and did everything they could to lure corporations back, but I guess it failed. My point? I agree the Tampa Bay area doesn’t have the super large corporations that other regions have but the support was there in 1998 with the same stadium the Rays play in now. There’s no longer a reason these big players couldn’t rejoin the Rays to help keep the team in their current facility. They real question is why they haven’t?
For ten (10) years we had a suite interest and season tickets. After Namoli’s antics and the new ownership group under Sternberg took over in 2005-saying,on the one hand,they would never ask for a new stadium while , on the other hand, meeting secretly with Mayor Baker to try to move the stadium 16 blocks for $500 million dollars taxpayer dollars (some of it from redeveloping Trop site which the city already owned ) when the ten year contract ended in 2008, we were “outta there!” We were not the only loyal fans who declined further ripoff from corporate welfare daddies.
Rivercats: 9,338/10,624 = 88% of stadium capacity for the season.
A’s: 21,829/35,067 = 62% of stadium capacity for the season
The Dayton Dragons have sold out every game at their 8,200-seat stadium since it opened in 2000. I think we have our solution.
If these ball teams are expecting to get 2/3 of their local support from corporations (which are surely writing off their cost of luxury suites and high priced tickets as business expenses which burdens other taxpayers), that means only 1/3 of local support comes from regular taxpayers. If this is the case, why should general taxpayers be expected to provide subsidies to these billionaire team owners for the workplaces for their millionaire employees?
Neil: I believe the A’s ownership wants to remain in California.
Comedy is dead…
That would be a great rivalry with the Reds!
Sounds like Stu is getting ready for Montreal….
Montreal will get a baseball team when pigs fly and when snowmen use a toilet in hell.