Shouldn’t posting items more regularly during the week leave less news to round up on Fridays? I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to work, but here I am on Friday with even more browser tabs open than usual, and I’m sure someone is still going to complain that I left out, say, the latest on arena site discussions in Saskatoon. I guess lemme type really fast and see how many I can get through before my fingers fall off:
- The Washington Nationals will host their first-ever World Series games starting tonight, which means it’s time to look at whether the city’s $534 million stadium expense has paid off (the mayor who approved it says yes, a local economist says no!) and at what’s happened to some of the business owners who were forcibly relocated to make way for the stadium (some of them are going to the games, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy about the whole eviction thing!). This is all presumably more interesting than actually watching the games on TV, which fewer and fewer people are doing — I know I’m probably not a representative data point, but I for one haven’t been watching much because I’ve reached my capacity for 1) postseason baseball, 2) John Smoltz, and 3) that Postmates ad where the guy falls out the window.
- The California Air Resources Board still doesn’t want to sign off on the Los Angeles Clippers‘ proposed arena, as far as I can understand it because the board thinks more arenas mean more events and thus more people driving fossil-fuel-burning cars to them? I mean, maybe, but wouldn’t this be an argument for banning every new sports venue, let alone every shopping mall or anything else you have to drive to? Not that I’m opposed to that, mind you, just trying to understand the logic here.
- MLS commissioner Don Garber says that the expansion fee for the league’s next new team will be more than $200 million. despite MLS teams’ average operating income being around –$2.8 million a year. Ahem.
- The Atlanta Dream are moving to a smaller arena nearer to the airport, which should do wonders for attendance by people who like to fly to other cities to watch WNBA games. Or maybe people who want to catch a WNBA game while waiting to change flights?
- The Los Angeles Dodgers owners are spending $100 million on a new centerfield plaza to include “food, entertainment, and a statue of Sandy Koufax,” and some local residents are concerned this will create more traffic and noise. No, I can’t explain anything in that sentence, just chalk it up to 2019 being unutterably stupid.
- “This premium era of sports—taking the largely populist experience of going to a game and turning it into a luxurious one—began out of necessity. As player salaries rose in the 1970s, so did the need for teams to find new ways to generate revenue,” writes a magazine for rich people, which gets completely backwards the causal relationship between player salaries and ticket prices, but I guess rich people prefer to read that high ticket prices are the fault of greedy players rather than themselves having too much money to burn.
- Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he will take another “five, six years” to decide whether to keep his team at its current arena, which is all of 18 years old.
- A former Mobile BayBears exec says Mobile’s Hank Aaron Stadium may never get another minor-league baseball team now that the BayBears are leaving town, because the stadium is too antiquated. Hank Aaron Stadium in 22 years old.
- The Milwaukee Bucks are replacing 3,500 cup holders at their one-year-old arena, because the old ones were no longer state of the art.
- The Atlanta Falcons suck, and nobody wants to go see their games even if they do play in a snazzy new stadium with $2 hot dogs.
- NYC F.C. still wants to build a new stadium of its own, and a poll of South Bronx residents and business owners shows they’d be fine with that, so long as the team pays property taxes, unlike the Yankees. Hey, what ever happened to that rumored plan to rush through approval of a stadium before Election Day, anyway?
- A reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal went to the trouble of timing how long it takes to drive from the Raiders‘ new off-site parking lots to their new stadium in “normal traffic,” which would be very useful if only the presence of a 65,000-seat NFL stadium wasn’t likely to change what “normal traffic” will be. Seriously, does the Review-Journal even have editors anymore, or have the bots taken that over too?
The temperature of the implied take that Smoltz in the booth is more off-putting than the insufferable Joe Buck, is very, very hot.
It’s a tough bar, I admit, but Smoltz manages to clear it.
The Portland Diamond Project has a world series watch party. 1200 showed up. Well I think that is newsworthy
Uh, no. Hopefully, you’re kidding.
The fact it is called the “World Series” when only one nation, of the 197 on the planet, is participating is ignorant at worst and arrogant at best (especially given 11 other nations play baseball in organized leagues).
Reverse worst and best.
What are the odds that the World Series will be changing its name?
Definitely more than one nation is able to participate in the World Series.
I was gonna suggest that you take up your concerns with the ignorant and arrogant folks who decided to call it the World Series – but they’ve all been dead for about a century.
But keep fighting the good fight, their insensitivity should not go unchallenged!
The Portland MSA population is 2.2 million, so 0.05% of residents showing up to watch a game isn’t really newsworthy.
Sure, Kevin, but if they built an $800m stadium they could probably double that total…
Well you got me good on that one. Canada!
Good to know no other country is left out. Well maybe, Cuba. But no other country other than Cuba. Okay, maybe the Dominican Republic. But no other countries. Okay, okay. Maybe Japan. And Mexico. But definitely no other countries. Panama, Puerto Rico (I know, not a country), South Korea, Taiwan (I know, UN doesn’t consider Taiwan a country) and Venezuela. But that is definitely it. Colombia and Nicaragua in 2020. But no other countries.
Glad we cleared that one up!
Got me again. You are good!
Little League World Series!
I smell another Forbes franchise valuation curve!
It’s not that many years ago that the Galaxy – then actually a good on field product – was the first MLS team to break the $100m value barrier.
Today (or more accurately, 11 months ago when the linked article was written), playing in the same stadium with a largely diminished roster (yes, Zlatan but beyond that?) they are worth north of $300m?
Unlikely.
In a business model where existing franchises are rarely sold and expansion ones are handed out like candy, it is hard to put a true FMV on any example. Precourt paid $68m for the Crew in 2013 (around $10m more than DC United sold for the year earlier). The Haslams and Pete Edwards paid $150m to buy them last December (not clear how much of that went to PSV and how much to the league… there was a complex “expansion franchise default swap” involved).
So HSG’s initial investment ($5m) plus stadium costs ($30m, give or take) appreciated to $68m in 2013 and $150m in 2018?
Based on net revenue of errrrmmmm-tough-to-say?
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Well done.
https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/11/04/atlanta-united-retain-top-spot-forbes-annual-mls-team-valuations
The Bucks are suckers. Get a sponsorship for this cup holders. Also, I want to see that patent. Can you really just make something slightly larger and then apply for a patent?
When the SF Giants opened PAC Bell Park in 2000, every cup holder had an ad for WebVan, who of course went out of business right away.
It was cheaper to leave the ads on the cup holder than remove them, so the WebVan cup holders stuck around for a while.