That wasn’t a swing, was it? It sure didn’t look like a swing to me.
Sorry, right, enough about actual sports, back to the business of sports business:
- The owners of the new St. Louis City SC MLS team want a new parking garage built next to their new stadium, arguing that the stadium “will have a magnetic quality that draws people to the district 365 days a year,” according to the garage’s lead architect. Team officials already demolished several century-old mixed-use buildings to make way for the garage, which would seem to be a lost opportunity for things like stores and restaurants that might more likely be in use year-round, but far be it from me to argue with an expert in economagnetism.
- Albuquerque city officials say they won’t decide where to build a New Mexico United USL soccer stadium until voters approve the money for it — which makes total sense, because the cost of a project doesn’t depend at all on what land needs to be acquired, and also no landowner would ever jack up the price of property knowing that the city needs it for an already-approved project. Today is Opposite Day, right?
- Arash Markazi no longer works for the L.A. Times after being exposed for promoting friends’ projects in his columns and reprinting press releases almost verbatim, but Substack and Twitter don’t care if you’re ethical so long as you get eyeballs, so we have Markazi announcing, unsourced, that “The Oakland Athletics are expected to announce a handful of finalists for a potential $1 billion stadium in Las Vegas after the World Series,” and that getting turned into entire news articles elsewhere. Never mind that A’s exec Dave Kaval already said as much last month, or that “narrows down sites for stadium that nobody has proposed to pay for” isn’t really breaking news anyway, a famous reporter guy said a thing about famous business guys maybe saying a thing, everybody quick post updates at once!
- Tennessee Smokies owner Randy Boyd says he’ll pay stadium construction workers at least $15.50 an hour but won’t sign anything making that promise enforceable, and won’t promise to pay concessions and other stadium workers anything above the cheapest the labor market will let him get away with. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that Boyd says since he’s “a longtime community member, a community benefits agreement won’t be necessary,” a sentence that it’s amazing the News Sentinel production staff could type without busting out in visible lolsobs.
- Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium is in bad shape after the Pawtucket Red Sox left for Worcester and took all the kitchen equipment and office chairs with them. The city is considering whether to rehab the stadium for an indie-league team, but the two that kicked the tires said that at 10,000 seats it’s too big for them; or to redevelop the site for something else, but there are worries it will sink into the swamp.
- Charlotte officials have noticed that they’re paying city police officers to provide security at Carolina Panthers games instead of having the team hire off-duty officers, because no off-duty officers want to work for the $42-an-hour rate that the team offers. I spent a bunch of time reading local articles to try to figure out if it’s the Panthers or the city or someone else chintzing on security wages, and felt bad that I couldn’t figure it out until I saw a quote from Charlotte’s police chief saying, “Listen Panthers or whoever, enough is enough?” and decided that if he doesn’t know, I shouldn’t be expected to either.
- Do you really want to read NFL uber-insider Mike Florio speculating about whether the NFL will settle the city of St. Louis’s lawsuit against the league for moving the Rams by offering the city an expansion team? Even though Rams owner Stan Kroenke has promised to cover any losses the league is stuck with, and Florio doesn’t provide any sources at all other than “an acknowledgment in league circles of the possibility”? Probably not, but you’re a grownup, make your own decisions.
- The Tampa Bay Rays may have been eliminated from the postseason, but that’s not going to stop the Tampa Bay Times editorial board from taking the opportunity to stump for a new stadium on the grounds that, um, let’s see, “far too few people will buy tickets to watch them play at their current stadium” and “the hard work needs to be done now to ensure the team stays in the Tampa Bay area, even if it’s part time.” One could point out that there’s no solid evidence that significantly more people would buy tickets at a new stadium, especially for a team that would disappear to Canada all summer, but the Times also says that “this is not the time to clam up or for grandstanding or unhelpful posturing,” so I guess they wouldn’t want lots of people writing them about this, huh?
- Did you know that the USL is creating a new women’s soccer league, to be an adjunct to/compete with the NWSL, currently reeling under a sexual harassment scandal that has already brought down its commissioner and forced the relocation of its championship game? I had not, but more women’s pro teams can only be a good thing both in terms of growing the women’s game and providing more teams so that cities don’t have to outbid each other for them, though also more opportunities for teams to demand that cities outbid each other for them, because city officials are pretty much morons when it comes to this stuff.
- Lots of times sports team owners argue that there’s no way to fund venue construction and repairs without public subsidies, but did they ever consider growing and selling soybeans? On free public land, oh, Canada, you just had to ruin this feel-good story, didn’t you?
- Tokyo’s Olympic white-elephant stadiums are facing increased maintenance costs because they’re under attack by oysters. That is all.
As someone who goes to St. Louis a lot for Blues games (and will give the soccer team a try) a new garage actually sounds like a good thing for fans. If they law of supply and demand is still in effect, increasing the supply of something (parking spaces within a reasonable distance of Enterprise Center) lowers the average cost of that thing. If nothing else, other parking options will be forced to compete, and the only way of really competing the cutthroat world commercial parking is to lower your price. Is there a factor here that I am missing?
St louis should shoot for being reimbursed for building the dome and forget about the nfl
Sure St. Louis still owes $150 million on a dome with no team, but it’s far better than spending nearly a billion dollars on a new stadium with a team.
It’s not clear to me why St. Louis would even consider accepting a promise of an expansion team to settle their lawsuit. This sounds like Florio just bloviating (possibly at the suggestion of his league bosses).
If you are effectively suing a former business partner for misleading you, failing to deal honestly with you/lying to you, and inducing you to commit funds under false pretense (along with maybe a bunch of other things, who knows), it seems to me that you want to be made whole… not be offered an opportunity to again become partners with the party that crooked you the first time.
Add to this the fact that any ‘future’ partnership would inevitably involve the city committing at very least hundreds of millions to a new stadium and paying to demolish the old one (that they still owe money on). Under such circumstances, accepting an expansion team would be foolhardy.
What they ought to be seeking is to be made whole on their original investment. What amount and what form that takes is likely to be up to the courts, unless a settlement is made.
This is why it seems likely to me that the league wants Florio to float this particular balloon. I don’t know about you, but if I was being sued I would prefer a settlement in which the party that sued me agrees to provide $1Bn for a new stadium than one in which I have to pay them $200m for their old one…
On the paying concessionaires … many (!) years ago, our local pro football team used to recruit at various locations for people to come and sell products. The allure was that they’d pay you something like $10 for the day, you got to keep any tips, and “best of all you get to see the game for free!”
I can’t imagine it’s much different these days.
I wanted the Dodgers to win, but no way was that a swing.
re: Tampa Bay attendance with a new stadium, it won’t change at all. Miami swore they were just a new domed stadium away from great attendance, and their attendance now is just as bad as ever. The Rays have had a great team for years, and they can’t get more than 15,000 a game on average? Maybe if they stopped complaining about how hard it is to get to the ballpark, and how crummy the it is people might want to go. Keeping some of their stars might help too.
MLB should give Montreal a full time team, and then merge Tampa and Miami into one team. The Tampami Devilmarlins make more sense than the Tampontreal Exporays.
Why not call them “The Floridians”?
Even better would be “Florida Men” Imagine the headlines, “Florida Man hits into triple play”
Neil, I am puzzled by something. Why would you say the St. Louis garage represents “a lost opportunity for things like stores and restaurants” when the first sentence of the article says the garage will include ground-floor retail and event space?
Which has worked out so well in Miami.
I admittedly don’t know how much square footage of retail the garages will offer compared to the buildings they replaced. But “The stadium needs a garage so people can come 365 days a year to see concerts and stuff and also, oh yeah, there can be some retail on the ground floor” feels just slightly disingenuous.
Just to addd a point, pre-pandemic the retail area on the bottom floor of the marlins parking garages had A LOT of vacancy. And that was after nearly 8 years. There was a medical office, a subway sandwich shop, and a cigar bar type club. Not exactly draws for people to visit.
And on the same street there are the usual urban types of shops including a Walgreens and a Wendy’s literally across from the stadium – and where you can visit and park for free (the marlins garages charge even on non-game days)
So the promise of becoming a booming business area is … a dream (politely) or a lie (more accurately)
Why not call them “The Floridians”?
Those “territorial rights loving @$$ h*le$”, who are forever keeping my city of $an Jo$e hostage from its own Major League dreams, deserved an ending like that. Hell no it wasn’t a swing (LOL!). Oh well..GO DODGERS!
It’s okay to say “assholes” here, no rule against it. (So long as no Giants execs show up in the comment thread, anyway.)
LOL :). Thanks NdM.
What about the whole ass?
Far be it from me to defend sports cartels, Antonio. But I do have to ask… if you believe territorial rights should be abolished in the greater interest of the game and it’s fans, would you also be ok with the owners of the Rays, Pirates and Royals (for example) moving their teams to Fremont, Sacramento and Oakland after the A’s move to San Jose?
I think MLB (and in fact all pro sports) would be better if franchises could be organized locally and were tied to their geographic location only by their ability to generate revenue as businesses (it would certainly be cheaper for taxpayers – most of whom are not sports fans let’s not forget).
But that isn’t how our system works. The Yankees, Dodgers and Cubs don’t necessarily care that the A’s would be better off in San Jose than they are in Oakland, or that they would generate increased revenue in San Jose and require less “propping up”. They care that if they vote in favour of that move over the objection of the local owner, they could quickly find their own markets adding one or two more teams each thanks to the votes of small market owners who feel the big market clubs did not ‘have their backs’.
I don’t want to speak on Antonio’s behalf, but it’s likely that he’d be perfectly happy with only one particular territorial rights owner agreeing to relinquish a portion of their territory, rather than try to abolish a key piece of the franchise business model.
The problem there being that the one particular owner don’t wanna, and the rest of the league isn’t gonna make him because see John’s comment above.
That may be, Keith. That’s why I asked the question.
The broader point is that these things aren’t done in isolation, whether we are talking about the A’s moving to San Jose or a second NHL team in Toronto (which, despite all the hullaballoo over it a decade or so ago still has not happened and will not happen).
I don’t know if the Haas family used a lawyer to generate their “consent to move” letter (I’ve read it online and my guess would be that they absolutely did not), but they really, really should have spent more time and money on it.
Gee, I wonder why there isn’t cover to cover news about Marlins attendance and or relocation. Oh, that’s right. They have a new stadium. Once that occurs, There won’t be a peep about attendance for another 15 years when they want a new stadium.
The Marlins’ stadium turns ten years old next spring – I doubt it’ll take another 15 years for them to start asking for a new one.
I remember reading last week that one of the Rays execs said it is difficult to sell tickets in the St Pete/Tampa area. In my mind that should stop any talk of any location on the west side of Florida since by their own admission, it will still be difficult to sell tickets.
Taking the realistic approach that the Rays will not pay the whole cost of a ballpark, maybe some serious thought should be put into sharing the Marlins Park. They have the artificial surface which resolves the constant pounding on the grass. MLB has gone into ridiculous mode anyway so they can create a schedule where the two teams do not conflict. Post Season would be an issue, but I am sure there are ways around that, (Dare I say a day playoff game followed by a night in the unlikely event both make the playoffs at the same time?)
Football has done that for decades with the Jets and Giants and recently added Chargers and Rams. Yes, baseball is different with significantly more games and scheduling conflicts, but it could be a solution with creative thinking.
The two teams are at the bottom of their respective league in attendance so having two teams in one stadium, like the Mets and Yankees in the early 70s, would not be unique.
Benefit:
Miami Wins or as close as possible in this situation – With one ball park and two teams for 162 games use, it will generate additional income to help pay off Stadium debt, stop laughing.
Marlins Win – Shared costs with the Rays reducing costs and gaining some income.
Rays Win – They don’t have to play at the trop and maybe better revenue if they do a decent job with broadcasting contracts, (May have to entice the Marlins for rights into the market), Based on current play, The Rays may actually do half way decent in Miami if they keep producing competitive teams.
I know it is a long shot, but thinking outside the box.
If they just want to maximize ticket revenue, they should have the Marlins share Yankee Stadium and the Rays share Citi Field.
Barring that, I think you can make a strong case for the best financial decision being to keep the Rays right where they are, since any relocation — to Tampa, to Montreal, to a Tampa + Montreal timeshare, whatever — is likely to generate such a marginal amount of new revenue that it will never pay the cost of a new stadium. The Rays may not be doing great in St. Petersburg, but at least the building is paid off already.
Best financial decision from a revenue-maximizing perspective, I mean. Obviously it’s best for Stu Sternberg if he can get the benefits of 12 new stadiums without having to pay for any of them.
Teams have shared stadiums before. Yankees and Giants Polo Grounds. Mets Yankees shared Shea for two years. Dodgers Angeles shared Dodger Stadium for a year. Cardinals and STL Browns shared a stadium for decades. Even hosted a World Series. But that’s the least of the problems with this plan.
But Phil, what happens if the 8,800 baseball fans in Miami then split their attendance between Marlins and Rays games (which I could easily see happening, and not necessarily splitting in the Marlins favour either)?
In reality, the fact that there aren’t enough people in Florida willing to pay MLB prices to watch MLB suggests the same solution that Glendale’s 20 year dalliance with the National Hockey League does… a relocation.
But where to? That is the real problem. The Rays and Marlins don’t draw. I agree they probably never will (barring the occasional Marlins playoff run, which it seems will always be followed by a mass sell off of good players).
It’s a bit like a small business owner dealing with a bad employee (or two). It’s not enough to just say the employee is bad… you have to have or create a better option than the one you have.
The Marlins won’t move given their new stadium, but for the Rays the where is a bigger problem than their perpetually stalled stadium situation.
John, while I agree that it appears FL will not support MLB or at least two teams, if the Rays still want to stay in the state, the only place I could see is Orlando due to location and available fan base and 17th largest TV market. Doesn’t solve the issue that the Rays want someone else to pick up the bulk of the tab for a new ballpark. Orlando is rapidly growing and there was someone a few years ago that was willing to take Orlando’s money to build a place for MLB.
Out of the state, I only see a few of places in the east or central time zones, (if geography is important), that could work, I don’t know if Montreal will work full time once the newness wears off.
People love Louisville for some reason, but that is only the 49th largest TV market.
New Jersey always intrigued me, but the Mets and Yankees will never let that happen. North Carolina is another place, again like everywhere else, the Rays want someone else to pay for most of the cost.
Indianapolis as the 25th largest market could work, but again who is going to pay?
If MLB lets the team do the two city approach, (It’s such a dumb idea, MLB will probably let them do it), why not take the money and expand their spring training home, Charlotte Sports Park, to about 20,000. The Rays most of the time don’t come close to that number in attendance. Make the park Major League suitable. Unless there is a rule that your spring training home can’t be your regular home, why not?
Is it possible that there are not enough workable markets to support all the teams MLB wants? As long as the Rays expect someone else to pay, they should get use to the Trop or settle for less than a palace of a ball park.
Sure, why not?
I would (and in fact have) suggested that the best location for the Rays would be the Former Legends field… which Hillsborough county paid to expand a decade or so ago.
It would likely need at least another 6-8k seating (currently 11k) to host the Rays, but it could work.
It’s owned by the Yankees, of course, but hey…
As to why two teams which are based in Florida full time need “Florida spring training” stadia to play in for a month or so each spring, well, I suspect that is something future historians digging through the detritus of the human race will use as a mile post on the path to societal failure…
Looks like the Japanese have found new ways to reduce costs, devalue the currency. A billion yen loss is $8.8 MM not $882K. Ignoring the cost of the most expensive stadium also helps.
Here’s a good article from the local indie paper explaining the Time’s enthusiasm – and huge conflict of interest – in shilling for a new stadium in Ybor:
https://www.cltampa.com/news-views/local-news/article/21157233/the-tampa-bay-times-seems-to-have-a-problem-talking-about-its-rich-buddies
I am confused as to how the WorcSox managed to leave a park they didn’t own and take fixtures (which, even if they were tenant funded improvements – something I highly doubt – should have been left behind) with them to their new home.
I am also confused as to how they could have spent $160m (not of their own funds, of course) on a ‘new’ park that looks like an abandoned warehouse AND installed used kitchen equipment.
In other settings, this would be called theft and the police would handle it.