Lots of news this week, starting with the continuing reaction to yesterday’s tragic death of the Tampontreal Ex-Rays:
- While the rejection of his split-city plan by his fellow MLB owners would seem to leave Rays owner Stuart Sternberg in a position to play Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Montreal — and maybe other cities as well like Nashville or Portland — off against each other in a bidding war, he says he intends to focus on Tampa and St. Pete, at least for now, saying during yesterday’s bonkers Zoom press conference, “I’ve never threatened to move the team out of the region. That seems to be 101 in the playbook of getting stadiums and arenas built. It just hasn’t been my way to this point. And people have advised me to do that.” (Yahoo Sports’ Hannah Keyser astutely observes that “telling someone you haven’t threatened them yet — and, indeed, have magnanimously resisted the obvious and apparently advisable temptation to do so — can read a little like a threat.”) Meanwhile, would-be Montreal investor Stephen Bronfman responded like Montreal is out of the running, saying during his own Zoom call, “It’s like a bloody eulogy. I’m just tired. I’m a little upset. We had something so good. We would have proved [to] everyone, we would have made a mark. I think a lot of people in sport would have been listening to us.” Prediction: Sternberg works on getting whatever bidding war going that he can between the two sides of Tampa Bay, since that seems to be what MLB prefers, and if that falters then he can decide which city to start ostentatiously attending hockey games in.
- Speaking of the Oakland A’s, their Howard Terminal stadium environmental impact statement passed a planning commission vote this week, which means the environmental signoff could be headed for a final council vote in February. Of course, there’s still a potential half-billion-dollar budget gap even after the Oakland council gave preliminary approval to $495 million in tax kickbacks, all of which would need to be resolved before a final council vote later this year. Meanwhile, a new poll shows that Oakland residents oppose spending public money on an A’s stadium by 46-37% margin, though given that the maybe-billion-dollars in proposed public money is all for “infrastructure” and not the stadium per se, stadium advocates are claiming that the plan meets this provision anyway. The A’s seem to have backed away from threats to trade all their good young players this winter, which is probably a good idea as it’s tough to build support for public funding for a terrible team, but we could well see this whole threatdown reemerge after the 2022 season, if there is one.
- That lawsuit announced back in March 2020 against the city of Anaheim for selling its stadium land to the Los Angeles Angels without sufficient public meetings is finally underway, with former city manager Chris Zapata and councilmember Jose Moreno filing testimony that the council secretly made the sale decision before holding any public hearings at all. The trial is set to begin on February 14, and man do I hope it will be televised.
- The Buffalo Bills are currently getting about $13 million a year in state money to fund stadium operations under their current lease, while paying only $900,000 a year in rent, according to an Investigative Post report. The Bills lease, which was signed in 1998, is “not much worse than a lot of the other leases out there, but given that the average lease is pretty bad, that’s not really a compliment,” says one stadium blogger whose name you can probably guess even without clicking through to the article.
- The new head of Charlotte’s economic development committee, councilmember Malcolm Graham, said that “Public-private partnership is one that’s obviously going to get a lot of attention over the next 18 to 24 months in terms of some of the things we are working on with some of our local partners,” and indicated that taxpayer money for the Panthers and Hornets could be two of those things. The latest ask from Panthers owner David Tepper was for around $500 million, while Hornets owner Michael Jordan hasn’t put a dollar figure on his request so far that I can tell.
- Las Vegas’ top tourism marketer says that more than half of all Vegas visitors will add an extra visit or stay longer thanks to the presence of the Raiders and Golden Knights, citing … no actual data at all that I can tell? It’s going to be tough in any case to determine economic impact of the new teams given that the pandemic has turned both sports spending and travel spending upside down, but I hope that once we can manage a relatively normal year, the usual economist suspects will do some studies to see if the substitution effect holds for Vegas the same as everywhere else.
- The Single-A Hillsboro Hops want a $60-100 million stadium upgrade, because all the minor-league baseball kids are doing it. No word yet on who would pay for what, but the city of Hillsboro issued an RFP for design and construction work.
- This week’s non-sports-stadium subsidy report: West Virginia is giving $1.7 billion to a steel company for a new plant that will largely employ residents of neighboring Ohio and Kentucky, read all about it.
- A sewage pipe burst at the Los Angeles Rams‘ stadium, time to build a new one!
Dave Kaval has said on Zennie that one of the reason they are exploring Vegas is that is has potential for tourist walk ins as well as residents. Don’t be surprised 8 months to a year from now Sternberg brings in Orlando to the bidding war. I think there is alot of truth to the statement there are no new markets available to baseball. The brands are set in stone (though I think Portland might be an exception because it is West Coast Transient, and Montreal had the Expos) this is why baseball failed in Miami and Tampa. If you are a mayor in an up and coming city, my recommendation is focus on the MLS
The Rays would be DOA if they moved here to Orlando, especially if they zero in on the Disney complex as the ballpark site.
Baseball failed in Miami and Tampa because the teams are too new? Yet succeeded at the same time in Denver and Phoenix because…?
East Coast transplants. Loyalty to other teams. Income levels. The beach. Old people dont like to drive at night. No good public transportation. The suburbs are far from the city. Demographic. That us just a few i can think of
The loyalty-to-other-teams things is particularly bad in baseball, I think.
I once went to a Rockies-Yankees game at Coors. It was about 50/50. And a lot of people wearing both Yankees and Rockies gear.
The Rays are defying the trend by actually being good with a low payroll, but over the last 25 years, baseball’s de facto marketing message to every fanbase outside the top 5-10 biggest markets is “you don’t matter and you’ll never win anything but your taxes should build stadiums anyway.”
I never quite understand this argument. No matter what color their shirts are, the money of all home and away fans are still both green.
I don’t think that it’s succeeded in Phoenix like you may think. It would not surprise me if Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick is keeping an eye on Vegas.
Tampontreal has “tampon”, Montrampa has “tramp”. Difficult decision, I am sure.
As someone whose been to Vegas 3x in the past 6 months, none of those trips were inspired by a Raiders or Knights game.
Neil
What’s the likelihood of St Pete pulling a Glendale and telling the Rays to go play in the street? Isn’t the Tropicana land supposed to be prime for redevelopment?
They may do that after 2027. That’s when the lease runs out.
The Rays and A’s are a big problem for MLB and the Angels could turn into that as well.
Those situations have been going on for what seems like forever. They’re also smaller markets that may be getting subsidized by the big guys. That dynamic probably negatively impacts labor negotiations because there’s more infighting amongst the owners. I wonder at what point does MLB (ie: other owners) become super aggressive in resolving those situations? By that I mean the other owners putting up money to get stadiums built there or getting those franchises moved elsewhere. I think Nashville would build a stadium if it was local ownership but I also think that MLB wants that to be an expansion team so that they can cash in.
As a diehard Cubs fan I really want to see these things resolved. I respect the municipalities for staying firm. My beef is much more with the owners, not just Rays and A’s but across MLB. It’s a colossal mess.
The Rays and A’s are only a big problem for MLB because their owners have declared themselves to be a problem. Baltimore and Pittsburgh drew almost as poorly as the Rays last year, and no one is declaring them to be problems. (Until they start saying they need new stadiums, at which point it will suddenly be a crisis.)
Two decades ago, the Twins were considered a disgrace to baseball, and worthy of possible contraction. Now, in a new stadium, they’re drawing almost exactly what they did during their final years in the Metrodome (~2 million), but no one considers it a problem, because the owner is happy.
The Rays operating income in 2020 (c. Forbes) was $68m.
That’s twice what the Yankees earned (because the Steinbrenners, for all their many transgressions, spend it rather than pocket the fans’ money) and the same net as the Cubs. It’s also 7th on the net earnings list for MLB in 2020, if my math is right.
In 2018 (again, per Forbes) they had a net operating income of $23m – good for 15th in MLB.
So they generate significant profit and go deep into the playoffs every year.
Wait, what was the problem again?
As for the A’s, even with some payroll increases they earned a net $10/15m in the same years.
The hapless Pirates? $35m in 2020 and an impressive $66m in 2018 (on total revenue of about $275m).
Yeah, those poor small market owners… taking it on the chin just to save baseball for everyone in their communities…