Friday roundup: Utah enters MLB expansion sweepstakes, Bettman’s mouth issues more checks Coyotes can’t cover

It was 89 degrees in New York yesterday, which made me think about how the cities most threatened by climate change are only going to be threatened sooner and sooner. It may be too soon for team owners to start thinking about threatening to move to Duluth, but, you know, is it ever really too soon to threaten to move anywhere? Food for thought.

News roundup time!

  • Former Utah Jazz owner Gail Miller, who owns the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees, says she wants to bid for an MLB expansion team when and if MLB starts taking bids. “We believe that as a top-30 media market in the fastest-growing state in the country with the youngest population, that’s where our attention should be,” said Miller Company CEO Steve Starks, and while he’s right about those things — Salt Lake sits at 29th, just behind Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Nashville, and Baltimore — it also could soon be the site of arsenic-mercury dust storms, which may not be the best selling point. Salt Lake City also doesn’t have a major-league stadium, and Gov. Spencer Cox has already declared that he’s opposed to public funding of one … except for tax-increment financing kickbacks, which he’d be just fine with.
  • NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has visited Tempe, Arizona to take in an Arizona Coyotes game and promise that “once this [arena] project is built, this team is never going anywhere. It’s going to be here forever.” So Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo is going to sign a 999-year lease? That’s the only thing he can mean. Hey, everybody, Alex Meruelo is signing a forever lease, Gary Bettman promised, this is great news, Gary Bettman would never lie to us!
  • Philadelphia 76ers owner Josh Harris, who is already wrapped up in seeking a Philadelphia arena that all the neighbors hate and for which he’s been accused of illegally funneling money to a mayoral candidate, may be about to buy the Washington Commanders for $6 billion — at which point he will presumably begin lobbying for all the legislators who stopped pursuing stadium bills because they hated Commanders owner Daniel Snyder to resume their subsidy efforts. Here, let’s listen to effusive pro-stadium remarks in the Washington Post from Jack Evans, who was forced off the D.C. council after accepting tons of money from private businesses whose projects he was voting on. Old bribe-takers never die, they just end up becoming pundits.
  • Did I say last month that “the Detroit city council has awarded developers of the area around the Detroit Tigers stadium and Detroit Red Wings and Pistons arena $783 million in public subsidies“? Turns out the actual figure could be as high as $1.8 billion, according to figures compiled by Bridge Detroit, which quotes me as saying, “Once you get your foot in the door and shovels in the ground then you have the city on the hook. That’s how this becomes a gift that keeps on giving for developers, and it’s ‘In for a dime, in for a billion dollars.” (Okay, I got it right at least one of those times.)
  • Kansas City is going to cancel all in-person K-12 classes for two days at the end of the month to avoid traffic created by the NFL draft being held in the city, this is fine and normal.
  • Finally, enjoy some raves from the Globe and Mail about renovations to the Toronto Blue Jays‘ stadium, if pointing out that the Jays are charging $1 just to be admitted to a new liquor automat where you can pay $70 for a drink “reminiscent of Black Forest cake” counts as a rave. The paper also calls the stadium formerly known as Skydome “ancient,” which may be alarming to any readers born before it opened in 1989, apologies for not adding a trigger warning to the top of this post, my bad.

Other Recent Posts:

Share this post:

47 comments on “Friday roundup: Utah enters MLB expansion sweepstakes, Bettman’s mouth issues more checks Coyotes can’t cover

  1. If the Coyotes owner drops in a King Charles clause like Disney did that would be forever-ish, in my opinion.

    “[T]his Declaration shall continue in effect until twenty one (21) years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, King of England living as of the date of this Declaration,”

  2. Salt Lake has the AAA stadium though! They could just retrofit that one like the Blue Jays had to do in Buffalo.

    Oh wait, we don’t do fun things like that anymore. We just get taxpayers to cough up billions. Bah.

  3. A foot of snow, 40 below windchill, severe tornado warning, polio like virus spreading amongst children and an NFL Draft, all reasons that schools should be closed. Fortunately the Chiefs play on Sunday, or that would be 8 more days that school would be canceled.

    Bettman looked and sounded horrible yesterday in Tempe. The hurdles to building the goofy Tempe Entertainment District are insurmountable. The site isn’t large enough to hold nearly everything the proposed development promised and is too far from existing parking near Mill Avenue and light rail stations. Voters could reject one of the 3 referendums. Sky Harbor litigation could drag on for years delaying construction, and the Coyotes would probably end up losing. The interest at today’s rates on high risk projects guarantee huge losses, if anyone is foolish enough to finance this scheme. Finally there’s post-covid construction costs and timetables, that’s why the “value” of the development has ballooned from $1.7 to 2.3 billion in a year. I wonder why Alex Meruelo is a man of so few words.

    1. Do not worry about the parking, as Hugh ‘Working for the Coyotes’ Hallman has a plot of land, adjacent to the TED, where he will either sell or build the parking needed.

    2. The Draft thing isn’t all that surprising. In recent years, they’ve managed to turn it into a big outdoor free festival with bands and what not. Probably barbecue. One figure I saw suggested that it got 600,000 in Nashville and may bring in 350,000 into KC.

      Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. I don’t think many people are going to be there just to get a front row seat for Mel Kiper’s analysis of why the Jags are thinking about taking LSU’s second best safety or whatever.

      What is surprising is that the KC school district and the local traffic people only figured out now that this was going to be a problem for their school busses. The league announced that KC would host the event in 2023 back in 2019.

  4. I remember Bettman saying the same things about Glendale, in building the arena specifically for the Coyotes, and the $50 million that Glendale paid for ‘insurance’, and the promise of an All-Star game, too.

    NHL = Never Happening Liars

    1. Bettman is just trying to do everything he can to maximize the chances of this arena being built in Tempe. Sure, hollow promises probably won’t shift many votes, but being honest about what the taxpayers are being asked to pay for here would be even worse for their cause.

      The owners – the people who pay Bettman to say dumb things on their behalf – do not want to move the team at all – because that looks bad – but they really, really, really – to the point of irrationality – do not want to move it to a tiny market like Quebec City and they will exhaust every alternative possibility, no matter how remote, before they let what happen to the Thrashers happen again.

      There have been some rumblings that the owners are preparing for the possibility that the referendum will fail and/or there simply will be viable solution in Arizona. And I’d bet that the other owners are having dinner with other billionaires who might want to buy the Coyotes to move them to Houston or Salt Lake or Portland or maybe even Atlanta.

      But they won’t say that out loud while there’s still a remote chance of keeping the team in Arizona.

      1. Cities that already have NBA aren’t options, why would an NBA owner want to dilute revenue and arena dates? The last times an NHL team moved into an NBA arena was Dallas Stars (Reunion Arena) 1993, Colorado Avalanche (Big Mac) 1995, Florida Panthers (Miami Arena) 1993 and Atlanta Thrashers (State Farm Arena when it opened) 1999. All of these arenas are gone or heavily renovated and these moves were before the NHL proved how little revenue it can generate in the sunbelt.

        1. DPT is forgetful of when the New York Islanders played at the Barclays Center. Great location, across the street from an LIRR terminal and major subway hub. Not so great for the club’s fanbase accustomed to traveling by car. And the sightlines for hockey were not good at all.

      2. Owners means MSG, Leafs, Molson, Jeremy Jacobs, Rocky and the Illiches. Where does the invisible man, meaningless Meruelo fit in?

      3. I don’t get why they won’t put the team in Houston. I know Tillman Fertitta is a cheapskate who won’t pay unless they give it to him at a heavy discount, but you’d be trading the 11th largest media market for the 6th. Plus, Vegas could just move in and claim all of Arizona as territory.

        Again, I get the issues of being a Coyotes fan, but at some point, shit’s just not going to work. And I can see them argue “but the Lightning, the Hurricanes, the Predators”, and yes… they got to work, but they all got to have stable ownership and 2 out of 3 won a Stanley Cup or two. What does Arizona have to show for its existence in the desert?

        1. Could it be that the NHL has been burned before by chasing TV markets in the US over sustainable hockey markets in Canada? Quebec City and Saskatoon are NHL-worthy, Houston and Phoenix not so much.

          1. Saskatoon has a population less than half that of Winnipeg and closer to one quarter of Buffalo, Ottawa, Edmonton or Calgary’s (the next smallest markets in the league). And it’s 330,000 listed population includes a bedroom community of 70k plus. It is not any closer to getting an NHL team now than it was when Bill Hunter tried to buy the Blues and move them there.

            I agree with you on Quebec City… although it wouldn’t be a tremendous revenue generator for the league (neither is Winnipeg or Buffalo or Nashville or Carolina or…) it would at least stop the endless hemorrhage of money in places like Phx, Atlanta or a couple of others.

            It is hard to imagine that if another franchise moves it won’t be to Houston. I would much rather it be to a “hockey location” like QC, but I think that highly unlikely. Houston brings a population of 6m to the league (only a fraction of which will have any interest in the game, but that is not what advertisers sell). Quebec City would bring 800k, and most of the hockey fans there are already watching or buying merch.

            Not a great deal of upside there is there? Maybe one day the league will be desperate for $750m in expansion fees and will agree to create a franchise for Pierre Karl Peledau to buy… but I’m not holding my breath on that.

        2. Forget Houston, the home of many $100 million, 15,000 seat high school football stadiums. Texas is football crazy, there’s the Houston Texans and now XFL and USFL both have teams in Houston for a reason. TV market size is irrelevant, and there aren’t the Canadian snowbirds in Houston that fill seats in Arizona. Houston is similar in size to Atlanta, and I would expect similar results. Why would Fertitta spend hundreds of Millions to buy the Coyotes when that would probably reduce the value of his Rockets and add another payroll?

          1. They have people who can do this research. They don’t just rely on guesswork like “Texas is football crazy! It won’t work.”

            The NHL can do ok in non-traditional markets the teams are well-run and play in a place that people can get to and want to go to.

            Vegas, Tampa, Carolina, Dallas, and Washington have all been drawing well in recent years. The AHL also draws ok in hot weather markets like San Diego and Coachella Valley. Not quite as well as they do in Hershey or Cleveland, but still pretty good all things considered.

            Certainly, they can get more fans in a big sunbelt city than in a tiny Canadian city.

            The Bruins, Rangers, Stars, Flyers, Leafs, Avalanche, Caps, etc. share arenas with the NBA. That doesn’t seem to be an insurmountable problem for any of them. It doesn’t dilute the value of the NBA team and if it does, that’s not the NHL’s problem.

            But any team – in any sport – is always going to be better off if it has less competition for attention and they’re always going to want their own arena if they can get it. The NHL was smart to focus on Vegas and Seattle and get there before the NBA did (or, in the case of Seattle, returned).

            Houston can’t really offer that. It already has teams in every major pro sport, including men’s and women’s soccer, plus there’s a lot of attention on college sports.

            But Phoenix can’t offer that either. It’s already saturated with pro teams and college sports.

            But at least in Houston, the new team would be a novelty. The Coyotes have such a bad public image that I don’t think they will be able to change many minds unless they win a lot of games. And even then, they might need a new owner to change their PR.

            Local TV rights still matter a lot. But they might not for very long. It’s not clear how that will change how leagues, especially the NHL, think about what markets they want to be in.

            It might create even more incentive to try to create “new fans,” which case putting teams in non-traditional markets would be even more valuable.

            But it might mean that the cost of trying to do that just isn’t worth it and that they should instead just try to sell as many tickets as they can, in which case putting teams in Quebec and Hamilton make more sense.

            I don’t think anybody knows yet. I suspect within a few years, it will cost at least $US20 to get all the games over streaming with no blackouts. I have no idea how many people in the US, Canada or anywhere else will be willing to pay that.

  5. The Washington Post article relied on a lot of quotes from Eric Grubman. The man who thought the NFL could protect itself by acting like they did not know Stan Kroenke intended to move the Rams to the Hollywood Park site. Losing a $790 million lawsuit proved him wrong.

  6. The Bettman “never going anywhere” link took me to a site for Superchunk tickets. If it’s a joke, I didn’t quite get it.

    1. Ha! That was me getting my tabs mixed up this morning. (And I got the Superchunk tickets, fyi.)

  7. Commissioner Bettman, when the stadium doesn’t get built we’ll see the Coyotes down here in Houston.

    Stadium is ready for you to bring the Coyotes (to be re=named Aeros).

    https://icehockey.fandom.com/wiki/Toyota_Center_(Houston)

    1. Top-10 TV market and bottom-10 pro hockey market. Houston couldn’t even support minor league hockey, unlike Phoenix.

      1. That’s not actually true.
        The Aeros’ attendance was pretty good for an AHL team in a non-traditional hockey market.
        (https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att_graph_season.php?lid=AHL1941&sid=2013)

        The problem was that they were tenants in the Rockets arena and were being forced to pay very high rent.

        Also, the Wild, like all NHL teams, want their AHL affiliate to be close to the NHL team. It helps market the NHL team and makes it easier to move players back and forth. So the Wild bought the franchise and moved them to Des Moines. Des Moines is obviously much closer to St. Paul than Houston.

        Des Moines’ previous two AHL efforts hadn’t gone very well, but the Iowa Wild are doing reasonably ok for a city that size.

        You can’t just label cities as “good” or “bad” hockey markets. A lot of other variables go into how well a team will draw in a given place. An NHL team in Houston could probably do ok if it made the playoffs more often than not and played in an arena that people generally liked. Tampa, for example, or Vegas.

        On the other end of the spectrum, a team that isn’t very good, playing in an arena that people don’t like will not draw well, no matter how popular hockey is in that area. Ottawa, for example. Or, in recent years, Buffalo. Or, in the Bill Wirtz era, Chicago.

        1. NHL and AHL fans are not the same animal. Different types of fans, different income levels, different season ticket economics, different everything.

        2. There are plenty of flights that only take 2 hours between MSP and IAH, so moving players isn’t an issue. Give up on a market almost twice the size of MSP for dinky Des Moines in the middle of a cornfield? And who is talking about Quebec and Winnipeg being too small? Although Iowa isn’t in the sunbelt, hockey is still a minor niche sport and Drake basketball is more popular. Houston only has one major arena for a metro of 7 million, so using 45 dates plus playoffs isn’t economically viable at the Toyota Center.

          1. That’s just not how it works.

            The NHL wants the AHL team as close as they can get it. A reasonable direct flight isn’t good enough.

            That’s why the Canucks now have their team in Abbotsford and the Flames put their team in the same building. There are exceptions (Seattle and Coachella Valley, for example) because the geography just doesn’t always work out, but it’s a league-wide trend that’s been happening for a while.

            In the minors, the size of the media market doesn’t really matter. Nobody expects to make any money from TV. The only thing that matters is how many tickets and in-building (or on-uniform!) sponsorships they can sell and how well it serves the big league affiliate, not only moving players around but the marketing synergy.

            But it’s well-documented that the Wild tried to keep their affiliate in Houston. The Aeros attendance was fine. The last year they were there, they got about 7,000 a game. In the middle of the table for the AHL.

            The reason the Aeros had to move was that they could not come to a new lease deal with the Rockets. This is well-documented. Just google “Houston Aeros Lease Deal.” Reportedly – although I can’t find the exact source of this – they went from paying the highest rent to among the lowest rent in the AHL.

            So Des Moines was plan B and they aren’t getting quite as many fans per game – about 6,300 last year – but it’s turned out ok.

            Des Moines is not a podunk town in a cornfield. It has about 700,000 people in the metro area and a downtown arena. Hockey isn’t as big there as it is in Minnesota, obviously, but there’s a long history of minor league and junior hockey in Iowa.

            The Wild are the closest NHL team to Des Moines, so if any team is going to work there, it makes sense for it to be the Wild. But I wouldn’t be shocked if the Wild eventually put their AHL team even closer, like Minneapolis or the western suburbs of Minneapolis, if the right arena came into existence.

            That would mimic what the Twins have done by making the Saints their AAA affiliate.

          2. It’s not about an easy flight to Minneapolis, it’s about easy transportation to other cities (say their division rivals), plus adequate facilities for training.

            The Aeros practiced 30 miles from their arena, lots of time spent traveling between the Toyota center and the practice facility.

            Market size doesn’t mean much when it comes to minor leagues, their goal is player development, not maximizing revenues.

      2. That’s a lie; the Aeros had huge support, but Les Alexander was still burned about not buying the Oilers back in the 90s(!) that he didn’t want to renew the lease back in 2013 so the Wild were forced to move the team to Des Moines.

  8. By all accounts, the Bettman et al have talked to Tilman Fertitta about putting an NHL team in Houston – either moving a team or an expansion team. So far, at least, he’s simply not willing to pay the going price for an NHL team. He’s also not willing to pay the going rate for an NFL team either, which is smart.

    And I suspect the NHL does not want any more of its teams to be tenants in NBA arenas where the owner is actually more interested in the NBA (because, for reasons that I will never fully grasp, the NBA is massively more popular than the NHL).

    That is, after all, one of the reasons the Coyotes are in this mess to begin with. If they could share a downtown arena with the Suns and get a fair share of the good dates, etc, they would not have moved to Glendale or be looking for a home now.

    1. That’s more or less my understanding too Reed. But if Fertita buys an existing team (including assumption of debt and possibly cutting the current owner in for a minority fraction when the team moves…) for relocation he doesn’t really have to pay ‘the going rate’.

      There is quite a long history of announced sale prices in the NHL being more, double, or even several multiples of the actual cash price paid.

      Given the way Meruelo and Co have gone about operating the franchise (even publicly stating they would look to ‘lower player costs’ because fans don’t care about that… what they want is comfy seats and expensive warm beer…), it would not surprise me if the only reason they purchased this asset was to flip it for relocation when their arena pipedream fails.

      And, amazingly given the financial track record of this franchise, they wouldn’t be the first to put down a little cash, assume a pile of debt, and walk away with 8 figures in profit at the end of their short ownership gambit.

      1. I’m not sure what potential NHL deal Fertita was looking at when he said that. I didn’t hear him say it. I heard Elliotte Friedman say he said it, so I’m not sure.

        But you’re right that he could probably get a much better deal on a used Coyotes that needed a new transmission – to mix metaphors – than he would on a brand new shiny expansion franchise rolling right out of the factory.

    2. Comparing attending an NBA game at the Footprint Center with the United Center is an unfair comparison. Attending a Bulls game at the United Center is like watching from the Sears Skydeck. Every seat at the Footprint Center is right on top of the action. Shared arenas don’t really work, they have to be optimized for hockey or basketball.

  9. How are cities making bids for an expansion process that no one knows if it is actually happening?

  10. Just received my USA Today Sports Weekly in the mail (yes, I’m old school) and it has an interesting article on Mullett arena, new home of the Arizona Coyotes. He calls it
    “the Fenway park of the West” and has quotes from a few fans raving about the “loud, intimate experience.” He even quoted a visiting player “loving the energy.” Joe Mock writes about sports facilities for USA Today publications. Of course he glosses over the tripled ticket prices and the reasons the Coyotes left Glendale (the City forcing them to sign a 20 year lease, nothing about unpaid bills).
    He notes the Coyotes put in $30 million for upgrades to make it suitable for pro hockey (citation needed!). Guess they used the money they didn’t pay Glendale.

    Thoughts anyone?

    1. There have been a few positive comments from players, mostly about “energy” etc. One of them was local boy Matthews. Several others have laughed at the idea of an nhl team playing in a college rink, joked about hearing individual fans belching or sneezing, or remarked that the team still doesn’t seem to be able to fully sell out the 4600 or 4800 seats or whatever.

      FWIW, I think the only reason that the NHL was willing to entertain this idea is that – while they wait for an answer on the Tempe boondoggle – the team convinced them that it could charge ‘actual NHL prices’ in a smaller arena and would, if they sold out or came close, generate just as much game day revenue at the ASU arena as they did in Glendale (which a leaked 2008/9 internal document showed was ‘around $400k per game’).

      I understood that the team had paid $20m to build a media centre and ‘suitable NHL off ice facilities’, which I took to mean weight, training and locker rooms that don’t look minor league and have ASU logos all over them.

      The city of Glendale actually evicted them from the previous arena, but I’m not surprised that the team or sports writer you mentioned didn’t admit that. I would imagine everyone who is evicted tells their friends “I had enough of that place the landlord is terrible and I’m not puttin’ up with that”.

      Why should pro sports teams be different?

      1. A look at attendance data for Arizona Coyote games

        An analysis of average monthly attendance per game since the 2017 season shows the Coyotes have averaged a 4,600 crowd in every game played. In prior seasons at Gila River, now Desert Diamond Arena, average monthly attendance typically ranged from 13,000 to 14,000.

        The much smaller Mullett arena is most likely impacting ticket revenue. Due to a higher average ticket price, however, the figures would remain in line with some recent seasons. ESPN estimates the average ticket price for a Coyotes game this season was about $90, which would theoretically generate about $17 million in revenue. That compares with the 2017-2018 season when data from Seatgeek.com reports an average ticket price of $35.

        Video shows breakdown over average ticket prices over several years:

        2022-23 – $17 million
        2021-22 – $29 million
        2020-21 – $11 million
        2019-20 – $28 million
        2018-19 – $28 million
        2017-18 – $18 million

        https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/a-look-at-attendance-data-for-arizona-coyote-games

      2. From reading Joe Mock over the year, he takes whatever PR handout a team gives him and runs with it. He’s more cheerleader than investigative reporter, though his articles are interesting to read if you keep that thought in mind…..

    2. I went to a Sharks-Yotes game and loved the in-arena presentation to the point that I suggested that the Sharks should take notes.

  11. Speaking of climate-related issues, that deluge that flooded Ft. Lauderdale caused much havoc. Airport was closed for 2 days. You couldn’t get to some places (though the arenas for hockey and basketball were unaffected!), and they couldn’t get school busses or garbage trucks out.

    Good thing the nfl draft wasn’t there.

    1. Have you seen a swimming pool in Phoenix after a dust storm? That’s really negative, the same disgusting color as Tempe Town Lake. 115 in the shade and there’s no shade is a great place for a ice hockey team.

  12. Phoenix Sky Harbor’s Initial Analysis of Potential Flight Traffic

    “The two runways account for 68% of the flight activity at Sky Harbor and 95% of the departures. The blue lines are generated by software showing actual flights and show the path of departing aircraft directly over the proposed site. Flights would depart or arrive over this location every day, every hour, and during the busiest times every minute. Sky Harbor has about 1,200 takeoffs and landings each day.

    Chase Field and other nearby developments west of Sky Harbor are not under the flight paths. The newest development (commonly referred to as The Blue or the OIC Building) was permitted only after careful consultation with the airlines. It was determined not to result in negative impacts to air traffic. None of these developments are in a high noise environment as defined by the FAA in contrast with the proposed Tempe Development.”

    Related graphics shown in article.

    https://www.skyharbor.com/about-phx/noise-and-flight-paths/tempe-entertainment-district/initial-analysis-of-potential-flight-traffic/

    1. Sit on top of A Mountain where you get a clear view straight down PHX runways for an hour in the morning (takeoffs as frequently as every 45 seconds) and an hour in the evening (landings) and it will be obvious why this is such an insane location for this type of development. Just give up on this bs and move the Coyotes to Centre Videotron and end the 27 year circus in the Sonoran Desert.

    2. I would think a sports stadium is the ideal thing to put under a flight path. The noise doesn’t matter.

      But apartments, offices, restaurants, etc. would be a problem.

  13. Tempe Subsidy of Proposed Coyotes Arena Not Covered by Economic Returns

    Key Findings

    This economic impact analysis examines the Arizona Coyotes arena and music venue components of
    the proposed Tempe Entertainment District (TED). The arena and music venue represent the project’s
    primary economic driver and the most critical for evaluating the subsidy arrangement agreed to with
    the City of Tempe.

    The report also looks at other potential uses of the property and how those alternative uses compare on an overall gross (not new) revenue basis.

    https://grandcanyoninstitute.org/research/tempe-subsidy-of-proposed-coyotes-arena-not-covered-by-economic-returns/

Comments are closed.