It’s been a year and change of ever-more-record-breaking public stadium funding deals, so, sure, a $1.7 billion baseball stadium, with taxpayers contributing $975 million, for a team that doesn’t exist right next to a market that’s already having trouble supporting its existing team? Cool, cool:
“We’re ready to be a major league baseball city. And a city isn’t considered major league unless it has baseball and the arts,” said Pat Williams with Orlando Dreamers Baseball…
Before the pandemic hit, Williams unveiled the logo for the Orlando Dreamers baseball team. Now, WESH 2 Investigates has reviewed his proposal submitted to Orange County and paid for in part with tourist tax dollars to build a stadium.
So, a few notes:
- It was November 2019 when Williams, whose main claim to fame is having been a longtime exec for the Orlando Magic, unveiled plans for the Dreamers, which he said at the time would be named for such local cultural touchstones as Walt Disney and Arnold Palmer, punctuating the announcement with the world’s stodgiest social media campaign. (Ed. note: Pat Williams was born two years before Joe Biden.)
- Asked at the time whether it made any sense to submit a bid for an expansion team in Orlando when it’s only 100 miles from Tampa Bay, which has had some notable issues with drawing fans, Williams replied, in part: “Our job with any potential owner is to make this package here so attractive, and so — how about this word — luscious, that people say, ‘We gotta get there.’ … I’m dreaming a little bit, guys. So that’s my answer there, Mike.”
- The report from WESH-TV on Williams’ $1.7 billion stadium gambit is a little weird, or at least underannotated. It asserts that MLB “is widely expected to add two more teams next year to begin play in 2028” (no source provided); it cites a “proposal submitted to Orange County” by Williams without giving any details (it’s not on the Dreamers’ bare-bones website, which doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2019); and it notes, for no reason that I can tell, that shorter baseball games this year have allegedly led not just to higher attendance and TV ratings but also higher food and beverage sales (no link provided, just a citation of an unnamed Sports Business Journal article, which appears to be this one that actually says sales are “up almost equivalent,” which is to say down slightly).
- The $975 million would come from “tourist tax dollars,” according to “paperwork obtained by WESH 2 Investigates” (no link provided). Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said he would like to see a “probably a billion-dollar investment by some private entity or consortium that would be able to make that a reality within our community” and also that he would like the new stadium to be near the convention center.
This is a lot, especially since MLB hasn’t even set an expansion schedule beyond “once the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays situations are dealt with,” which they are decidedly not yet. Rich and semi-rich dudes hoping for a shot at the expansion brass ring aren’t wasting any time, though, figuring that the more they get their vaporfranchises into the public discourse, the more momentum they can create to win an eventual expansion team, or at least to get on the lists of potential candidates. And throwing around ginormous stadium subsidy numbers is a great way to get attention from the lords of baseball, at least whenever they have attention to give.
The biggest danger from all this handwaving is that of our old friend anchoring: Once you establish “almost a billion dollars” as the going public price for a stadium for an expansion franchise, that figure isn’t likely to come down by much, especially not once MLB really gets a bidding war going in earnest. I can already hear you saying, But why does one octogenarian retired sports exec get to set the price that the public will be forced to pay to sports barons going forward?, to which I can only say: You must be new around here. Sorry about the mess.
There’s any number of reasons why an MLB team would never be well-supported here in Orlando, but one of them is this: this town cares so little about the sport at the professional level that it doesn’t even have a *minor league* team at any level — and people here don’t even realize that we have no minor league team at any level.
Pat Williams was a credible figure some 30-odd years ago, and is still a venerable figure in Orlando. He’s also 30 years older and decidedly unserious at this point. I’m actually not sure why the local media is even entertaining his cockamie idea at all, but then again, any publicity is good publicity.
Didn’t there used to be spring training there? Something with Disney and the Braves?
Braves played their spring training games at WSOS until 2019, and used to host a Double-A team for a couple years before that team moved out. There hasn’t been a permanent tenant since — not that any team there would play to capacity crowds except for one-offs, since WSOS might as well be on another planet relative to where people actually live in Orlando.
Bring back the Solar Bears!!!!
(*NB: and the rest of the IHL, obviously)
The Solar Bears exist. In the ECHL. They draw ok.
Orlando City FC draws ok.
Minor league baseball is not a good proxy for how well a major league team would do, but I don’t think Orlando would be a great place for an MLB team.
I assume the Rays have kicked the tires, at least, on trying to maybe move there. They decided that trying to convince both Montreal and Tampa to build a stadium for half a franchise had a better chance of success so I suppose that’s good evidence that their research on Orlando was not promising.
Hence the *IHL suffix. They were gone for about a decade as I recall. Then ‘came back’ as something else.
The IHL survived for nearly six decades – almost half of that with a pretty high level of play and competition. MBAs and wanna be USFL-Trumpettes flooded in, drawn by the relatively cheap expansion fees (by comparison to other sports) and pushed out many of the solid markets… many of the teams started competing with their NHL market former partners, which didn’t go over well. Within a decade all of the IHL teams who had NHL affiliation agreements had lost them and the league was floundering financially.
Trump couldn’t force his way into the NFL and the miniTrumps couldn’t force their way into an NHL merger either. Both the USFL and IHL ultimately paid the price.
I can recall watching the IHL Wolves and Vipers home games a fair bit on ESPN (can’t remember which one… ESPN Ocho etc). Progress and the so called free market tend to leave fewer jobs for professional players in every sport, don’t they?
Oh sorry, I couldn’t figure out what NB meant there.
Yeah, I could never understand who thought that was a smart business plan for the IHL.
I hate to see Williams doing this because I’d prefer to remember him as the author of one of the greatest quotes in sports history.
“We can’t win at home. We can’t win on the road. As general manager, I just can’t figure out where else to play.”
While it’s true his main claim to fame is as a longtime Magic exec, that undersells him. He was a successful basketball AND marketing exec for several franchises, and before that was a successful minor league baseball exec. He was also a protege of Bill Veeck, which gained him some points in my book, which he’s now lost.
Luscious. Such a great word to explain your plan.
I lived in Orlando for a time, something like 30 years ago. The magic were a draw because they had Shaq. But no other sports drew much attendance. The lightning hockey team played some “home” games in Orlando to expand their fan base, but there was an at-the-time lowest attendance record set for one game, which caused that experiment to end quickly.
I don’t know what attendance is like for the soccer team, or other sports, but I have to assume it’s small because most of the teams are second tier.
And as for the notion of using tax dollars, with the ongoing feud between the governor and … pretty much anybody … I would think this would be a tall task.
Orlando’s MLS team is averaging 20,404 per game in their purpose-built stadium. The NWSL team is not faring well, drawing 6,198 through two home games.
The Magic averaged 17,765 this past season. Middle of the pack for the NBA.
The ECHL team averaged 6,033 this season, above average for that league.
The XFL team did not draw well, just 8,031, in a league that outside of St. Louis didn’t draw well at all.
Orlando is still a middling sized market and not one you would necessarily rush to add to your league. (Then again, I am not sure Nashville is, either, but they are constantly named.)
Pat had a great career. I am not sure this is anything but busy work.
The odds on Orlando getting an MLB team if Tampa Bay keeps the Rays are, is there something bigger than infinity-to-one?
My bigger concern is that this will raise the bar for what’s considered a non-laughable amount of public money to demand. And/or that it will allow St. Pete elected officials to say “We have to build the Rays a stadium, or else they’ll move to Orlando!”
You nailed it Neil on the button.
St. Pete officials could just say “Great! Someone else is paying for the Rays stadium and they are still staying sort of in the area. Go watch them there”.
If I were a T-SP resident and taxpayer, that would make me happy.
Sure, it’s a trip. But then, the reason the Rays “need” a new stadium is that no-one wants to go to the current one because it is allegedly hard to get to.
Orlando City built their stadium with a higher capacity than originally planned (~20k), on the optimistic but wildly misplaced belief that the fan support would be there to keep the place filled even after the new-home smell had worn off. By the time they got to the season before the pandemic, some regular season games at the stadium were doing numbers that were even lower than the original capacity.
Truth is, Orlando is an event-based sports town. CFB bowl games involving FSU or UF, NBA games against the premier franchises, preseason soccer friendlies featuring marquee teams, the occasional Wrestlemania — those are the only real crowd-pleasers and crowd-getters in this town.
For all the talk about Tampa Bay not being a good MLB market (or a sports market in general, though the Lightning seem to be changing that perception somewhat), a place like Orlando is even less suited to handle the 81-game MLB home slate, especially if the team gets off to the kind of start the Rays got off to in their first decade.
And speaking of the Rays… don’t assume that the people here will immediately warm to the team if they somehow find a way to move up I-4 to Orlando, and *especially*, don’t assume the Rays will have more of a statewide fanbase if they make that move. Orlando and Tampa are as far from each other as Philly is from NYC, as Milwaukee is from Chicago, as San Diego is from Anaheim, as San Antonio is from Austin, and so on and so on. Which is to say, those are not the same places, and those are not the same markets — if anything, they view each other as rival cities, albeit maybe not to the same degree as the examples I listed.
Orlando is hardly an event market as far as sports. The Magic, though still a lottery team for now, improved their won-loss record and have this season’s NBA rookie of the year. UCF football nearly went unbeaten in 2018 and that season gave them the visibility for when they join the Big 12 this fall.
Orlando Magic games are events in Orlando, when they’re historically good (by their standards); UCF football games are events in Orlando, when they’re historically good (again by their standards) — which is the whole point. Maybe the numbers aren’t there yet simply because the history of the older franchises and programs isn’t there yet, but this is a town that has always tuned its teams out whenever they reverted to being merely good to mediocre.
And for a sport like baseball, which hasn’t had a minor league presence in Orlando for the better part of 20 years? It won’t even matter if, by some miracle, an MLB franchise did land on our doorsteps. We’ll tune them out just like we have with the teams we already have.
FYI…the NWSL Orlando Pride attendance is actually pretty good.
Remember, they are a fledgling league. You gotta start somewhere.
The Pride paper the stands by giving free tickets to Lions STH’s. The actual in game attendance is less than a thousand for some games and many people are turned off by their aggressive politicization of the matches.
No doubt some of the attendees are “turned on” by what you see as politicization of matches as well. People who hate yellow probably don’t go to Savannah Bananas games either.
To quote Donald Rumsfailed circa 2004:
“We don’t know if we are creating more terrorists than we are killing”.
#winning
At least Pat mentioned the arts…..
the last thing Florida needs is another baseball team
The Orlando Pride paper the stands and many won’t attend games due to them being glorified political rallies, the Solar Bears and Predators get no media support (although they draw well for their leagues – Preds drew over 7500 in their home opener), people have cooled to Orlando City, and the Magic are stuck in permanent mediocrity. Only UCF football has any support. It is very, very sad, because the Preds drew 13,000+ for almost 25 years and the Magic were a must watch. But now the town is one big urban sprawl ant hill with no identity.
Orlando! Yours to enjoy!
As its name suggests, Orlando Pride is overtly welcoming to LGBTQ+ fans and players, as is the NWSL and women’s sports in general. They’re not the ones who decided that people’s right to exist is “too political.”
Yeah, they’re not drawing especially well. But it’s unlikely they’d be drawing much better if they were called the Orlando Sunshine or something banal “family friendly” like that. Because, as has been mentioned, Orlando isn’t much of a sports town anyway.
Trying to be the St. Pauli of NWSL at least gives them a “hook,” as marketing people might say. But they’d draw more if they did it in Toronto.
Besides, nobody in the NWSL, with the important notable exceptions of Los Angeles and Portland, are drawing particularly well. LA and Portland – as well as the US women’s national team – show what is possible for women’s soccer if a team is well-managed and well-marketed, but pro women’s soccer as a whole has been, for the most part, run by idiots and/or people who really just don’t have enough money to make it work.
Here is your link to the “study” where Pat Williams is getting those numbers
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/orlando-dreamers-announces-completion-economic-120000654.html
here is also the link to the to formal paperwork filing with Orange County
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/orlando-dreamers-files-formal-application-200000659.html
Thanks! Those just appear to be press releases about the study and the paperwork filing, though — anyone know where the actual documents can be found?
I messaged the sports info director for the group to find out.
I don’t think it was published in the interviews but I believe one of the local sports directors from one of the local tv stations indicated that they would release everything (official study and other paperwork) when they make their official presentation to the Orange County Board. Also heard that stadium site and renderings will be released as well but we’ll see about that part
I so wanted the headline on this to read “Orlando guy proposes $1.7Bn MLS stadium”.
Just because.
Admit it… that line may sound ridiculous but not nearly as ridiculous as it would have even ten years ago. That’s where we are.