How it started:
If we end up spending 2022 on [discussing a new stadium for] the Chicago White Sox, don’t say I didn’t warn you. —me, 11/27/20
How it’s going:
Knowledgeable sources say Jerry Reinsdorf, the team’s majority owner and chairman, is considering moving the organization from Guaranteed Rate Field in Bridgeport when the team’s lease expires just six years from now. —Crain’s Chicago Business, 8/21/23
I really need to start establishing betting lines.
Anyway: For starters, this is some execrable journalism on the part of Crain’s, allowing White Sox execs — one of the many unnamed sources is explicitly IDed as “a source close to Reinsdorf” — to drop hints about a move threat while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. It’s made all the worse by the fact that this is Jerry freaking Reindorf, the guy who literally invented the fake move threat, or at least was the first to openly admit to it, with his famed “a savvy negotiator creates leverage” quote after getting the current White Sox stadium built and paid for by the state of Illinois after falsely threatening to move the team to St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg has a team now, of course, but there are always other cities to saber-rattle about, and the flavor of the month appears to be Nashville:
Among the possibilities are moving to a new stadium in the city or suburbs, or even relocating to Nashville, a subject of recurring gossip on and off for years.
(No source at all on that, nice work, Crain’s.)
Some context for those who haven’t been keeping up with the White Sox, or who have possibly even forgotten they’re still an MLB team after Reinsdorf has consigned them to near-perpetual irrelevance in recent decades: Yes, their lease at I Can’t Believe It’s Not Comiskey Park expires after the 2029 season, though there’s nothing stopping them from extending it. (It originally expired in 2011, but was extended in 2008.) And yes, the stadium is kind of awful — the first row of seats in its upper deck is infamously farther from the field than the last row of upper deck seats at Comiskey, the stadium it replaced — but it also comes with a sweetheart deal where Reinsdorf gets to keep all income from tickets, parking, concessions, and merchandise, and pays only $1.5 million a year in rent. He also gets to play in Chicago, which has more than triple the number of TV households as Nashville.
With the Bears kicking tires all over town in pursuit of their own stadium deal, though, it seems like the 87-year-old Reinsdorf figures this is an opportune time to create some of his beloved leverage. He’s certainly won the first battle, which is to dominate the headlines:
All this, just by having a few of his friends call a local friendly reporter and say, “You didn’t hear this from me, but…” We’ll no doubt be hearing more soon — a Sox spokesperson told Crain’s that “it is naturally nearing a time where discussions should begin to take place” about “vision, opportunities and the future” — and it will likely start to include hints about who Reinsdorf would like to pay for building a potential replacement for his current near-rent-free home.
Meanwhile, I am obligated to point out that nearly all of the teams whose 1980s and ’90s stadium demands first drew my and Joanna Cagan’s attention to this topic — the White Sox, the Baltimore Orioles, the Cleveland Browns, the Milwaukee Brewers — have now launched campaigns for either new stadiums or massive taxpayer-funded upgrades to their old ones. Detroit Tigers, I think you’re next up to get back on line for seconds, grab a plate already!
This is early, but I have started to see murmurs here in Pittsburgh, and I just want to make sure it’s on your radar: the Pirates’ lease expires in 2030. The reason it’s such an interesting case is because the ballpark itself is consensus top three, if not #1, wherever you see lists of the best ballparks; the team is the worst in baseball over the last couple of decades; and there is already an anti-ownership fan movement with broad sympathy, mostly rooted in the team’s not spending any money to reinforce its opportunity during the only three year period (13-15) when they have been good since the 1970s. Also not to be left out is that the Steelers and the Penguins rule local sports. And let me add one more: our Mayor and our County Executive in waiting (will be elected in November by an overwhelmingly Democratic electorate) are firmly on the left.
This all adds up to “it should not be possible for the Pirates to make any demands of anyone.” But we all (who read this website) know that stadium demands are about the direct transfer of public funds to well-connected rich people, with a small allotment going to the building trades for their help. And we know how support for this gets built piece by piece.
I’m genuinely fascinated, in the horror movie sense, to see what happens.
Kauffman also rates highly on those lists but it doesn’t stop the Royals owners from trying to get money out of Kansas City and Missouri. If owners think they can make more money by getting someone else to build them a stadium they’ll try and try until someone caves.
It genuinely is a first tier facility… made all the more comfortable for fans by the fact that not many other fans show up.
MLB really needs to do something about cheapskate owners who farm the league’s subsidy program in perpetuity and have no intention of even trying to compete. The whole point of the program is to ease some of the disadvantage small market teams have when chasing free agents (which is really just another way of saying that lots of markets that have MLB teams aren’t really big enough to support them on merit).
If they aren’t going to try to compete, then there is no reason for the program to exist.
There will never be a salary floor without a salary cap and vice versa. If the players won’t accept a cap. There’s just no incentives for either side to cave in on that.
The owners have, apparently, agreed among themselves that the less-rich owners will be free not to spend and the richest owners will be largely free to spend whatever they want. The players apparently care a lot more about the incomes of the richest veterans than anything else, so their complaints about the cheapskate owners are just complaints.
On top of that, the constraints on rookie salaries incentivizes the small-market owners to spend frugally and load up on cheap young players.
If I could go back in time, I’d advise the leaders of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, etc, to give up on baseball. If they insisted on giving money to sports, give it to the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLS – sports where their cities can be more competitive.
When pro baseball was born, these cities were “big markets” relative to the rest of the country. Now they’re not.
Except the luxury tax means that there is already an effective cap on spending. An owner my occasionally go over it, but by and large they all use it as the ceiling for roster spending.
Not really. Teams are going over it and most teams are not spending near the threshold.
But still, the players would ne unwise to accept further restrictions on payrolls without a salary floor.
Contrast that to the NHL, which has a hard cap. Lots of teams are up against it and the rebuilding teams are forced to reach the salary floor.
The NBA also has a floor.
Hmmm. Looks like my suggestion for repeating articles from the early FoS is taking caring of itself.
The White Sox park is quite bland. And this is from someone who sat in Shea, The Vet and Three Rivers. It seems to have more in common with those three than Baltimore or Cleveland. Exact location doesn’t help much either. That doesn’t mean Jerry should get another free one.
In a strange (non monetary) universe, the Sox and the Bears switching locations kind of works. Would think the Cubs would fight like h*ll to keep the Sox far away from downtown.
The White Sox had the bad luck to build the last stadium before Camden Yards opened so being bland was sort of the height of design in the late 80s early 90s.
As my friend suggested when Reinsdorf first pulled this “give me a new stadium or I’ll move” scam, the appropriate name for the place should be Chick Gandil Memorial Stadium.
It is a bit bland, but it does have some of the things owners demand in new stadiums. A wide concourse that wraps around the entire lower deck. Plenty of restrooms. Massive scoreboard. Location wise it’s served by a major highway, two different CTA lines and a Metra line. So when people complain about the location, I think they’re hinting at something else. People say Jerry dreams of a lake front stadium downtown, but anyone who’s dealt with Bears parking knows that comes with it’s own problems.
It’s also a design and location that Reinsdorf picked out himself, so it will take a special kind of gall for him to complain about it now. (SPOILER: Reinsdorf has all kinds of gall. He has his own gall closet.)
Is there anywhere to even build a lake front stadium downtown in Chicago? I’m asking seriously as all the land seems to be spoken for already, so I’m not sure it’s possible without spending a fortune on land acquisition costs.
Not really. Building anything east of Lake Shore Drive is mostly illegal. Even George Lucas couldn’t get away with it. There’s land way south, the old steel works, but it’s not readily accessible. But there’s always talk of using land near McCormick Place, but that would involve building over the tracks, (which they’ve done for some the exhibition halls). Some people dream of removing the oldest exhibition hall, which is east of the drive, but it would not give you room for a stadium, and would be better of returned to green space.
Maybe not lakefront property (the US Steel sites is probably not going to happen for a million different reasons). But a riverfront stadium at The 78 (Roosevelt and Clark) is an interesting possibility. I know some of the land has already been accounted for, but a Bears stadium has recently been floated there as well.
It’s possible, but the 78 is private property.
So Chicago is back in the position of, “What do you want us to do? It’s not our land. We’ve already apportioned for infrastructure improvements. It’s your problem not ours to find a way to pay for it.”
I know this can be said about every team threatening to move, but the White Sox really have no leverage. Real estate development has been moving south of downtown. The Sox park is near railroad tracks and expressways, which hinders development if the stadium is still functional, but if an enormous plot of land (big enough to hold a stadium and parking lots) becomes available near a Red Line station, there could be a huge transit oriented project that would bring in a lot of property tax revenue. That would bring in enough money for the city to experiment with capping the expressway to build park land.
A site for the new casino has already been approved, but if that falls through because Ballys can’t get their act together, the Sox location would be a good replacement site.
I respectfully disagree. I don’t think Reinsdorf cares if a new stadium stays at 35th street. As the Bears fiasco has played out, it has become clear that there is no shortage of suburbs looking to throw money at a major sports owner to give them a new stadium. Couple that with the fact that the new mayor probably doesn’t want to lose 2 teams in his first couple of years in office, even if it is just to a suburb, and a think a perfect storm is brewing for the White Sox to get just about anything they ask for. The only questions are: who is going to give it to him and who is he going to choose?
Brandon Johnson campaigned as a far left progressive. Telling Reinsdorf to pound sand and converting GRF and parking lots to housing/office/retail, then using the property tax revenue for social services would bolster his image.
The Bears are a little trickier because the stadium land can’t be converted to anything that produces property tax revenue. However, only 62,000 people go to Bears games and a large percentage of those come in from the suburbs. That means few residents of Chicago actually go to Bears games, so playing in the suburbs doesn’t affect 99% of voters, except for saving hundreds of millions of tax dollars.
“Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration ‘is planning to hold a conversation with the team about its future,’ according to senior adviser Jason Lee.”
That could be just boilerplate ass-covering, but it’s still not exactly a sign that Johnson will be taking a hard line.
What a coward.
The mayor is a man of much talk and little action, but just as with the Bears, there are hard facts about the situation.
The city of Chicago does not own large plots of land close to downtown.
None of the suburbs are large enough to publicly finance a stadium
The state legislature is majority Cubs and Cards fans, and city council is also split between Cubs and White Sox.
As well as a strong distaste for dealing again with a team that has repeatedly shown itself to be in bad faith.
The Teachers Union and school districts have the most political power right now, and are the least sympathetic group to sports teams’ requests as the Bears have learned.
On top of that, a team owner who is 87 years old and likely to die before the lease expires.
The only realistic option the city of Chicago has to offer is to recommend a private developer and approve zoning.
And not take any relocation threats seriously unless Nashville or Charlotte build a stadium on spec.
Wait, the guy from My Name is Earl is advising the mayor of Chicago?
Well, he should recognize Reinsdorf for what he is at least…
Baseball, hockey and basketball do better in an urban setting near transit and restaurants and what not, but football is different. There’s not really much incentive for NFL stadiums to be in a central, urban location.
There are 11-14 games a year, including preseason, the TV deals are all national, and so is most of the sponsorship.
The games are usually on the weekend and most people are going to drive there anyway.
If the Sox let the Bears situation play out and the Bears move to the suburbs, Solider Field 3.0 could become the Sox best option in the city. Keep as much of the exterior (previously landmarked) and tear up the seating bowl again.
I just don’t think that would work. There’s just not enough parking on the lake front. And during the summer it would be worse because the museum, planetarium and aquarium also need the limited lake front parking. Even though almost every CTA line stops at Roosevelt, you still have a long (but pretty) hike through the park to get to the stadium. It’s just a crowded location. Everything at the current location is better, except the view.
The Roosevelt stop to Soldier Field is about 3/4 of a mile. It isn’t a hardship for most people to walk that distance on a summer evening.
https://whitesox.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2hQUaqxVjoulbQa
The White Sox recently sent out a survey to fans. Some of the questions included:
When attending White Sox home games, what is the primary reason(s) for being in the City of Chicago?
When attending White Sox home games, do you typically stay overnight?
Do you typically spend money outside Guaranteed Rate Field (in the local and/or regional area) in connection with attending a White Sox game.
It also asked you to estimate how much you spend inside Chicago and Cook County.
If they can’t get the new Chicago mayor to play ball, it seems fairly obvious that they are going to use the Atlanta Braves playbook to get some South Suburb to cough up land and tax breaks using the excuse that the majority of the fanbase is there and it will bring in additional tourist revenue.
Well, which will it be? Gary or Joliet? Cicero?
Oh, definitely Gary. If the Illinois politicians won’t play hardball, go to the Hoosiers. They’re dumb enough to support anything.
Source, an actual Hoosier
Also, I recall a decades old survey of White Sox season ticket holders who answered the question “what makes you a White Sox fan” with words to this effect:
“I’m not a White Sox fan. I just hate the Cubs”.
I just don’t see where they go. It would have to be in Will or DuPage County as we have seen the trouble the Bears have had trying to strongarm Cook County into lowering their tax assessment in Arlington Heights. Even in the suburbs, it will cost $2 billion to build a new stadium, and the return on publicly funded stadiums are lousy. The people who move out to Will and DuPage County do so to have relatively low taxes for the services they receive. Them allowing some of that money to be shifted towards a stadium doesn’t make sense politically. Maybe some know-nothing mayor or local something or other official will put out a statement about moving the White Sox to their town, but until a real offer is put out there it is just empty talk.
If the White Sox leave Chicago. They lost me as a fan and I’m a lifelong fan.
I’m wondering if we’ll go completely full circle and have the Bears and Sox ask for a shared stadium.
“…it is naturally nearing a time where discussions should begin to take place…”
I hope this is code for ‘Reinsdorf is ancient and likely to croak any day now’.
And surely, if anyone on earth deserves a billion dollar gift mainly sourced from poor people/their children, it has to be the money grubbing prick Reinsdorf, right?
Go Jer Go.
I thought the threat to move the White Sox to Tampa was real. There’s that whole story about how the pro-stadium-subsidy people mechanically changed the clocks in the legislature and all of that.
Also, there were some proposals to build a new stadium that would fit into the neighborhood and look more like Fenway or Camden Yards. I don’t recall why those ideas were bypassed.
The “savvy negotiator” link above describes how Reinsdorf later admitted the St. Pete move was all a bluff.
As for Philip Bess’s neighborhood stadium, it wasn’t a proposal that came from Reinsdorf, and the city and state didn’t show any interest in telling him what they were willing to build for him, so it got nowhere. (That’s chapter, um, I think 6 of our book?)
Oh, I think I’ve conflated the Giants-to-Tampa Bay story, the White Sox-to-Tampa Bay story, and the plot of Major League.
It is hard to keep track, what with all the reboots.
Just curious, how are we so sure that he didn’t just say it was a leverage play after he got the deal to stay as a way to mend fences/not come off as heartless. There is no benefit to saying “yeah guys I was heading for Florida if the state didn’t give me money. Now buy my season tickets”
He flew to Florida, got off the plane, got back on the plane, and flew back, all while the legislature was in session, IIRC. It was pretty transparent at the time, and the “savvy negotiator” quote was just confirmation.
At least St. Pete had a stadium. It’s not a great one, perhaps, but it’s more than what Vegas has.
There was a lot more than one plane trip. I remember ESPN did a breakdown a few years ago but I can’t find it now. They were looking at Al Lang for a season while the dome was being finished. I did find this one though: https://sabr.org/research/article/a-ballpark-as-a-political-football-florida-illinois-and-a-new-home-for-the-white-sox/
Now the thing is he either lied when he said he was looking to leave or he lied when he said he was just looking for leverage. There is no way to actually know. My point is that after he got the deal to stay it would make sense for him to say that he was never going to move. There would have come a point when Comisky was no longer viable so something had to give.
A lot of times it’s a ploy. Like we know the Yankees and Mets are never leaving New York, but we have seen the Browns leave Cleveland, the Oilers leave Houston, the NHL had a musical chairs game, etc.
If he intended not to come off as heartless, I would say he failed (at least on that front).
The White Sox just fired their club president and their general manager. That takes the heat off Reinsdorf baying for his new taxpayer-funded palace for the ChiSox.
Reinsdorf also just referred to Ken Williams as being “like a son to me”.
Man, like being fired isn’t enough….
Pretty optimistic for an 87yo guy to be making plans for 6 years down the line. Of course I’ve never forgiven him for breaking up the Bulls and giving us the stupid line “Players don’t win championships, organizations do.”
Yes. And the number of titles the Bulls have won since Jordan left is, you know, less than before.
I had to LOL when he claimed in today’s presser that “professional sports is a results based business”.
I wonder how many White Sox fans spewed hot coffee all over themselves at that one… he probably single handedly caused 5-10 vehicle accidents today by saying that.
He is making plans for down the line in the same way people his age get their affairs in order. If his sons are more interested in maintaining the Bulls than the White Sox, then setting the White Sox up to be sold for the most possible makes business sense.
I didn’t think the threat really involves a new stadium as much as an extension or similar deal to their sweetheart current one Neil points out. Reinsdorf, or any owner, would take one, but Jerry isn’t delusional about the politics in play. If Reinsdorf is thinking of selling the White Sox, an extension on a stadium with favorable terms will increase the sale price. I don’t believe a bidder would pay a Chicago price to move it to somewhere smaller. It is bad business. It was always mentioned that Ballmer should move the Clippers to Seattle, but he paid an LA price. Howard Schultz sold the Sonics a long time ago for $350 million, not $2-3 billion. I don’t see that ever happening again. The local tv money makes it such that the threat to leave the Chicago area is laughable. The one area where the White Sox rate as a big market team is their local tv rights deal. I cannot fathom a deal from any city that could compensate for losing half or more of their local tv money per year. Reinsdorf owners 2/3 of the local tv station because he owns the Bulls and White Sox. It is a stable channel as opposed to what exists in other markets. Plus, if the thinking is that his sons will maintain ownership of the Bulls, who are more – and frankly unspeakably- profitable annually, they won’t want to have a sizeable portion of that local fan base hate them for allowing their favorite baseball to leave town. An extension to the favorable lease and a local sale seems like the most likely outcome. I am not in favor of any of these sweetheart deals for billionaires, but it is the most politically palatable solution because extending the status quo tends not to get opponents taking to the streets to object.
“Local TV money” is no longer a sure thing thanks to cord-cutters and the terminal decline in linear TV audiences.
Besides, BW confused the White Sox’ TV situation with that of the other Chicago team. The Cubs are a part owner of Marquee — the Sox are on a channel controlled by NBC.
NBC Sports Chicago is owned equally by Blackhawks, Bulls, Comcast, and White Sox. Reinsdorf controls 50%. Even with some people getting rid of cable, NBCSN could go with a direct streaming app, which the Cubs/Marquee have started.
NBC Sports does have a Chicago-specific app but that doesn’t offer live games — and NBC is migrating the mobile audience to Peacock whenever possible.
As well, NBCSN was shut down on New Year’s Day 2022.
Jeremy pointed out the ownership of NBC Sports Chicago, but the station also benefits from year-round games that draw viewers because of the White Sox, Bulls, and Black Hawks. Part of the problems with local sports channels is that they have one team affiliated with it, which makes getting distribution on cable/satellite/streaming services difficult. NBC Sports Chicago has great distribution in the area.
Most of the RSNs have more than one major team. Not all of them, but most.
Having more obviously puts them in a stronger position to negotiate with cable providers, but that business is in decline either way.
With cable, every subscriber is paying for the sports networks if they watch them or not. Now, the people who do not watch sports really have no reason to get cable and so the RSNs, and therefore the teams, are going to lose all that easy revenue.
They will struggle to make that up with streaming/over-the-air packages.
NBC Sports Chicago can be viewed on fubo, youtubetv, directtv stream, and Hulu. Again, the White Sox aren’t lacking for local tv distribution, and the revenue from it is near the top of MLB. They aren’t about to give that up to go to a small market.
Yeah, while much is uncertain about the great streaming future, I think one thing that’s clear is that MLB is going to stick to its model of “big-market teams get most of the revenue.”
(I know I speculated otherwise a few months ago, but things Manfred has said since the Diamond Sports collapse have convinced me that nothing significant is going to change in terms of TV revenue sharing.)
Those cable-emulator apps don’t do anything to solve the basic problem. Increasingly, the only people who are going to buy those are sports fans, just like regular cable.
But, for now at least, baseball teams still have to rely on a local fanbase.
So it doesn’t make sense for the White Sox to leave Chicago. Even if they cede 2/3 of the market to the Cubs, they still have a bigger market opportunity than they would in Nashville, for example. Plus they have 130 years of history and a lot of loyal fans throughout the region. Not as many as the Cubs have, but it wouldn’t make sense to flush all that.
But, as we’re seeing with the A’s, the owners don’t always think long-term like that.
The Tigers aren’t going anywhere. Comerica Park is fantastic and the team has done a great job upgrading the stadium and keeping it current. It will be many years before the Tigers talk about a new stadium.