While it’s tempting to report on yesterday’s meeting between Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and state legislative leaders about a new South Loop stadium with a potential $1.7 billion subsidy, the public statements by Reinsdorf and his developer pals were just along the lines of “yup, we met, thanks everyone for their time,” which isn’t really much fodder even for tea-leaf reading. So instead, let’s devote some attention to the big article yesterday by ESPN’s Jeff Passan on MLB’s expansion plans, such as his unnamed sources may claim they are:
While no current plans to expand exist, the potential of a nine-figure financial windfall for every existing team reaping its piece of a combined $4 billion-plus in expansion fees for two new franchises — and the emergence of viable candidates whose merits appeal to owners and the league — has left the game preparing for a 32-team league as an inevitability, according to owners, high-ranking league sources and other team personnel who spoke to ESPN.
We kind of knew this already: Existing MLB owners are salivating at their cut of expansion fees (though even if each team cost $2 billion, they’d only each be getting $133 million, or about one and a half Eduardo Rodriguezes), so expansion will happen eventually. But “eventually” has always been the timeline, so what kind of eventually are we talking about here?
Expansion, those sources said, is not imminent — and in fact is unlikely to happen until the early 2030s. Creating a franchise out of nothing takes time, and expansion isn’t MLB’s immediate priority, either — not amid the fallout from the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group, the company that owned local television rights to 14 teams, the unsettled status of the Rays’ attempt to build a new stadium and the Oakland A’s attempt to abscond to Las Vegas. Not to mention the new collective bargaining agreement to be negotiated after the current one expires in 2026, too.
“It hasn’t been much of a topic of conversation,” one owner, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, told ESPN. “Everybody knows what’s going to happen eventually, but it’s so far off that people just haven’t focused on it.”
So maybe MLB commissioner Rob Manfred will be able to work out an expansion plan before he leaves office in 2029 as he’s promised. Or maybe the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays will still be trying to figure out stadium deals by then, or maybe a 93-year-old Reinsdorf will still be trying to extract a stadium deal from Chicago and will need Nashville to remain vacant so he can create leverage there, or maybe expansion will need to be held over the head of either the players union or an owners faction in order to get them to cave on some issue that Manfred will want to horse-trade on.
This has gone from “inevitable” to “someday” in record time, but sure, let’s keep playing along. Where exactly would MLB expand to, given that when the Rays and A’s owners were looking for places to move or at least threaten to, the best they could come up was “maybe part-time in Montreal in a stadium that doesn’t exist” and “maybe in Las Vegas in a stadium we still don’t know how to pay for even after $600 million in public cash“?
It is expected to include one team situated in the East and another in the West, paving the way for realignment that could radically alter the game.
Uh, if you’re going to completely reshuffle all the divisions, it doesn’t matter where the new teams are geographically. And if you’re not, you would have to have uneven division sizes anyway, since right now there are six five-team divisions, so there’s nothing stopping MLB from putting, say, one team in the AL East and one in the NL West. But if the sources say it, the sources say it.
Any particular cities in mind, Jeff?
FOR ALL OF their differences culturally, spiritually and historically, Nashville, Tennessee, and Salt Lake City share plenty in common. Nashville is the 26th-biggest media market in the United States; Salt Lake City is the 27th. Both regularly rank among the United States’ fastest-growing cities. And both have positioned themselves to be at the front of the line when MLB finally decides to expand.
I mean, yes, Nashville and Salt Lake are both similar media markets — bigger than Cincinnati and Milwaukee, about the size of Baltimore and San Diego. That also applies to San Antonio and Charlotte, both of which are growing as fast if not faster than Nashville and Salt Lake. So why are Tennessee and Utah at the front of the line?
Nashville’s and Salt Lake City’s reputations as front-runners is in large part due to their preparation and planning.
Go on…
Music City Baseball recently contracted the real estate development company Mortenson to undertake a stadium site and market analysis, two integral pieces to any eventual presentation to the league….
Big League Utah is proposing an exceptional mixed-use development that would cost $3.5 billion in private money.
And there we go. Nashville and Salt Lake City are — for the moment — the expansion frontrunners because they have stadium plans, or at least are talking about them. (Better yet, that Utah stadium development that would cost $3.5 billion in private money would also include $600 million or more in public money.) Or at least that’s what league sources want everyone to think, and why would league sources possibly mislead anyone about that in order to prompt a bidding war with taxpayer cash? You think they would lie just because they’re shielded by anonymity? What kind of monster would do that?
So we’re left with: MLB may expand someday, and right now Nashville and Salt Lake City are on their radar because they’re waving around possible stadium money, but that could always change. And it’s always possible that MLB will pick expansion cities based on some other criteria: probably not market size since there are no obvious slam-dunk markets, but which city has a potential owner who will sign the biggest expansion-fee check, or who just seems like they’d be most fun to hang out with at owners’ meetings, can’t be ruled out.
Let’s turn it back over to Passan for some closing words:
Expansion is coming to Major League Baseball. In what form, in what cities, in what year — all of those questions will be answered in time. It’s destiny.
Only one thing’s for sure: No one knows.
I should go back and check, but when the NFL went from a six-division setup to its current eight-division setup I don’t seem to remember it as being that big of a change, other than Seattle moving from the AFC to the NFC. If MLB wants to use realignment as an excuse to put the Mets and the Yankees into the same division, they can do that of course, but let’s recognize that it’s just an excuse and not some sort of mathematical necessity.
I would agree it is almost certainly going to happen because: billionaire greed.
But, in my view it isn’t necessarily any less stupid than the A’s moving to Vegas.
There are no good/big markets that are untapped, true enough. And while adding middling to small markets might seem like a windfall (and is, at least up front) MLB is not adding markets that are going to grow the overall pie that much (if at all. A Nashville franchise will grow the overall attendance in the SE/midwest how much exactly? And forget TV… the RSN market is already split among other teams, just like Vegas).
Sure, $130m in expansion fees is nice and all. But if you are adding two small market teams, at least one of them is likely going to be a revenue sharing recipient in short order… and the nightmare for you if you are one of the teams that currently receives that sweet billionaire welfare is that the team(s) they displace on the mlb welfare list might just be yours.
At some point adding small markets doesn’t help the overall business. Fortunately, MLB owners have never been about long term thinking… so $130m now which you can bonus out to yourself for your visionary thinking and leadership before selling the team is much better than whatever might happen 5-50 years down the road. That’s the next guy’s problem.
The theory around league expansion is that you put a team in smaller, “unserved” markets today in the hope that, 1) the team can cultivate a sizable enough fanbase by the time the first generation of fans who grew up with the team is old enough to start buying season tickets, and 2) the market itself can grow big enough, in terms of both population and the corporate base, to sustain the team over the long term. Of course, all of this goes out the window when the existing stadium springs its first pipe leak, at which point a new stadium becomes “necessary” — but that was basically the logic behind the push to add teams across southern and western US from the 80s and on.
There will obviously be diminishing returns on future expansion, but as someone who lives in one of those southern cities and has witnessed the expansion of the metro area firsthand (to the point where its population is bigger than many existing MLB markets), I can see what these leagues’ visions are. It might not necessarily work out over the long run, but there’s a reason why they target these types of places.
Sure, and I know/agree with the general theory behind expanding business footprints (no matter what kind of business). You give yourself more product to sell to more consumers.
But if you are the third McDonald’s franchisee in a smallish town, you probably aren’t getting your money’s worth (and yes, I know that where multiple McDonald’s exist they are always offered to the current franchisee in the region first… and that those franchisee’s tend to buy the new franchise for obvious reasons). The prime locations will be taken and you will have to exist on the overflow. It might be doable. But if you keep adding outlets, eventually you are going to hit saturation and have to buy back at least one of your franchises.
Every one of the available markets for MLB (barring Oakland once the A’s/Fisher are gone, Montreal and NY/North Jersey) is really too small to make an impact on overall revenues. In most of those cases, any ‘local’ fans – be they school kids or adults – are likely to be drawn to the new team from an old one.
I completely understand you wanting your own “local” team. What percentage of a Nashville franchise’s revenues will just be redistributed from the other franchises in the “six state blackout” zone, though?
And regardless where the next pop 2m expansion city is, the likelihood is that they will draw about as much out of revenue sharing over the next 30 years as they will pay in expansion fees.
Whether it is Portland (pick which one you like best), Sacramento, Salt Lake, Vegas, San Antonio, Nashville, Charlotte etc, I don’t see there being a huge upside.
But, with $4-12Bn in expansion cash available and most existing owners being really old, hey, I would be more surprised if it doesn’t happen than if it does…. that’s like a free year of total revenue!
And adding six teams could keep the divisions balanced. Also $12 BILLION!!!!! But obviously the latter is very much a secondary concern…
“Preparation and planning” is a great euphemism for “gimme tax money.” Should try to get that one into general circulation.
“Expansion is coming to
MLB. “ What form, what year, what cities? No one knows for sure yet. What you can count on is this. It will be EXPENSIVE for the fans. They will pay HUGE for the watered down crap that will be trotted out on the field. Then, after a few years owners will want a new stadium to replace the 20 year old ballpark so they can put a competitive product out there. What a JOKE! Damn glad I don’t support it anymore.