Moving a little slow today as I head home from the Sports Economics Conference 2024, which hopefully can become a regular event. As a reward for your patience, here’s audio of yesterday’s journalism panel discussion with me, Ken Belson of the New York Times, and Pat Garofalo of the American Economic Liberties Project, plus lots of questions from the assembled luminaries of the sports economics field. (That’s our host, Dennis Coates of that meta-study fame, introducing us, and the other co-authors of that paper, J.C. Bradbury and Brad Humphreys, make cameos as well.)
And now, if the Amtrak wifi is willing and the creek don’t rise, let’s move on with this week’s news lightning round:
- The Kansas City Star has urged a “no” vote on Tuesday’s 0.375% sales tax surcharge extension ballot measure, saying the Royals and Chiefs stadium plans “remain far too hazy and unclear” and “the people who will pay it have every right to ask for facts before making a decision.” It’s pretty unusual for team owners to go into a stadium vote without lining up the support of the city’s major newspaper, and the Star was not that long ago a major booster of a downtown Royals stadium, so this seems very much a sign of cracks in the local growth coalition; whether it’ll be enough to defeat the proposal, we’ll need to wait to see until polls close Tuesday night.
- In related news, KCUR reports that because the Royals stadium district would be on land the county would purchase and then lease to the team, team owner John Sherman would be able to duck out of $1.4 billion in property taxes over 40 years, according to “an analysis from Jackson County obtained by KCUR.” Visiting ye olde present value calculator shows that this would be worth about $600 million in current value (maybe somewhat less if it’s significantly backloaded as property values rise), which when added to the $250-350 million from the sales tax and maybe another $650-750 million from as-yet-unallocated city and state money comes to … let’s just say “a huge-ass amount of money” and leave it at that.
- Royals president of business operations Brooks “No Relation” Sherman says that the “concrete cancer” issue that was previously blamed for making Kauffman Stadium ineligible to be renovated is “not new news” and is “part of our responsibility to maintain the stadium” and “not the reason we’re leaving,” everyone who cast early ballots only reading the previous claims gets to go back and re-vote now, right?
- “Rays’ home opener sells out. Would a new stadium bring crowds year-round?” asks the Tampa Bay Times, and while both Ian Betteridge and the existence of the baseball off-season have something to say about that, the TBT instead asked fans at Tampa Bay Rays opening day, who responded with a decided ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. One did suggest, “I think they’ll sell out for the first couple of years. Then it’ll be right back to this,” which matches very well with Bradbury’s slide from yesterday’s presentation where he showed how stadium honeymoon periods only last 5-10 years.
- The Rays are supposedly working on a non-relocation agreement in exchange for a $1.5 billion-ish stadium subsidy, but you can’t see it yet, it’s still getting its face on. Asked if the new lease clause would be as strong as the old one that barred team execs from even talking to anyone about a move, St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said only, “I am feeling good about the process.” City and county votes on the Rays stadium plan are expected not this evening, but surely tomorrow.
- Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren has officially said the team’s priority is building a stadium on the Chicago lakefront “right now,” but “we still own the land” in Arlington Heights, but “the focus now has to be on Chicago to give us the best opportunity for success” — yeah, I think we get the picture, thanks.
- There were more Oakland A’s fans outside their opening day home game than inside, taking part in a “block party” in protest of the team’s planned-maybe-who-knows move to Las Vegas. For some reason unclear to me this required buying tickets to the game, but as Marc Normandin notes in his long-running-but-only-recently-named Marvin Miller’s Mustache newsletter, “John Fisher getting some extra cash out of the deal bothers me, yes, but him taking a proverbial punch to the chin is also a nifty occurrence, so I’ll let it go.”
- “NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell optimistic about a Commanders stadium in Washington” because of course he is, that’s why the owners pay him the big bucks.
- Buffalo Bills fans are really steamed about possibly having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for personal seat licenses or else lose their place on the season ticket line, guess you shouldn’t have voted for the new stadium then — oh haha, I was just joshing, New York state doesn’t believe in voting, people might vote the wrong way!
- “Could the Chicago White Sox really move to Nashville?” asks the Chicago Tribune, before answering its own question: “It’s complicated.” Heavy sigh. Hello, Chicago Tribune copy desk? I have some news for you about the might/could distinction.
Regarding the Ray’s, there seemed to be a lot of Jay’s fans there based on the dark blue uniforms and noise level when they hit homers. Not empirical but several Jay’s fans talked to our broadcast people saying they had simply extended their stay in FL past Psting Training.
Also the whole upper deck was empty. Not sure if that’s closed off or what.
Yeah, that was going to be my point too Jake… how do you sell out with an entire tier of seating empty?
I know, why not lower official capacity to 14,382, refuse to sell any of the other seats, and then announce sellouts all season long?
It would be at least $1.5Bn cheaper than building a new stadium to prove that you really don’t have more than 14,000 fans willing to buy tickets wouldn’t it?
Some fun updates surrounding Big League Utah this week. An open records request by the Salt Lake Tribune showed that while SLC officials presented a unified front when the ballpark bill was signed, in private text messages they all recognized how terrible of a deal it was. One city councilmember even referred to working with the Larry H. Miller Group as “negotiating with terrorists”! They’ve since tried to walk back their comments, but haven’t really explained what changed in the final bill that addressed their concerns.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2024/03/29/negotiating-with-terrorists/
It’s also awkward timing because in the same week, the Trib reported that Little League Baseball is on the verge of getting priced out of SLC due to the city more than quadrupling its rental fees for fields that are literally falling apart. Irony is not lost on Mayor Mendenhall, it seems.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2024/03/25/while-utah-courts-mlb-little/
If anyone thought the film Major League could not move beyond the fictional, head over to the MLB App/YT channel and check out the AA’s performance last night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB4CZQe4ciw
I know it’s hard, but remember fans, this is not the players’ fault.
This is not strategic tanking either (which we know because Fisher and Kaval aren’t capable of creating a strategy if their lives depend on it).
It is simple a disgrace to the game of baseball (not to mention marketing).
Good luck with your new blood sucking scumbag, Vegas.
Marc got it wrong, you didn’t need to buy game tickets if you wanted to attend the A’s boycott in the parking lot. $30 to park (ouch, but Fishy only gets half, half goes to the the Oakland/AlCo stadium thingy, to the best of my knowledge.). Otherwise you roll down on BART for just a couple of bucks, BYOB, PirateTV, a couple of chairs, party. Heck, we rarely go in before the 4th or 5th inning. Wouldn’t cross a picket line, a good excuse to get home early.
As an aside, I caught a glimpse of the AZ Coyotes rink tonight. I’m all Rangers, as was most of the arena, we did okay.
But the camera angles looked all wrong. Like they were beaming it down from Google Sattelite. No cameras at the corners.
What’s the deal with that? I watched on MSG.
When the Rangers, Bruins, Penguins, Blackhawks or any Canadian team came to Glendale, well over half, and sometimes over 75% of the fans were cheering for the opponent. It sounds like nothing had changed at 4,000 seat Mullett. The Legacy Ice Arena, and adjacent hotel, continue to sit without any sign of construction resuming after over 4 years. A retail development is under construction to the south, and a residential development is underway to the east. If nobody is able to finish the arena 10 miles from where the Coyotes are hoping to build their arena, there obviously isn’t demand for hockey anywhere in the Phoenix area. Then there’s the all the issues with the proposed Coyotes arena, from flood control to competition with existing developments to traffic and financing a multi billion dollar arena development. The Coyotes may not have noticed, but their proposed arena is 25 minutes east of their former Glendale Arena alongside Loop 101. The Coyotes are therefore saying that there are 10,000 fans every night who are unwilling to drive an extra 25 minutes, but are willing to pay much higher ticket prices needed to pay for a billion dollar arena. Channel 5 had a sob story again last night about how desperately the Diamondbacks need “community participation” to help pay to renovate their completely obsolete Chase Field.
According to Channel 5, the roof is literally falling in on a barely salvagable Chase Field. The segment also made what amounted to an outright threat the Diamondbacks would leave Arizona if Maricopa County didnt cough up a couple hundred million. Ther are a multitude of cities with a population approaching 6 million and growing by 100,000 a year where the Diamondbacks can move, not. I’ll keep watching for the Arizona State Land Department to post the auction and details on their website, I’m not holding my breath.