Last night was the MLB All-Star Game — or so I hear, like everyone else I know I didn’t watch once I saw the hideous uniforms they’d be wearing — which was held at the Texas Rangers‘ home park in Arlington, the only stadium ever built solely because its predecessor lacked air-conditioning. The Rangers are also unique among MLB teams in not holding a Pride Night, and someone asked league commissioner Rob Manfred what exactly was up with that, to which Mumbles responded:
“There are a whole host of factors that go into deciding who’s going to get an All-Star Game, and I don’t view whether you have a Pride Night or not as a outcome-determinative issue,” baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said before Tuesday night’s game at Globe Life Field. “It’s an issue. We look at all those issues and make the best decision and try to give it to the place that we think is going to kind of be the best in terms of marketing of the game.”…
“I think it’s really important to remember here — here there’s a massive public investment in terms of creating a great new facility and that obviously is an important consideration in terms of awarding All-Star Games.”
We look at all the issues! Especially the number of zeroes on the taxpayer check! And this one had a whole lot of those, what’s a raised middle finger to LGBTQ fans compared to that?
In case you’re wondering, next year’s All-Star Games is set for the Atlanta Braves stadium, which also got a pile of public cash (around $300 million compared to Arlington’s $450 million), and which was all set to host the 2021 game until MLB moved it following protests around Georgia’s new hyper-restrictive voting law, only to have it re-awarded for 2025 when the league quietly changed its mind. In 2026, the game will be played in Philadelphia, which has been waiting patiently since opening its own publicly subsidized stadium way back in 2004, which will make it as old when the All-Stars arrive as the Rangers’ old stadium was when its replacement was approved.
All of which is a choice, certainly, and a longstanding one: Manfred may have also said that “a significant factor should be when did you have a game the last time,” but an even more significant factor is whether it’s needed as a carrot to get cities to approve stadium funding — both the Colorado Rockies and Seattle Mariners have hosted the game twice since any of the Baltimore Orioles, Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland A’s, Tampa Bay Rays, or Toronto Blue Jays have hosted, and you 100% know that in most of those cases MLB is waiting to be able to use the game as a prize for upgraded facilities.
Manfred said recently about the Atlanta voting-rights flipflop that “one of the things we’ve learned over time is that the more we stay out of political issues, the better off we are.” Except for the political issue of public funding for stadiums, that’s core to their business model, don’t mess with that or you’ll only get to watch those ugly All-Star uniforms on TV, see?
Rob Manfred might look and sound like a doofus, but he has just enough awareness to know that there’s a ton of value in making fans believe there’s nothing inherently political about stadium negotiations, that all stadium arrangements (and relocation deals) are purely business decisions, rather than results of years and years of back-and-forth between franchises and local governments.
Even more cynically, he and other league commissioners know that not only is there value in pitting cities against each other, but also in trying to pit every other fanbase against the city/fanbase of so-called struggling teams. That last part obviously isn’t working out well for him or MLB when it comes to Oakland, but it’s not an accident that they’re still insisting on trying.
How much money does an All-Star Game really bring in? Even under the most ridiculous, pro-chamber of commerce, BS projections, it cannot be more than a drop in the bucket of what it costs to build a new stadium. Even the dumbest politicians have to see that.
And it does not really do much to promote the city. It’s two days and all-star games are not the big deal that they once were.
“$3.9 to $9.4 million” in tourist spending:
https://hcapps.holycross.edu/hcs/RePEc/hcx/HC2101-BaumannMathesonStephensonMurray.pdf
Needless to say Neil beat me to this, and with much more current info!
Ha, Google search just worked better for me for whatever reason!
See folks, the way to raise funds for stadiums would be for MLB to cancel the regular season and just host “all-star” games. I’d call it the Harlem Globetrotters funding formula.
Reed,
I know this is really old, but Baade & Matheson published a paper back in 2001 looking at 25 years of MLB all star games….zero increase in any year in tax revenue (their metric of choice), and three years of actual decreased revenue! :)
Bill, that is a great stat. So, the answer is $0. Turns out people visit American cities in the summer, All-Star game not neccessary.
Great. Thanks
The Atlanta All-Star game was moved because a significant number of players were going to boycott it.
MLB didn’t take a political stand- their choice was to move the game or not play the game.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210402-mlb-risked-player-walkout-if-all-star-game-not-moved
MLB moved its 2021 game from one of its blackest cities (Atlanta) to one of its whitest (Denver). If MLB ever moved its ASG out of Arlington for parallel reasons, the move would be to Abu Dhabi.
I actually like that we are at the point where these All-Star games are completely meaningless. If I was an owner or stadium operator I would want these 4-5 dates for big money summer concerts.
All-Star games meant something when people only had that one opportunity to watch those stars in any capacity, whether in person or (especially) on TV. Fast forward to now, and interleague play has become totally commonplace, and even mediocre-to-bad teams are being broadcast nationally. In a world where appointment viewings can basically be spread out over an entire week, there’s not as much allure to the idea of seeing all those players in one place at the same time.
Right on!
You can thank baseball for instituting a balanced schedule where all 30 big-league teams play each other during the season.
As well, mediocre-to-bad teams get national TV if their names are Red Sox, Mets, Cubs, or White Sox.
The last World Baseball Classic had that awesome viral moment when Ohtani struck Trout out. 2 outs bottom of the 9, the tournament and national pride at stake. We had never seen these two face each.
You could argue that was baseball’s biggest moment since 2016 (Cubs World Series)- that fact that it occurred during a preseason tournament says a lot about how MLB’s product has kinda fallen apart.
Baseball has improved noticeably with the new rules, but it may be too little too late.
If they want to get more interest in “all-star” competitions, they should play the WBC more often or have a more regular schedule of international competition. The fan interest in that has grown. Regular games between the US, DR, Japan and a few others would get more interest than the all-star game.
I just don’t know if the owners want to “loan” their players that often.
Soccer has international “windows” because FIFA is still nominally in charge of the game worldwide, which brings other problems. I cannot imagine any of the big US-based pro leagues would ever be willing to cede more power to the international blazerati.
But an NHL draft is priceless! Just build a $3 billion Sphere and snow can accumulate on the roof when it’s 120⁰ and the sun is beating down.
The Sphere was a great venue for the draft, but it was not built for the draft.
I now want to use “outcome determinative issue” in every conversation. Try it with friends, it’s fun!
The 2026 All-Star Game was awarded to Philadelphia over a decade ago because the Phillies wanted to host it on the 250th of the signing of the declaration of independence.
That’s right. Its original reason for existing no longer applies.
The upside of all this electronic media is that we can see almost anything we could ever want to see whenever we want to see it. The downside is that it we can see almost anything we could ever want to see whenever we want to see it`. None of it feels special anymore so none of it feels valuable.
It’s impossible to go back in time and recreate the feeling of watching an All-Star game on TV in the 70s (or even the 90s). I can recall when the all-star game was the only time I ever saw what many of the American League’s uniforms looked like in color, other than on baseball cards.
And, of course, in those days, the NL and the AL were distinct leagues with separate rules, separate umpires and separate commissioners. They were rivals. For better and worse, that is no longer the case.
I don’t know if that’s better or worse, really, but it is very different.