Category: Los Angeles Dodgers

Friday roundup: If you’re watching TV sports in empty stadiums by summer, count yourself lucky

access_time personNeil deMause

Michael Sorkin, who died yesterday of COVID-19, was a prolific architecture critic (and architect) and observer of the politics of public space, and so not a little influential in the development of my own writing. I’m sure I read some of Sorkin’s architecture criticism in the Village Voice, but he first came on my radar with his 1992 anthology “Variations on a Theme Park,” a terrific collection of essays discussing the ways that architects, urban planners, and major corporations were redesigning the world we live in to become a simulacrum of what people think they want from their environment, but packaged in a way to better make them safely saleable commodities. (I wish I’d gotten a chance to ask him what he thought of the Atlanta Braves‘ new stadium, with its prefab walkable urban neighborhood with no real city attached to it.) In his “Variations on a Theme Park” essay on Disneyland and Disney World, he laid out the history of imagineered cities starting with the earliest World’s Fairs, up to the present day with Disney’s pioneering of “copyrighted urban environments” where photos cannot even be taken and published without prior approval of the Mouse — a restriction he got around by running as an illustration a photo of some clouds, and labeling it, “The sky above Disney World.”

I really hope this isn’t the beginning of a weekly feature on great people we’ve lost to this pandemic, though it seems pretty inevitable at this point. For now, on with the other stadium and arena news, though if you’re looking for a break from incessant coronavirus coverage, you won’t find it here:

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Friday roundup: Ex-D.C. mayor says his $534m Nats stadium expense was worth it, Clippers arena stymied by car trouble, MLS franchise fees to go even higher

access_time personNeil deMause

Shouldn’t posting items more regularly during the week leave less news to round up on Fridays? I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to work, but here I am on Friday with even more browser tabs open than usual, and I’m sure someone is still going to complain that I left out, say, the latest on arena site discussions in Saskatoon. I guess lemme type really fast and see how many I can get through before my fingers fall off:

 

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Friday roundup: Lotsa new vaportecture renderings, lotsa new crazy expensive bridges

access_time personNeil deMause

I’m traveling this week and next, so there will likely be some weird scheduling changes for posts, such as this Friday roundup appearing close to noon Eastern time. (I think. I’m not entirely sure what time it is here or anywhere, just that it’s hot, which doesn’t narrow it down much because it’s hot everywhere.) The news watch never stops, though, so here’s a somewhat abridged week of highlights:

  • New Los Angeles Clippers arena renderings! This vaportecture is honestly all starting to look more or less alike to me, though what appears to be a transparent roof on an arena is novel — the article refers to “indoor/outdoor ‘sky gardens,'” though, so maybe this is those, whatever those are. (Gardens open to the sky? Wouldn’t that be … “gardens”?) Anyway, constantly releasing renderings is a great way to show people that you absolutely are going to be able to build an arena, despite any lawsuits trying to block it, because everyone knows cartoons always come true.
  • And on the other side of the pond, Everton has released its own stadium renderings, with more lens flare and balloons and promises that 1.4 million more people will visit Liverpool just by Everton moving into a new stadium. (The balloons are probably the least fanciful of these predictions.)
  • Norman Oder has a long analysis of the New York Islanders Belmont Park arena plan laying out all the remaining questions about the project, from the value of land and tax breaks to how exactly the state expects a Belmont arena to host sports and concerts without cannibalizing shows from the nearby Nassau Coliseum. (Not that it should matter to the state if the Coliseum loses business, but if shows are just relocated, they’re not new economic activity. For that matter, if Long Islanders just go to more shows and fewer restaurants, say, that’s also not new economic activity. So very many questions.)
  • Dodger Stadium is getting a $100 million facelift this offseason, including a new centerfield plaza, new elevators and bridges for fan circulation, and a statue of Sandy Koufax. A hundred million dollars seems like a lot for that, but it’s Magic Johnson‘s stadium and his money, so whatever floats his boat.
  • And finally, the cost of the Atlanta Falcons‘ pedestrian bridge has now surpassed $33 million. up $6 million from the last accounting. On second thought, maybe $100 million for some bridges and a statue isn’t that crazy at all.
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Friday roundup: Leaky fountains, cheap stadium beer, and the magic of computers

access_time personNeil deMause

The world may be on vacation this week, but the stadium news decidedly is not:

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Friday roundup: Trump tariff construction cost hikes, Beckham lawsuit tossed, Elon Musk inserts himself into headlines yet again

access_time personNeil deMause

Lots of news to report this week, and that’s even without items that I can’t read because of Tronc Troncing:

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Friday roundup: Senators owner stalling on arena commitment, Jaguars owner wants to buy Wembley, and gondolas, forever gondolas

access_time personNeil deMause

As late as Wednesday, I thought this was turning out to be a slow news week. Then the news made up for it in a hurry:

  • The New York Islanders owners held a question-and-answer session for residents near their planned new arena on Tuesday, and when asked about how they plan to increase Long Island Railroad service to avoid tons of auto traffic, a state development official said, “We are in very active discussions with the LIRR — meeting with them once a week — and those talks are ramping up.” Hopefully they’re involving Dr. Strange in those discussions, because they badly need to find some new topological dimensions.
  • Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson says he plans to talk to Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk about whether he actually plans to pursue the LeBreton Flats arena development he won rights to last year, after Melnyk called it “a huge project with tremendous risk” and said, “If it doesn’t look good here, it could look very, very nice somewhere else, but I’m not suggesting that right now” and “Something’s got to break somewhere and I mean a positive break.” Melnyk has made threats like this before, but you’d think now that he has an agreed sale price for the land he’d be happy; it sure sounds like he’s angling for some additional public subsidies now that he has his mitts on the land, which you can’t really blame him for, since Watson opened the door to that already. Come on, mayor, haven’t you learned yet not to get the can opener out when the cat is around?
  • Tampa Bay Rays 2020, the group started by the Rays to push for business support for a new stadium, is signing up plenty of members, but DRaysBay notes that “the real test of commitment will come when businesses are asked to make clearer financial commitments to a stadium plan.” Yeah, no duh. (The subhead here, “Business leaders line up behind stadium plan, but financing questions linger,” is also a masterpiece of understatement.)
  • MLB commissioner Rob Manfred says that the Toronto Blue Jays‘ Rogers Centre “needs an update to make it as economically viable as possible,” noting that other stadiums “have millennial areas, things like that that have been built and become popular more recently.” So, like, an Instagram parlor?
  • Here’s a story about how 25 years ago the NHL handed Norman Green the rights to move the Minnesota North Stars to any open market as consolation for putting an expansion team in Anaheim, where he’d wanted to move, and he ended up going to Dallas. Also it has Roger Staubach in the headline for some reason.
  • And here’s a story about how 50 years ago NHL expansion inadvertently kicked off the rise of arena rock, which is probably overstated but it has links to vintage Cream videos in it, if you like that sort of thing.
  • Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan is in talks with the Football Association to buy London’s Wembley Stadium for £600 million, which is certain to raise eyebrows about the possibility of the Jags moving to London, but is probably for right now more about Fulham F.C., which Khan also owns, being about to get promoted to the Premier League and wanting a bigger place to play. Khan also said, “I think it needs investment and updating. Compared to American stadiums the video boards are something that need to be looked at. The lounges are a little bit dated.” The current Wembley Stadium was built in 2007.
  • The son of former disgraced Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt wants to build a gondola to take fans from Union Station to Dodger Stadium to avoid traffic. “It’s not actually crazy,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti insisted on Thursday, which, given that this is a city considering allowing Elon Musk to build a network of tunnels to whisk residents about via some unknown technology, maybe we should take that with a grain of salt.
  • San Diego State says its stadium plans could eventually be expanded to fit an NFL team, for a mere additional $750-$850 million. Most San Diegans responding to an internet poll (which means some San Diegans, some non-San Diegans, and some dogs) don’t think they’re getting an NFL team anytime soon, anyway.
  • The Port of Oakland has approved giving the Oakland A’s owners exclusive negotiating rights to develop Howard Terminal, which now gives the A’s exclusive rights to two possible stadium sites. As DRaysBay would say, financing questions linger.
  • NBA commissioner Adam Silver has toured the new Milwaukee Bucks arena and says it has “unique sight lines.” Hopefully he means that in a good way, though I’m still wondering about that “sky mezzanine level.”
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Dodger Stadium springs a sewage leak, time to build a new one

access_time personNeil deMause

Last night’s spring training game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels was called off in the 5th inning after a giant pool of sewage poured out on the field from a broken pipe. Guess it’s time for the Dodgers to demand a new stadium, huh?

(I have nothing else to add about this story, except to give props to the Associated Press for the opening line of their report: “Spring training came to a repulsive end Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium.” Sheer journalistic poetry.)

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Dodgers land deal for McCourt includes NFL stadium rights, management fees, money room like Scrooge McDuck’s

access_time personNeil deMause

The Los Angeles Times has acquired documents providing more details on last year’s $2 billion sale of the Dodgers and Dodger Stadium, after a judge ruled that the Dodgers’ new owners couldn’t keep them secret. And while the specifics are a bit convoluted, the upshot is: Baseball has been very, very good to Frank McCourt, who could end up with three billion dollars on the sale of the bankrupt franchise that he raided in order to line his pockets.

The short version: McCourt got $2.15 billion in cash for the Dodgers, Dodger Stadium, and half-ownership of the stadium parking lots. The new owners, Guggenheim Baseball Management, it now turns out, also were required to “invest as much as $650 million in a real estate development fund run by McCourt,” and to pay him an annual management fee of $5.5 million. As for McCourt’s remaining 50% share of the lots, McCourt is getting at least $7 million a year in rent from the Dodgers, plus has an option to sell back the lots to the Guggenheim for $150 million — or to buy the Dodgers’ share himself to build a non-baseball stadium. And since the NFL has been sniffing around the Dodger Stadium parking lots for a possible stadium, that clause might well come into play.

All this is interesting enough in terms of what happens to the Dodger Stadium property, but mostly because it’s an indication that Guggenheim’s purchase price for the Dodgers is even more insane than it appeared at the time. (“Our goal was to put together a proposal that got a yes,” Guggenheim partner Todd Boehly told the Times yesterday, which roughly translates as “We had to have the team, and money was no object.”) And also an indication that though Dodger Stadium is often referred to as “privately built,” the publicly gifted land that Walter O’Malley picked out from a helicopter ended up being worth quite a bit, indeed.

 

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First look at redone Dodger Stadium shows Smith’s handiwork

access_time personNeil deMause

The Los Angeles Dodgers home opener is today, which means the first opportunity for fans to check out the $100 million in renovations to Dodger Stadium that were done in the offseason. If you don’t have tickets, you can see a video here (though most of it consists of players batting in the new underground batting cage or team officials talking in front of a terrifyingly large bobblehead) or, perhaps more usefully, check out the graphics of the changes put together by the Los Angeles Times.

The Times graphics reveal a renovation that’s right in line with Dodgers renovation director Janet Marie Smith’s previous work at Fenway Park: Do everything possible to make the best use of space behind the scenes, while preserving the historic look and feel of the stadium overall. Fans like wider concourses and drink rails to watch the game without spilling their beers? Eliminate the back row of seats on each level, and make room for those. They want bigger, more hi-def scoreboards? Replace the current ones with new ones the same size and hexagonal shape as existed in the original stadium design in 1962, but with modern resolution. (As a side note, I also like how the Times graphics make clear that because it’s built into the side of a ravine, Dodger Stadium’s main entrances are actually level with the top deck of seating — something I never quite got until I visited the place myself.)

It all looks nice so far, and an example of how teams can get more use out of their current ballparks for a relatively low price. The Chicago Cubs should be listening, though given all the talk lately about them wanting to install a 6,000-square-foot video board at Wrigley Field, it sounds like they haven’t gotten the “unobtrusive” memo.

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Forbes: MLB franchise values soar 23%, thanks to TV riches

access_time personNeil deMause

The Forbes baseball team value estimates are out, and they’re a doozy:

The average baseball team is now worth $744 million, 23% more than a year ago and the largest increase since we began tracking MLB finances in 1998. During the 2012 season, revenue (net of stadium debt service) rose 7%, to an average of $227 million per team. Operating income (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) per team fell 9%, to $13.1 million, mainly due to higher player costs and stadium expenses.

Yeah, you read that right: Baseball teams are less profitable, but worth more. How’s that work? Forbes doesn’t exactly explain, but does note that both TV rights fees and revenue for MLB Advanced Media (baseball’s online arm) have been soaring, so presumably prospective team buyers are expecting that those revenue streams will keep growing in coming years, enough to outpace increased payroll costs. Though the way things are going there, player costs might just eat up any new revenues faster than owners are anticipating.

More likely is that last year’s sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers for $2 billion and the San Diego Padres for $800 million forced Forbes to recalibrate its entire scale upwards. Which is fine enough — new data points should be incorporated into the calculation — but it still doesn’t exactly explain why team values are soaring this much when profits are essentially flat.

The one thing that the Forbes numbers make even more clear is that TV and internet broadcast money is king right now: MLB is starting to become more like football, where a larger share of money is generated by people watching at home, rather than the more stadium-revenues-based model it’s traditionally been. How this will affect the business of the sport is complicated: Does it dilute the advantage of teams like the Yankees because everyone now has TV riches at their disposal, or give them more of an advantage because they can expect their cable contracts to outpace their competitors by an even greater margin? Does a team like the Oakland A’s (third to last in team value, but 5th in the league in profits at an estimated $27.5 million) or the Tampa Bay Rays (dead last in value, 19th in profits at $10 million) reconsider its stadium plans if access to eyeballs outweighs ability to put fannies in the seats? If nothing else, one thing should be clear: No teams are moving to San Antonio or Las Vegas anytime soon.

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