Category: Orlando MLB team

Friday roundup: More Rays scuttlebutt, Sixers arena advances, nobody’s buying pricey Bills PSLs

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been three whole days since we checked in on the Tampa Bay Rays stadium situation! Do you feel bereft? Do Rays execs and Tampa Bay–area elected officials feel bereft? If a press statement falls in a forest and there’s no one around to aggregate it, does it make a sound?

None of this, and more, will be answered in this week’s news roundup:

  • The Tampa Bay Times sports desk has certainly been chiming in on the Rays situation, with columnist John Romano, who first reported on Rays owner Stu Sternberg’s threats to move the team if he didn’t get stadium bonds approved ASAP, declaring that what is needed is “a hero” or “a savior” or “a fairy-tale knight” to “step up and purchase a large hunk of the franchise and pay for a stadium, or at least provide a stadium financing plan that does not involve more than a half-billion in public dollars.” Why a half-billion? Who knows! Where does Romano think Sternberg will go if no buyer steps in? Dunno, though he predicts the team will “be on the move, at least temporarily, when 2026 rolls around and Tropicana is still not fixed and the Rays do not want to be stuck in an 11,000-seat spring training stadium.” (The number of cities that could have significantly larger stadiums ready to go by 2026 is zero, or maybe one if neither the Athletics nor San Francisco Giants have territorial rights to Oakland.) The most logical short-term solution is for Sternberg and local electeds to get together and agree to pay the $55 million it would cost to repair Tropicana Field for the short term, with Sternberg agreeing to extend his lease a few years in exchange; it would take a lot of pride-swallowing, especially on Sternberg’s part, so it probably won’t happen, but the alternative looks like it’ll be a whole lot of baseball seasons in minor-league parks somewhere.
  • The group that wants to bring an MLB team to Orlando — formerly led by former Magic executive Pat Williams before his death this summer — also chimed in, saying that while they would never interfere in the business of St. Petersburg, if the Rays did want to move to Orlando, they’re confident that Orange County political leaders “can provide an attractive public/private partnership stadium financing structure that benefits all stakeholders involved.” The last time they brought this up, the “public” part involved $975 million in hotel tax money, one of the same revenue sources that St. Petersburg had been looking to use on its new Rays stadium. (Though it’s often said that Florida counties can spend this on tourism promotion and building things like stadiums and convention centers, it can also use some of it for zoos and beaches and river cleanup and even transportation and sewer infrastructure, something lots of Floridians would like to see counties do.) The Orange County Commission has passed on this idea in the past; we’ll see if it goes over any better with the Rays as a potential target.
  • The Philadelphia city council voted 10-3 to approve creating a tax-kickback district for a new 76ers arena and a new “arena district” to manage neighborhood impacts, which are expected to be extensive. More arena votes are scheduled for the next council meeting on Tuesday.
  • Cleveland and Cuyahoga County are each being asked for $20 million for Guardians and Cavaliers stadium and arena repairs, with another $30 million ask on the table right behind that. If there’s a small silver lining, it’s that this is money the city and county already agreed to spend, it’s just that the cigarette and alcohol taxes that were supposed to fund it are coming up short, so now taxpayers will have to dig into another public pocket.
  • How are those super-pricey Buffalo Bills PSLs selling? Extremely poorly: Only 10% have sold so far, and the rate of purchases is slowing. If they don’t sell out, the Bills owners are on the hook for coming up with the money elsewhere, at least, so at least it won’t be an additional public disaster like the 1990s Oakland Raiders PSLs were.
  • The Chicago Bears owners and Arlington Heights have finally agreed on a property tax valuation for the land the team wants to build a stadium on in that Chicago suburb, but also they say they still really want to build a stadium in Chicago, raising the question, as the Chicago Sun-Times puts it, of “whether the Bears’ latest announcement is [just] a push for leverage in stadium negotiations that have now stretched over three years.”
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Orlando stadium plan gets new target (Rays), made-up impact number ($40B), renderings (bonkers)

access_time personNeil deMause

Now that everyone is done making fun of Pat Williams for proposing $975 million in public subsidies for a $1.7 billion stadium for an MLB expansion team in Orlando that doesn’t exist, Williams is … doubling down? Pivoting? Let’s go with pivoting, since his latest statements shifted from how Orlando should build a stadium to get an expansion team to how Orlando should build a stadium to lure the Rays from Tampa Bay:

“Time is running out on Tampa Bay, and the question is: Can they get a ballpark built? More importantly, can we get a ballpark built?”

Can anyone get a ballpark built? Is the future knowable? If you ask enough questions, does that make you a visionary, or just Tucker Carlson? Please answer soon, I’m starting to worry about myself after this paragraph.

In any event, news coverage is now describing Williams’ proposed Orlando stadium as intended to “help lure the Tampa Bay Rays or a Major League Baseball expansion franchise to Central Florida,” which is more reasonable, or at least less laughable, than getting an expansion team while the Rays play just 100 miles away. And look, Williams also has a clear plastic binder:

According to Williams, an economic and fiscal impact study conducted by JLL, a local firm that specializes in such studies, found that the stadium complex would generate $40 billion of economic impact over the next 30 years.

JLL actually appears to be a real estate firm founded in London and now based in Chicago, but sure, they do consulting studies, even if they don’t really appear to specialize in them. Projecting $40 billion of economic impact over 30 years is an impressive feat, especially given that most baseball teams bring in less than a third of that per year in their entire business, but sure, maybe after the Great Inflation and Dollar Devaluation of 2040, $40 billion will be what you give your kid in weekly allowance. Or maybe it’s just that “economic impact” as a metric of anything is, as we’ve discussed here many a time, some bullshit — the Orlando Sentinel article that mentioned it didn’t bother to provide a link, so it could easily be just whatever number the JLL economic impact consulting crew thought would provide sufficient shock and awe to make everyone forget about the $975 million subsidy, $40 billion is a lot bigger than $975 million, so that means it must be good, right?

Even if this proposal ends up going nowhere — it still needs approval from, first off, Orange County’s new Tourist Development Tax Citizen Advisory Task Force, which is set to make spending recommendations in July — it’s likely to, as one local report puts it, “put a little more pressure on Bay Area leaders to come up with the funding to convince Rays ownership to keep the team,” which has to bring a smile to Rays owner Stu Sternberg’s face. At last, perhaps, the bidding war that he never really got going with Montreal!

But here I go burying the lede again. What you want to know is whether Williams presented any vaportecture renderings, and whether they will make you want to gouge your eyes out after seeing them. And the answer is yes, and oh yes:

Some initial thoughts:

  • That is very orange.
  • I see the Dreamers stadium will feature one of those upper decks that require a transporter beam to get to your seats, as will be all the rage with Gen Zers in the 2030s.
  • Is that video board suspended over the field, blocking the view of the game for fans in the center field upper deck?
  • Why do both teams appear to be wearing the same shade of gray uniforms? (The Dreamers, assuming that’s the team in the field, appear to be wearing orange socks perhaps, but their uniforms are decidedly gray.)
  • Is there a worse sports logo than an O with a baseball in the middle of it?
  • Why do so many fans in the foreground appear to be taking pictures of the game with 2000-era point-and-shoot cameras? Is that what phones are going to look like in the future?
  • I realize the Dreamers, and the Rays for that matter, won’t have a long history to celebrate, but who even are those people depicted on the top ribbon board? Is one of them Paul Newman?
  • OH MY GOD ARE THOSE TREES IN THE SKY

Just remember: $40 billion in economic impact. Repeat it to yourself at night, and let all your questions wash away.

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Orlando guy proposes $1.7B MLB stadium with $975m in subsidies, do I hear $1B?

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a year and change of ever-more-record-breaking public stadium funding deals, so, sure, a $1.7 billion baseball stadium, with taxpayers contributing $975 million, for a team that doesn’t exist right next to a market that’s already having trouble supporting its existing team? Cool, cool:

“We’re ready to be a major league baseball city. And a city isn’t considered major league unless it has baseball and the arts,” said Pat Williams with Orlando Dreamers Baseball…

Before the pandemic hit, Williams unveiled the logo for the Orlando Dreamers baseball team. Now, WESH 2 Investigates has reviewed his proposal submitted to Orange County and paid for in part with tourist tax dollars to build a stadium.

So, a few notes:

  • It was November 2019 when Williams, whose main claim to fame is having been a longtime exec for the Orlando Magic, unveiled plans for the Dreamers, which he said at the time would be named for such local cultural touchstones as Walt Disney and Arnold Palmer, punctuating the announcement with the world’s stodgiest social media campaign. (Ed. note: Pat Williams was born two years before Joe Biden.)
  • Asked at the time whether it made any sense to submit a bid for an expansion team in Orlando when it’s only 100 miles from Tampa Bay, which has had some notable issues with drawing fans, Williams replied, in part: “Our job with any potential owner is to make this package here so attractive, and so — how about this word — luscious, that people say, ‘We gotta get there.’ … I’m dreaming a little bit, guys. So that’s my answer there, Mike.”
  • The report from WESH-TV on Williams’ $1.7 billion stadium gambit is a little weird, or at least underannotated. It asserts that MLB “is widely expected to add two more teams next year to begin play in 2028” (no source provided); it cites a “proposal submitted to Orange County” by Williams without giving any details (it’s not on the Dreamers’ bare-bones website, which doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2019); and it notes, for no reason that I can tell, that shorter baseball games this year have allegedly led not just to higher attendance and TV ratings but also higher food and beverage sales (no link provided, just a citation of an unnamed Sports Business Journal article, which appears to be this one that actually says sales are “up almost equivalent,” which is to say down slightly).
  • The $975 million would come from “tourist tax dollars,” according to “paperwork obtained by WESH 2 Investigates” (no link provided). Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said he would like to see a “probably a billion-dollar investment by some private entity or consortium that would be able to make that a reality within our community” and also that he would like the new stadium to be near the convention center.

This is a lot, especially since MLB hasn’t even set an expansion schedule beyond “once the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays situations are dealt with,” which they are decidedly not yet. Rich and semi-rich dudes hoping for a shot at the expansion brass ring aren’t wasting any time, though, figuring that the more they get their vaporfranchises into the public discourse, the more momentum they can create to win an eventual expansion team, or at least to get on the lists of potential candidates. And throwing around ginormous stadium subsidy numbers is a great way to get attention from the lords of baseball, at least whenever they have attention to give.

The biggest danger from all this handwaving is that of our old friend anchoring: Once you establish “almost a billion dollars” as the going public price for a stadium for an expansion franchise, that figure isn’t likely to come down by much, especially not once MLB really gets a bidding war going in earnest. I can already hear you saying, But why does one octogenarian retired sports exec get to set the price that the public will be forced to pay to sports barons going forward?, to which I can only say: You must be new around here. Sorry about the mess.

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Pat Williams, mad that Orlando got snubbed for MLB’s pretend expansion list, introduces “Orlando Dreamers” logo and hat

access_time personNeil deMause

Former Orlando Magic executive Pat Williams is making an announcement right now about a possible new MLB team for Orlando, and I’m liveblogging it like it’s 2008! (Which is to say, writing down notes as it goes and then posting it all afterwards.)

Highlights:

“The next logical step is to try and become a Major League Baseball city!”

“We need a mascot! But that’s not pertinent right now. What is pertinent is finding out how badly this community wants to do this.”

“I saw a news report that Major League Baseball was considering expanding at some point to 32 teams. And then Major League Baseball announced the six markets they would be considering: Montreal, Portland, Vancouver, Nashville, Las Vegas, and Charlotte. And when I read that, my competitive blood rose, and kept rising.”

“Orlando, Florida, the 18th largest media market in the country!”

“We have a nickname. And we’re going to tell you about it. When I say Walt Disney, what comes to mind? What I say Arnold Palmer. When I say astronaut John Young. … They were all dreamers!”

“So ladies and gentlemen, may I inform you that we will be the Orlando Dreamers baseball team.”

Way too much to unpack here, starting with why Pat Williams thinks that name-checking Arnold Palmer is going to resonate with sports fans of today. (Not to go all generational politics on you, because generational politics is the opiate of the masses, but it should not escape notice that Pat Williams is 79 years old.) Mostly the takeaway should be that now that MLB has hinted that maybe someday possibly it might admit more expansion teams, every would-be team owner is jockeying to get in line; and now that the Nashville Stars have shown that you can get attention just by announcing a team name, everybody else is going to try that as well. I look forward to the flood of terrible team names that will surely result, plus the flood of terrible stadium renderings, though not so much to the public-money bidding war that MLB is almost certain to launch in order to determine which teams make the cut, once the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays stadium situations are resolved and there’s an actual cut to make.

And speaking of the Rays, surely Williams doesn’t think Orlando could get an expansion team even if the Rays are still in Tampa Bay? Someone at the press conference just asked, and Williams replied:

“At this point, all I can tell you is this. The Rays have eight years left on a lease. They have said that they are exploring this radical plan to play in two cities. … Can it happen? Well, they’re going to see if it can happen. In the meantime, our job with any potential owner is to make this package here so attractive, and so — how about this word — luscious, that people say, ‘We gotta get there.’ … I’m dreaming a little bit, guys. So that’s my answer there, Mike.”

So you are, Pat. Just like Arnold Palmer would have wanted.

UPDATE: This is what the @OrlandoDreamers Twitter just tweeted to show off the new logo and hat. Their social media director may also be 79 years old:

 

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