Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[gosioux76]

The assumptions made by the Rays ownership group in this story are mind-boggling:

• They believe cutting the number of games in half will improve revenues because demand for the remaining games will increase.
• They believe this scheme could create some weird economic development symbiosis between Tampa and Montreal
• They believe it will make the team a tourist draw (from vacationing Quebekers, I presume?)
• And despite all of this, they seem to believe that the fans will somehow embrace all this. Because if they don't, the whole idea falls to pieces. 

Just mind boggling.

[Maroon]

Considering two people on this page alone used the word "floundering" to describe the Florida franchises and their attendance, how about move the Rays to Montreal and split the Marlins between St. Pete and Miami and call them the Florida Flounders. Heck, have them play a few games in Orlando and they could get licensing rights from Disney for this bad boy to appear in their logo:

 

[GhostOfNormMacdonald]

I can't wait for the Rays to return home from their road trip to an empty(ier) stadium. I want to see if fans boycott to tell Stu to :censored: off or finally show up to try and convince him to stay. Previous is more likely

[CardsFan79]

I thought I read in some of the articles about yesterday's press conference that the Montreal Group was going to have their own press conference today, but I can't find any info on it.  Did they hold one or did I make all that up in my mind?

[Survival79]

6 hours ago, CardsFan79 said:

I thought I read in some of the articles about yesterday's press conference that the Montreal Group was going to have their own press conference today, but I can't find any info on it.  Did they hold one or did I make all that up in my mind?

 

Montreal businessman on Rays' future: 'It's a full-time team played in 2 places'

Montreal, QC — Canadian businessmen Stephen Bronfman and Pierre Boivin acknowledged Wednesday St. Petersburg’s mayor would have to give the Tampa Bay Rays approval to begin pursuing the possibility of splitting home games between two cities.

 

Bronfman’s investment company, Claridge, and development company Devimco are teaming up to try to bring Major League Baseball back to Montreal.

 

"We really have a real chance to have a team in Montreal today," Bronfman said.

 

The Rays’ lease runs through the 2027 season at Tropicana Field. Under the team’s current agreement, the Rays can’t pursue hosting home games outside of St. Petersburg during that time period.

 

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman said Tuesday the city would "not participate in the funding of a new stadium for a part-time team."

 

"It’s a full-time team," Bronfman said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference. "It’s just played in two places."

 

The Rays would have to reach a memorandum of understanding with the city of St. Petersburg before they could negotiate playing home games elsewhere, in this case between the Tampa Bay area and Montreal.

 

The Montreal group needs approval from St. Petersburg before devising a business model, Bronfman said.

 

The Montreal Expos left Canada after the 2004 season when the franchise moved to Washington, D.C.

 

Bronfman and Boivin have gotten MLB’s approval to pursue the two-city plan while they wait for St. Petersburg.

 

"We've got an opportunity to explore and study this sister-city concept," Bronfman said. "Hats off to MLB for their innovative thinking."

 

Bronfman called the split-city concept "groundbreaking," comparing it to massive sharing-economy companies like Airbnb and Uber.

 

A North American professional sports team – which includes MLB, the NFL, the NHL and the NBA – has never had a team evenly split its home games for an entire season.

 

Before the Montreal Expos moved from Montreal to Washington, D.C. in 2005, the team played 22 home games in Puerto Rico in 2003 and 2004.

 

Bronfman admitted to having conversations with Rays owner Stuart Sternberg. Bronfman said he didn't ask Sternberg to buy the team, but he did ask about relocating the Rays.

 

During Wednesday’s news conference, Bronfman and Boivin didn’t say how much an open-air stadium would cost or how it would be financed.

 

"We’re not going to start building a stadium without a definitive plan," Boivin said.

 

Bronfman said it might make more fiscal sense to build an open-air stadium used for part of the year because the seats higher up in any stadium or arena don’t provide as much return on investment as the closer, more expensive seats. He also admitted inclement weather in both Tampa Bay and Montreal could lead to postponed games and doubleheaders.

 

A new open-air stadium in Montreal could also be used for concerts and football, according to Bronfman.

 

Bronfman said it wasn’t his call for how soon it could be until Montreal hosts MLB games again. He said it would take about three years to build a new stadium.

 

Bronfman said he would like for his 88-year-old father to see the first pitch if MLB returns to Montreal.

 

While Bronfman didn’t dismiss the possibility of playing at the Expos’ old home, Olympic Stadium, for the first few years, he said MLB prefers a new downtown stadium before bringing a team to Montreal.

 

Bronfman also acknowledged the necessity of getting the MLB Players’ Association on board with a split-city concept.

 

Sports agent Scott Boras told the Tampa Bay Times he didn’t think any player moving midseason was "workable." Boras said he couldn’t envision the Players’ Association agreeing to the split season because he said it would affect players, their performance and their families.

 

Bronfman said while Boras was one key voice, it would be a "team effort" to get the Players’ Association to agree to a team hosting home games in two cities. It would take a "lot of lobbying and a lot of work," Bronfman said.

 

Like Sternberg and Rays management suggested Tuesday, Bronfman said the team could have a higher player payroll by splitting the season between two cities.

 

"It's hard to fight against a behemoth [the New York Yankees]," Bronfman said.

[CardsFan79]

Thank you Survival79!

[CardsFan79]

After reading Bronfman's statements, I wonder if he/his group were told that they'd be given a team one way or another if they play along with this joke for the time being?  I can't believe that they've put in all this work to bring baseball back to Montreal to settle for a ridiculous team sharing plan, nor can I believe that they actually think it's a good idea.

[Survival79]

3 minutes ago, CardsFan79 said:

Thank you Survival79!

 

You're welcome! Here's an email the team just sent out.

 

Subject: Tampa Bay Rays Sister City Concept

 

[PrimalCookie]

41 minutes ago, Survival79 said:

 

You're welcome! Here's an email the team just sent out.

 

Subject: Tampa Bay Rays Sister City Concept

 

The noses of Sternberg and everyone else involved with this email just grew 10 feet.

[mania]

On 6/24/2019 at 4:06 PM, Magic Dynasty said:

The Rays consistently get high TV ratings

 

This is a myth.

 

Their TV ratings are on the lower end. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2018/10/04/2018-mlb-regional-tv-ratings-in-primetime-shows-continued-strong-popularity/#21d746d46257

[PrimalCookie]

5 minutes ago, mania said:

 

This is a myth.

 

Their TV ratings are on the lower end. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2018/10/04/2018-mlb-regional-tv-ratings-in-primetime-shows-continued-strong-popularity/#21d746d46257

I'll admit defeat on this one. I remember hearing about high TV ratings, but I guess that was wrong.

[marlinfan]

7 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

The regional Florida team is probably the best solution, though it’s impossible considering what Miami did for the Marlins in exchange for rebranding themselves as “Miami’s team”. 

 

 Miami Marlins in Tampa Bay of Florida

[Red Comet]

 

Mrw Montreal has caught the stupidity virus. Again, gambit or not, this is Browns fans thinking they'll win the Super Bowl level of stupid.

 

[Survival79]

7 hours ago, Maroon said:

Considering two people on this page alone used the word "floundering" to describe the Florida franchises and their attendance, how about move the Rays to Montreal and split the Marlins between St. Pete and Miami and call them the Florida Flounders. Heck, have them play a few games in Orlando and they could get licensing rights from Disney for this bad boy to appear in their logo:

 

 

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[Cosmic]

12 hours ago, McCarthy said:

the Browns players' contracts were shifted to a different franchise the same way they would be in a trade

And what exactly did the Browns get for that whopper of a trade? A three-year vacation?

[marlinfan]

8 hours ago, Maroon said:

Considering two people on this page alone used the word "floundering" to describe the Florida franchises and their attendance, how about move the Rays to Montreal and split the Marlins between St. Pete and Miami and call them the Florida Flounders. Heck, have them play a few games in Orlando and they could get licensing rights from Disney for this bad boy to appear in their logo:

 

 

Two or three mid-week series a year in Orlando, Jacksonville, SW Florida and Tampa wouldn’t be a bad idea to build support for the team around the state.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

14 hours ago, Gothamite said:

But in the case of the Yankees and the 1901-02 Orioles, what exactly is the point? 

 

The point is the principle that historical events should be recorded as they actually happened.

 

In this particular case, the principal was violated just so the Yankees' history wouldn't be contaminated by events in another city. Even when I was a Yankee fan I would have thought that that was cheesy.

 

And in the Browns' case, it was done in order to ensure that there would be no lawsuits. This reasoning is less cheesy than the reasoning in the Yankees case, but no less dishonest.

 

 

12 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

I used to be far more hardcore about this before I realized, it’s just sports. It’s just the stories of the games

 

13 hours ago, McCarthy said:

It's just sports. None of this is real.

 

This "it's just sports" line of argument just will not do at all.

 

Earlier in the thread, the phenomenon of anti-Stratfordianism was mentioned. Someone could similarly dismiss that assault on history: What does it matter? It's just a bunch of stories.

 

You might wish to  retort that literature matters, and sports do not. But we could easily find people who would maintain that sports matter and literature does not.

 

The truth is that both of these things matter — and for the same reason. That reason is that both literature and sports are pillars of our culture.

 

 

13 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

and as long as independent accounts say what really happened, teams and leagues can do whatever the heck they want.

 

But no independent accounts will ever have the weight of a league's official record book.

 

 

11 hours ago, mjrbaseball said:

I count records the way I think they should be counted, not the way someone (even the league) tells me to.

 

As you should. However, your good practice influences precisely no one, while a league's official history informs what the vast majority of people now and in the future will accept as real.

 

 

13 hours ago, McCarthy said:

the Browns players' contracts were shifted to a different franchise the same way they would be in a trade, and the Browns franchise was put on hold until the time when a new group could get the franchise back on the field.

 

This describes how it would have been if the NFL had created a new expansion team in Baltimore and had granted it to Art Modell, and if the Browns had actually gone on hiatus in the way one NFL team did during World War II.

 

But what actually happened was that the franchise moved, and was originally going to be called the Baltimore Browns. Then litigation was threatened, so the league came up with the plan to play "let's pretend" with the facts of history in order to appease the would-be litigants.

 

 

13 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

The stakes are fairly low and localized.

 

The stakes are neither low nor localised, because every act of this sort encourages more of them. MLS specifically cited the Cleveland Browns when it cooked up the fantasy version of the history of the San Jose Earthquakes' move to Houston.

 

More fundamentally, this practice erodes the value of intellectual honesty.

[Around the Horn]

OK after reading the article about the Montreal people and the email from the Rays (thanks @Survival79 for posting) I think it's pretty clear that they do not actually intend to split seasons between Montreal and Tampa Bay but they have to act like they do in order to make one of the two cities bite on a stadium.

 

I would be very interested to see how they reacted if neither city bites by 2027 or whenever and they actually have to go through with this.

[MDGP]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

You might wish to  retort that literature matters, and sports do not. But we could easily find people who would maintain that sports matter and literature does not.

 

I'm not going to maintain literature doesn't matter, but it's ridiculous that people on this site say sports don't matter. Sports are a major part of our identity. Hell, you can't truly understand the history of the United States without baseball. Sports have played a major part of the civil rights movement, played a role in the cold war, helped repair relations with Japan after WW2, created some of our most noted celebrities, provides insight to labor issues, antitrust, regularly gets roped into politics, national and local. 

 

Sure, what name a team uses may not appear that big of a deal, but recording those histories correctly can provide insight on how capitalism and consumerism impact sports in more ways than people realize. Hell, we talk about that every single day here. 

 

We should preserve history as best we can, even if the matters seem trivial, because that's how future generations learn and adapt. Besides, isn't it easier to just pretend the new Hornets are the old hornets if it means that much to you than bending over backwards to rewrite history?

[Wings]

12 hours ago, Maroon said:

Considering two people on this page alone used the word "floundering" to describe the Florida franchises and their attendance, how about move the Rays to Montreal and split the Marlins between St. Pete and Miami and call them the Florida Flounders. Heck, have them play a few games in Orlando and they could get licensing rights from Disney for this bad boy to appear in their logo:

 

 

 

Stu Sternberg's true identity revealed: