Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[GDAWG]

 

[GhostOfNormMacdonald]

        I love how one of the richest dudes to ever become a governor isnt a cartoonishlycorrupt dude who shills for private businesses over everything else.       not a singlepublically funded stadium has been a good investment for the state/city/  county that has done them. These guys want it both ways where they can cry poor, all while using their teams as a trophy. If you can't afford to build a new stadium, then you can't afford to have a sports franchise. PERIOD.    if I can't afford the upkeep of a boat, and I can't afford a new boat, I can't go crying to the government to buy me one. So why should these :censored:ers get hundreds of millions for their toys?    /endrant 

[The_Admiral]

What I can't get over is that it's the same guy! It's the same guy who did it last time. "If you don't give me a free stadium, I'm moving the team!" 35 years go by, "hey, me again. You're not gonna believe this."

[Red Comet]

At this point, how many people on the South Side want the clownshow that is the White Sox (no offense to the late Andy the Clown) to act on their relocation baiting? 

[throwuascenario]

On 2/23/2024 at 3:16 PM, Sec19Row53 said:

I'll take it in a different direction -- it shows the pull created by being on WGN all over the country and creating the mystique that is Wrigley Field.

 

On 2/23/2024 at 3:22 PM, pmoehrin said:

 

The White Sox had a historic ballpark that Jerry couldn't tear down fast enough, and they also had a deal with WGN to carry all the games that Reisndorf couldn't get out of fast enough because he wanted his games to be exclusively on cable.

 

The Cubs thought big; he thought small. That's always been the difference.

 

This isn't just true of the White Sox though. This is true of all teams in the NHL, NBA, and MLB. Putting games behind paywalls has been nothing short of disastrous for all of them. The NFL and the Cubs are all the proof you need that exposure should be the #1 goal of any mass entertainment entity. These teams are stepping over dollars to pick up pennies with their RSN deals.

[throwuascenario]

I don't think that publicly financed stadiums are always a bad decision. Just usually.

 

If a team provides a crucial piece of the city's identity, I think it makes sense to pay to keep them. The StL Cardinals. Any NHL team in Canada. The Lakers. The Chiefs. The Bills.

 

Teams that are one of the first things that comes to mind when people think of their city.

 

No one in the last 50 years has thought to themselves "Chicago? Oh, you mean where the White Sox play!"

 

Ship 'em to Nashville on the next bus out.

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

If a team provides a crucial piece of the city's identity, I think it makes sense to pay to keep them. The StL Cardinals.

 

Busch Stadium was privately financed, in a rare case of the Cardinals occupying the moral high ground while actually having earned it.

[LaGrandeOrange]

19 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

I don't think that publicly financed stadiums are always a bad decision. Just usually.

 

If a team provides a crucial piece of the city's identity, I think it makes sense to pay to keep them. The StL Cardinals. Any NHL team in Canada. The Lakers. The Chiefs. The Bills.

 

Teams that are one of the first things that comes to mind when people think of their city.

 

No one in the last 50 years has thought to themselves "Chicago? Oh, you mean where the White Sox play!"

 

Ship 'em to Nashville on the next bus out.

 

That cuts both ways though- the Maple Leafs aren't really the Maple Leafs if they move to Houston and these team owners know this. I think a lot of major domestic sports' expansion has struggled because we're reaching diminishing returns on the untapped markets- Vegas is already being wrung dry, and no amount of threats will make London (UK) feasible. Seattle in the NBA is probably the only real strong exception, although even there I have to imagine the Kraken have eaten into a certain amount of what the limit would be, but otherwise I think cities need to start letting teams walk. At a certain point it'd stop the whole game, because the owners would police their own- they need the leverage to make it work, and when all that's left is Omaha and Regina, the leverage will be gone.

 

Edit: I'd add Québec as a strong potential NHL market, but it's a fairly low ceiling market and it doesn't really work as leverage because it involves selling the team to PKP, who already has a sports toy now in the Als.

[FrutigerAero]

What more cities should push for is to stipulate that a team's payroll is in the top 1/3 of the league, or that at least 3,000 seats must be priced below a certain price point, etc. etc.?  People clearly want these teams, or else all these cities wouldn't be doing the funding.  So just own it!

 

For historical perspective, Dodger Stadium has always had 56,000 seats because of some sort of deal when the Dodgers moved in. 

[LaGrandeOrange]

3 hours ago, FrutigerAero said:

What more cities should push for is to stipulate that a team's payroll is in the top 1/3 of the league, or that at least 3,000 seats must be priced below a certain price point, etc. etc.?  People clearly want these teams, or else all these cities wouldn't be doing the funding.  So just own it!

 

For historical perspective, Dodger Stadium has always had 56,000 seats because of some sort of deal when the Dodgers moved in. 

 

I'd definitely be more amenable with something like this, although the payroll only really works for MLB/NBA.

[Sec19Row53]

47 minutes ago, LaGrandeOrange said:

 

I'd definitely be more amenable with something like this, although the payroll only really works for MLB/NBA.

Well, everyone can't be in the top third of payroll (or of anything, for that matter).

[FiddySicks]

On 2/27/2024 at 7:53 PM, The_Admiral said:

 

Busch Stadium was privately financed, in a rare case of the Cardinals occupying the moral high ground while actually having earned it.

I kinda think the Cardinals and Giants proved that if you really want to “revitalize” a part of your city, a park will definitely help to do that. But it’s usually a lot more feasible when all of those gains (and then some) aren't just given to the owners because they made a vague threat to move to another media market. 
 

The Giants, in particular, are proof that you can pay for your own park and still rake in money hand over fist. Even with all of the Bay Area hurdles to overcome. It just might take a decade or so longer to do that. Amazing that the A’s didn’t have this foresight in the FOUR DECADES they’ve been doing this stupid dance. 

[BBTV]

17 hours ago, LaGrandeOrange said:

Québec as a strong potential NHL market, but it's a fairly low ceiling market

 

NHL should be focusing on high floors, and not worrying about low ceilings.

 

9 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Giants proved that if you really want to “revitalize” a part of your city, a park will definitely help to do that.

 

 

I've been in the park's area a few times (mostly just to take pics of the park), but is there really anything of note there other than a Safeway, some offices, and a couple of coffee shops?  Like, is there any reason to be there when there's not a game going on?  I can't compare before and after, but even the after doesn't (as an outsider with a small sample size) seem "vitalized".

[FiddySicks]

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

I've been in the park's area a few times (mostly just to take pics of the park), but is there really anything of note there other than a Safeway, some offices, and a couple of coffee shops?  Like, is there any reason to be there when there's not a game going on?  I can't compare before and after, but even the after doesn't (as an outsider with a small sample size) seem "vitalized".

Yeah China Basin (the neighborhood where the park is) was basically skid row prior to construction. The only thing that was really there was the Pacific Bell building (where my parents met) and homeless drug addicts. It was Kensington on a smaller, 80/90s scale. 
Now it’s admittedly more “sleepy” than you would expect for a downtown ballpark, but that’s because it’s like five blocks from Market. It’s also one of the most expensive areas in the city now in terms of real estate. 

[BBTV]

But that’s kind of my point. It may have pushed the homeless and drug users into other parts of the city, but does it really bring much economic value on non game days?

 

Dont get me wrong - having something nice where there’s currently crap is better than the alternative (it’s part of why I’m Pro Sixers arena even though there’s a lot of risks and flaws with the plan), but I think that claims (not you specifically, but by most people that support new parks) of revitalization and  economic impact are often overblown. 
 

“Vitalization” is part of “revitalization”, and I think in many of these cases, it’s more like “clean up and make prettier” more so than “revitalize”. And that’s cool - I’m in favor of that… so long as it’s mostly privately financed. 

[Red Comet]

17 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Well, everyone can't be in the top third of payroll (or of anything, for that matter).

A similar clause wrt to the Dome in St. Louis is what allowed that Walmart bastard Kroenke to break the lease and bail from St. Louis. 
 

Also, what’s stopping an owner from jacking up payroll with their hat in hand asking for our hard-earned money and then slashing it back down to nothing once the stadium is built or whenever that payroll requirement clause expires? It’s what happened with the Miami Marlins. 

[FiddySicks]

3 hours ago, BBTV said:

But that’s kind of my point. It may have pushed the homeless and drug users into other parts of the city, but does it really bring much economic value on non game days?

 

Dont get me wrong - having something nice where there’s currently crap is better than the alternative (it’s part of why I’m Pro Sixers arena even though there’s a lot of risks and flaws with the plan), but I think that claims (not you specifically, but by most people that support new parks) of revitalization and  economic impact are often overblown. 
 

“Vitalization” is part of “revitalization”, and I think in many of these cases, it’s more like “clean up and make prettier” more so than “revitalize”. And that’s cool - I’m in favor of that… so long as it’s mostly privately financed. 

Well, Pac Bell Park was part of a greater revitalization plan for the entire area, but it basically covered the entire stretch on the Embarcadero down to the Ferry Building. In that sense, yes. Absolutely. That stretch was old industrial ports that weren’t being used anymore. 
 

I think the issue here is revitalization vs gentrification. China Basin is definitely the latter, if that’s what you mean. The entire city is, though. 

[kolob]

As much as this is for expansion, I still think this is a play for the A's right now, especially if they can't finalize things in Vegas.

 

 

[pmoehrin]

Utah is an odd case because even though Salt Lake City is barely a top 50 US metro area,  the Salt Lake City media market covers the entire state and bleeds into parts of Nevada and Wyoming.

 

So even though it would be the smallest metro area with an MLB team, in terms of media market, they would be ahead of several MLB clubs, whereas Vegas would be ahead of several MLB clubs when it came to metro size but dead last when it came to media market size.

 

It's also a state that's experienced 20% percentage growth in population almost every decade since the first census data was taken in 1850. The population of the state and the SLC metro area have both doubled since the Jazz moved there in '79, so I think its far more of a matter of when not if Utah gets an MLB team now that the financing aspect is set. It's just too big of a TV market for MLB to refuse.

[Fowler2]

Selected markets that don't have an MLB team at the moment:

 

Metro Rankinkgs

22. Orlando

23. Charlotte 

24. San Antonio 

25. Portland 

28. Sacramento 

29. Las Vegas

34. Indianapolis 

35. Nashville 

41. Raleigh 

46. Salt Lake City 

 

 

TV Market Rankings

16. Orlando

20. Sacramento 

21. Charlotte 

22. Raleigh

23. Portland

25. Indianapolis 

26. Nashville 

27. Salt Lake City

31. San Antonio 

40. Las Vegas