For years, I have been actively involved in the process of MLB relocation or expansion. I do not work for Major League Baseball, but I have been directly involved in efforts by one market (Portland, OR.), and long since that tent folded, have continued to look at markets and the challenges with all of them, in rating them.
What I have never done is give the secret sauce on what will allow markets that currently don’t have an MLB team how to land one.
Until now.
Below are the steps that civic leaders, politicians, and boosters need to do in order to give themselves the best shot. None of them are easy. There will be considerable financial resources to bear. There will be political capital burned. There will be forces—both within baseball and outside of it—that will seek to derail it all. But, if you start now, you have a better shot than any in making it happen.
First things first: nothing on expansion happens until the Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays get new facilities. That does not point to it happening as part of relocation, or rather, should they fail to get new ballparks where they have homes now, relocation within their own operating territory as defined by the MLB constitution and bylaws would need to happen. Relocation outside of them is far too difficult, which we’ll get into in a bit.
You’re Small-To-Mid-Sized, So Count What Makes You As Big As You Can Be
Commissioner Manfred has said that he sees baseball as a growth industry, and with it, expansion to 32 teams is something he’d like to see. The problem for he and the owners is, all the big markets have clubs already, or at least that’s the case in the continental U.S. This is a concern for the owners as the last thing they want is another mouth to feed as a revenue-sharing taker, not maker.
To allow for the best chance of success in small-to-mid markets, it is not just population base that needs to come into account. Yes, you start with the population in the city proper, as well as outlying cities and towns in relatively close proximity, but there’s other factors that can help make or break your market.
- How many other professional and collegiate programs would compete with an MLB club? – This gets into population base per franchise. This impacts how diluted the disposable income of your market has to spend on sports entertainment. A market that is already full of pro sports options, or storied college brands offers challenges for sponsorships, season ticket holders, and single-day ticket sales.
- How many Fortune 500 or 1000 companies are in your market? – Large corporations account for not only sponsorships, but potentially large blocks of season ticket and suite sales. Your market needs more than just average fans and the more large businesses in the market are going to make that happen.
Speaking Of Making Yourself Look Big, How Big Is Your Television Market?
Television and digital media rights are the most impactful aspect of sports business in the last 20 years. Markets will find challenges to them from other MLB clubs (with one exception, more on that in a bit), and remember, the available markets are almost all small or mid-sized. Look at the Designated Market Size (DMA) for TV market size (here is the most recent list in PDF). This is what is going to drive the ever-important local television deal you need to reach with a regional sports network. So, for example, while markets such as Portland, San Antonio, Charlotte, and Las Vegas have repeatedly surfaced in the past for discussions about placement of an MLB club with conversation centered on relatively close population sizes, when it comes to television market size, the differences can be fairly large. While Charlotte (No. 22) and Portland (No. 24) are fairly close, San Antonia (No. 33) and Las Vegas (No. 40) are much smaller in terms of their television universe.
No Matter Where In The U.S. You Are, You’re Part Of Another MLB’s TV Market
The biggest challenge to expansion for MLB in the U.S. centers on the painful fact that the entire country is blanketed by the other 29 clubs (and in Canada, the Blue Jays, Mariners, Twins, and Red Sox control all of the country) with television territories. For Charlotte, if they want to look at a broadcast territory that would just blanket North Carolina, they would need to indemnify the Baltimore Orioles, Washington Nationals, and Cincinnati Reds. If San Antonio wanted to do a deal that would encompass Texas, they would have to indemnify the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros. For Portland, and the state of Oregon, the same would hold true with the Seattle Mariners, Oakland A’s, and San Francisco Giants. And for Las Vegas they have to deal with (takes deep breath) the A’s, Giants, San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Dodgers, LA Angels, and Arizona Diamondbacks.
While he won’t admit it, this tangled web of television territories is why Commissioner Manfred has looked to Montreal, where there is less competition, and Mexico City, where there are no clubs that claim the market at all.
So, if you want an expansion team, you’re going to have to get creative on how to not only create a reasonably sized TV territory to allow for critical revenues to flow in, but also figure out how to make up taking that territory from one or more other clubs that already claimed it. To show how problematic this is, to allow the then Montreal Expos to relocate to Washington, DC, the creation of Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) was created as a new regional sports network that would air both Nationals (the former Expos) and Orioles games, yet see the Orioles with the majority stake. This seemed to make good sense at the time. But with the explosion in media rights, the arrangement that sees a provision where MASN would pay the Nationals "fair market value" had the Orioles balking and has thrown the whole thing into one messy and massive court battle.
So, if you’re a market looking to land a team, put on your creative thinking cap and try and figure out how to make others happy around television… unless you are Mexico City. Yes, the international market may have other issues to deal with (travel, crime, disposable income, etc.), but TV territory encroachment isn’t one of them.
Start Looking At Property Downtown For The Ballpark
While there has been cases in the past (Kaufmann Stadium in Kansas City) and in the future (the new Braves stadium being built in Cobb Co.) MLB likes to have ballparks built in the downtown urban landscape where public transportation is available, and views look great on television. Unlike any other sport, baseball is one in which the ball can be tracked out to the outer edges of the facilities and having picturesque views makes for grand visuals in the summer months.
The hunt for room for a ballpark in downtown locations can be problematic depending on density. And finding locations where parking structures close to public transportation becomes even more difficult. While you’re out driving, start looking. And then when you find it, start thinking about…
How Much Money You Got?
I mentioned at the outset that financial and political capital is going to get burned bringing an MLB club to your market. It’s not fair. It’s not right. But, if you want a club bad enough, prepare to fork out a whole lot more money than the owners will be putting in. When the rubber hits to road, markets need to think about not only money to build the ballpark, which can total well in excess of $1 billion, but can potentially see added costs such as the infrastructure around the ballpark. If markets are smart, they also get it in writing that any cost overruns come at the expense of the club, not the city. Getting all this money can come in a variety of ways, including increased sales taxes, hotel and car rental taxes, in-stadium taxes (harder to do as it takes money away from owners), and if you have state income taxes, you can do like Portland did and use player income taxes (both the home and away players) to cover part of the construction costs. Smart local, state, and regional governments figure out ways to find a guarantor should tax rates fall below bond payment thresholds.
Bits And Pieces (Binding Advance Season Ticket Deposits, Interim Ballpark, Build It And They Might Come)
As we’ve seen in Las Vegas, if you build a sports facility (in this case, T-Mobile Arena), and get fans to make deposits on season tickets that are binding (locking in investment), you can get a pro expansion club. In this case, from the NHL. If you want to create options to allow a expansion to happen before the state-of-the-art ballpark is built, you can tout any interim ballpark to hold a team for a season or two. For relocation, this worked well for the Expos to DC in the form of RFK Stadium.
Finally, you can risk it all by building a ballpark without binding commitment from Major League Baseball. This is highly risky and does not guarantee that a club will appear shortly after. As some history, the then Suncoast Dome in St. Petersburg was unveiled in March of 1990 at a cost of $138 million ($252.43 million when accounting for inflation in today’s dollars) yet did not see the expansion Devil Rays arrive until awarded in 1995 and would not begin play until 1998, eight years after its completion.
So, there you have it. There’s the challenges. Get your mayor, governor, and fans going. Fend off anti-tax groups. Figure out how to placate other MLB clubs that currently claim your market. Figure out how to compete with the other sports in your markets. Track down corporate sponsors. And above all, find mountains of cash somewhere in-between the couch cushions. That’s all it’s going to take. There’s the secrets to making it happen.
