Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times: Move the Toronto Blue Jays to Venezuela

Hell, this is increasingly what you find in yay-hoo (not to be confused with yahoo although they'd certainly hire some) bloggers who think they're journalists. And their numbers are increasing daily.

 

Bang on.

From the time Skydome opened in '89 through the Jays two world series wins in '92 & '93 and up until the strike, a Jays ticket was the hottest thing in town. Seriously, it was almost as tough as getting a Leafs ticket.

And now the stadium is almost retro-quaint. Still, watching the roof open and close is very cool

As Huggy said earlier, on a nice summer day with the roof open, it's a more than an OK place to watch a game..

Lloyd Moseby had a great line: "It's like playing baseball in a mall".

 

Hey it's about time for some new stadium expansion to you know, spike the economy. We'll start with Camden Yards and Skydome. Been here, what, 20 years? They're past their prime. Let's level em and start over, at taxpayer expense. Or we'll move to Caracus.

 

A new field surface would mean a world of difference at Rogers, but apparently there's no proper drainage system beneath the facility and to install one just for grass would not be practical.

A dirt infield would be nice.

 

Well, here's an interesting nugget I dug up:

From a BLOG! of all places:

"After finally freeing himself from the tyranny that we call Canada, Joe Cowley and his journalistic stylings accompanied the Chicago White Sox to Cleveland. Friday night's attendance? 10,421 (Toronto att: 14,779). Saturday's attendance? 12,885 (Toronto: 17,187).

Looking forward to the article discussing the benefits of moving the Indians to Tijuana or wherever the fuck."

Now, I'll say this, I'm not sure if those are paid attendance figures or people through the gate or what. But, I double checked the box scores on MLB.com and the numbers quoted above are the ones reported by MLB.

 

I think Kyle Whelliston of the Mid-Majority (a great college basketball blog) called it in January 2009:

http://midmajority.com/2009/01/the-sports-bubble.php

I write this to you in the literal shadow of a true icon of America's Nonsense Era. Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the 2010 Final Four, rises up next to the Indianapolis skyline like a giant Monopoly hotel. It's a place where American-style football is played eight times a year. The regular tenant pays its employees millions of dollars each, paychecks funded by VIP tickets sold to the very same advertisers and companies struggling to explain themselves in the new logic-based economy. Working fans were priced out of the building before it was even built, and they can stay home and watch the games on free television anyway.

Does all of this make any sustainable sense to you? Doesn't this strike you as completely fucking ridiculous? Big-time American sports is just another bubble, with as fragile a meniscus as those of the dot-com boom or the failed, suburban house-as-ATM movement.



Of course, Whelliston wrote this after ESPN cut his freelance pay in half, and he decide to solicit donations from readers independently to keep up his traveling -- for which he was fired by ESPN (Whelliston ended up with $20,000, by the way, to keep himself on the road for 2009-2010).

But back to the point of Sports Bubble Stadium (as Whelliston calls Lucas Oil) and the like: even when it was built, it was becoming clear that it was getting more difficult for teams to hold their cities hostage for a new building. Lucas Oil Stadium might represent the last and best attempt, at least for a while. Cities have learned was researchers have said for years: that pro sports does not add significantly to an economy, because of a limited number of events and most fans being local. The populace, for the most part, does not consider pro sports to be the major arbiter of whether is city is high quality. Did people start thinking Los Angeles was a horseshit town because it "lost" football, or Seattle because it "lost" the NBA?

As someone noted earlier, pro sports have built their models on every team drawing like it was the wiggle room of a Chicago or New York. The model also was built on a lot of corporate sales of suites and tickets. The bigger hit to franchises has not been everyday fans no longer buying -- most of them were priced out anyway. It's the businesses dying out or cutting back that are really putting a scrimp in live gate sales. That the NBA is raising its salary cap for next season is a joke only to wring cheap publicity out of whether LeBron will go to New York, and to give teams cap space so the much-anticipated free agent season isn't a dud.

Teams are actually going to have to get savvy in selling to the marketplace they're in, because guilting people with the idea your team is going to leave otherwise isn't going to work. People know there's nowhere for you to go. They also know that, even if their sympathies are with the owners in labor disputes, that the owners are rich as hell. The Simon family is now making a big deal that it's "lost" (presuming it's all cash, which it isn't -- I'm sure depreciation and other accounting moves are thrown in, too) $200 million since buying the Pacers in 1984. Geez, at that rate, the family will be broke in about 300 years.

There is a Sports Bubble, and it's starting to deflate, even for the NFL.

 

I believe the McDonald's was where the Jays Shop is now at Gate 5 and when it opened it was one of the biggest in the world - or just North America, I can't remember. Anyway I am sure if they had to do it all over again, there would be no McDonald's there. Since turfing them out some years back they have upgraded some of the food choices even if the prices are still larcenous.

The Windows restaurant in centre field is empty most nights and I see this season they have placed huge banner ads at each end to cover some of it up. Ripping that out (and getting rid of the hotel) and opening that space up to a view of the skyline (such as it is there) would be an improvement. An expensive one, but an improvement. The Hard Rock Cafe in right field (saw Griffey hit a ball off there in BP years ago) is gone.

I'm not really sure how or when the attendance went off the rails for the Jays. The opening of the 'Dome in 1989 came at a perfect time as a the team was on its way to being one of the best in MLB. The strike didn't help but the casual fans who jumped on the bandwagon would have faded away anyway. Ambivalent ownership after Labatts sold the team didn't help either, same with losing Paul Beeston to MLB.

The corporate types who bought the season tickets and boxes put their money towards the Leafs when the ACC opened. Now the Jays have to compete with the Raptors and Toronto FC - two entities that didn't exist back in the day - not only for fans but space in the papers and on the sports channels.

If Rogers didn't own the team I think the franchise would be in big trouble. As I mentioned earlier, they use the Jays to flog their core businesses. Maybe I'm just being a looser fanboi, but I think there is a commitment to winning. It won't be anytime soon, but I think they ae going in the right direction.

 

In particular with Toronto, I would suspect rapidly changing demographics are a factor, too. A while back, I brought up a Canadian study finding a rapidly declining teen interest in the NHL, a major factor being the high foreign-born population that didn't bring an interest in the sport. (The study concluded the reason to bring a seventh NHL team to Canada was to INCREASE interest in the league, not to take advantage of it.)

Turns out the situation is even worse for baseball.

http://www.reginaldbibby.com/images/PTC_2_TEENAGE_INTEREST_IN_PRO_SPORTS.pdf

From the study:

"During the glory days of the Blue Jays in the early 1990s, 33% of teenagers said they were following Major League Baseball. Today that figure stands at only 10%." In Toronto alone, it's 13%.

(By the way, even the CFL has more interest, at 14%.)

It turns out that interest in baseball is less reflective of national origin than interest in other sports (namely, soccer and hockey). Pretty much all teenagers are ignoring it. However, the study makes the point that changing cultures and a growing sports palette in Canada makes for less "monoculture" interest in certain sports and teams.

For adults, the decline is just as preciptious -- 29% followed MLB in 1990, now only 13% do. I would suspect that losing the Expos hurts that number quite a bit, and for that matter has hurt the Blue Jays more than they would care to admit. At least with a team in Montreal, you could choose from two teams to root for in Canada. Now, it's Blue Jays or forget it.

(By the way, adult interest in the NHL fell over the same period to 30% from 36%, but interest in the CFL, NFL and NBA went up, though only 7% of Canadian adults follow the NBA.)

 

With all due respect I think that story in terms of hockey is a crock. The game has never been bigger in these parts(Vancouver) when you include the popularity of junior hockey. It has become so big in the Punjabi community that CBC has hired 2 punjabi announcer to do Canuck games.

 

That was good stuff, Elliotte.

Skydome was a phenomenon, a marvel of ingenuity, trend-setter and you can even say briefly a source of national pride. For all that OP@CY ushered in, it's still in the same predicament as the Rogers Centre. They're inhabited by two organizations that have treated their paying customers very poorly over a span of 15 years.

 

Elliotte,

Interesting stuff. Don't know about building somewhere other than right downtown, sure parking is tough to find - and very expensive - but getting to the 'Dome is a breeze on public transit.

How much cheaper would the 'Dome had been if they had passed on the hotel (did they ever include the fitness club and movie theatre that were part of the original plans?), hadn't had to redo the plans because there were no washroomn included and not had to endure a trades strike?