Nashville as MLB Expansion/Relocation Market

[Bark At The Sun]

1 hour ago, tragenvol said:

Correct assumption about attendance.  Watching the Reds FSOH broadcast from  St. Louis last night, Brennaman and Welsh were gushing over the attendance averages at Busch Stadium and mentioned that if the Reds hadn't been so bad over the last five years...attendance would be better at GAB.

Reds have given their fans hope so far.   Only Houston and Tampa have allowed fewer runs through the first 60 games this year.   They are in a good division to be in as well.....only 5.5 out of first.   Looking forward to going back in the fall.

[bnacincy]

The Reds are celebrating their 150th year! And I still haven't been to a game since I moved up here!

When I was younger I watched the Big Red Machine but except for 1990 I haven't kept up.

It's quite a tradition up here though, the atmosphere of Downtown, the Riverfront and GAB is hard to beat.

[Bark At The Sun]

12 hours ago, bnacincy said:

The Reds are celebrating their 150th year! And I still haven't been to a game since I moved up here!

When I was younger I watched the Big Red Machine but except for 1990 I haven't kept up.

It's quite a tradition up here though, the atmosphere of Downtown, the Riverfront and GAB is hard to beat.

150 year celebration is a cool thing for the city.  This past saturday was Joe Morgan Bobblehead day.   Was able to get one and will be giving to my Dad.  

[japan]

On 5/20/2019 at 2:19 PM, Ingram said:

Interesting how everyone keeps harping about MLB's attendance while MLS teams have far fewer games and outside of Kansas City, Portland, and Salt Lake City most teams attendance appear to be 50% to 75% of capacity.

Seattle and Atlanta also have great attendance.

[BnaBreaker]

4 hours ago, japan said:

Seattle and Atlanta also have great attendance.

agreed... and obviously MLB is still a vastly more 'major' league than MLS, but the point is that MLS is on a sharp upward trajectory in terms of popularity, whereas MLB seems to be sliding in popularity, even if there are still enough fans in large markets to fill stadiums on most days.

[Bark At The Sun]

Congrats to Vanderbilt on another NCAA Championship in baseball.   Now spend some money and build an upper deck at Hawkins Field so we can create a new thread here.

[titanhog]

1 hour ago, Bark At The Sun said:

Congrats to Vanderbilt on another NCAA Championship in baseball.   Now spend some money and build an upper deck at Hawkins Field so we can create a new thread here.

 

I hope they rip up that artificial turf and plant real grass before they go and build an upper deck. 

[Andy20]

32 minutes ago, titanhog said:

I hope they rip up that artificial turf and plant real grass before they go and build an upper deck. 

New AD just stated they are getting new artificial turf this offseason.

[titanhog]

1 hour ago, Andy20 said:

New AD just stated they are getting new artificial turf this offseason.

Yuck.

[bigeasy]

The artificial turf makes tons of sense, esp for the climate here. They run the risk of losing lots of practice time and/or games being canceled by having grass/dirt. Plus the technology has changed lots for turf. UK and UT switched to it this year.

[titanhog]

1 hour ago, bigeasy said:

The artificial turf makes tons of sense, esp for the climate here. They run the risk of losing lots of practice time and/or games being canceled by having grass/dirt. Plus the technology has changed lots for turf. UK and UT switched to it this year.

I get it.  I just don't like it.  Especially turf in the infield and even base paths.

[markhollin]

Rumors are persisting about the sale of the Baltimore Orioles and them being relocated to Nashville. 

Simply no way of this happening as there is no facility that could host MLB anywhere near on the horizon, nor is there the appetite for public financing (to one degree or another) for a stadium. 

Nevertheless, it is interesting that these type rumors are circulating, as more people keep thinking of Nashville as a major league city.

https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2019/08/13/in-baltimore-rumors-of-an-orioles-move-to.html?iana=hpmvp_nsh_news_headline

[MidTenn1]

And of the 'new' stadiums, Baltimore set the standard. They were the first to get away from the cookie-cutter, multi-sport format and build a stadium that was an homage to the older, great stadiums. They put it downtown and revitalized an older neighborhood near the waterfront. I've been there. It is a top five ballpark. Why would they leave?

[titanhog]

Yeah...it’s hard to imagine supporting 70-80 home games a year right now in another sport and building a new stadium.

[Outskirts]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2019/08/13/despite-the-rumors-orioles-will-almost-assuredly-remain-in-baltimore/#5c21a5e02a11

[PruneTracy]

38 minutes ago, PHofKS said:

Why would they leave?

Well, they are 28th in the show for total attendance (only ahead of perennial empty-stadium teams Tampa Bay and Miami). The city's population is continuing to decline and the O's do not have a national fanbase they can fall back on. I'm sure the relocation of the Expos to DC did not help either. Not saying they are moving but their future is not exactly on an upward trajectory.

(On a side note, the average attendance of the Marlins this year is less than the capacity of First Tennessee Park. In fact the Sounds are only drawing about 2,000 less per game on average in the first year of a new affiliation deal with a mediocre major-league team and a crap farm system.)

Edited August 13, 2019 by PruneTracy

[Tyrone Wiggum]

On 6/8/2019 at 3:29 PM, BnaBreaker said:

agreed... and obviously MLB is still a vastly more 'major' league than MLS, but the point is that MLS is on a sharp upward trajectory in terms of popularity....

Attendance for the first half of the season is down almost double digits.  TV ratings are down.  The league appears to be a Ponzi scheme. But, yeah, MLS; that's the ticket!

 

 

Edited August 13, 2019 by Tyrone Wiggum

[MidTenn1]

50 minutes ago, Outskirts said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2019/08/13/despite-the-rumors-orioles-will-almost-assuredly-remain-in-baltimore/#5c21a5e02a11

Thanks for the post, but this article is more of an opinion piece than journalism, in my opinion. I'm don't know what 'almost assuredly' means, anyway.

There is a point made about encroaching on broadcast markets, but the Reds and Cardinals web sites don't show any radio affiliates in the Nashville metro area. Braves fans are generational and I doubt loyalties will change drastically if an American League team were to come here. Indeed a couple of Braves games in Nashville would reinforce those loyalties, I think. Goodness knows, I saw plenty of Nashville Steelers fans at Titans games and 'Predwings' at Bridgestone over the years. 

I KNOW it is a long shot!!! But, drive around town and look at the miraculous growth occurring everywhere in town. I'm not writing anything off. 

[titanhog]

Not to take us too far off the subject...but I just wonder if live sports in general will be a totally different animal in the next 10-20 years?  I really think it's going to become comfort & amenities over pure numbers...meaning your stadiums are possibly going to become more intimate...with less seats and more "suites"...much higher ticket prices (meaning your wealthy and corporate people will be even more important to sustaining your team's bottom line).

NASCAR will eventually shrink back to mostly southern markets with tracks less than 50k (and probably be more healthy in the long-run).  Baseball will start building under 30k parks (heavy in corporate suites).  Basketball arenas will remain the same size...but with more and more suites.   Even SEC football may one day be more about smaller stadiums with 3-4X the suites they use now.

[BnaBreaker]

57 minutes ago, Tyrone Wiggum said:

Attendance for the first half of the season is down almost double digits.  TV ratings are down.  The league appears to be a Ponzi scheme. But, yeah, MLS; that's the ticket!

 

 

Huh... not really sure how you can dig up a quote from two months prior and hold that person accountable for not being aware of something that hadn't happened yet, but you go ahead and count that as a 'win' if you need it that badly.  However, regardless of the numbers from your very small sample size of one half of one season, my point still stands, which is that despite ebbs and flows the MLS is on a general upward trajectory, whereas the MLB is on a general downward trajectory, having seen steep attendance declines in each of the last four seasons.  It'll probably level off before too long though.  

[PaulChinetti]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26857513/mlb-attendance-4th-straight-year

Baseball down.

https://blog.koresoftware.com/blog/looking-at-mls-attendance-over-the-years

MLS attendance looks pretty good to me. They averaged 21, 875 last year, which is 91.5% of capacity. Atlanta and Seattle both average over 40k, damn! That is getting close to NFL/College football numbers. Doesn't have this year's stats yet as they are only about halfway through the season. Seems like MLS might have overtaken MLB in popularity.

[NashWellington11]

1 hour ago, PruneTracy said:

Well, they are 28th in the show for total attendance (only ahead of perennial empty-stadium teams Tampa Bay and Miami). The city's population is continuing to decline and the O's do not have a national fanbase they can fall back on. I'm sure the relocation of the Expos to DC did not help either. Not saying they are moving but their future is not exactly on an upward trajectory.

(On a side note, the average attendance of the Marlins this year is less than the capacity of First Tennessee Park. In fact the Sounds are only drawing about 2,000 less per game on average in the first year of a new affiliation deal with a mediocre major-league team and a crap farm system.)

Having recently moved back to Nashville after an extended stint in DC, I can assure you that the Nats are most definitely hurting the Orioles. People forget how close Baltimore and DC are geographically. In many ways they operate as one metropolitan area. A lot of people who grew up in DC were Redskins fans for NFL and Orioles fans for MLB. A lot of that shifted when the Nats came to town. There is ongoing litigation between the teams because the Orioles have the better TV contract and it prevents many Nats games from being televised the way they otherwise would be. Despite that, there are FAR more people who  fall into the typical demographic that follows the MLB in DC than in Baltimore.

Not to mention DC and its suburbs are growing rapidly (almost at Nashville levels!) while Baltimore is losing population. And despite all of Baltimore's downtown revitalization efforts, downtown Baltimore still feels really dead. Even on a weekday with all of the office workers. I chalk quite a bit of that to geography. The bay prevents the city from being fully surrounded by suburbs and distributing the population around the core. So while downtown may be the geographic center of the city, it is not the population center of the city, making it harder to get people from the suburbs to go downtown . You have a lot of Cool Springs and Sandy Springs (ATL) type areas where the suburban dwellers and workers congregate instead of having those businesses and attractions downtown. 

As much as it will piss off anyone on here who is from Baltimore... at this pace Baltimore will soon be DC's equivalent of Fort Wort/St. Paul/Newark.

Edited August 13, 2019 by NashWellington11

[Tyrone Wiggum]

Wow.  I say this in the Charlotte thread but it bears repeating here (I only wandered in when I saw it was trending on the landing page):

In the majority of major tv markets nobody gives a rat's ass about MLS: eight of the top ten TV markets in the country are in the bottom half of MLS attendance; in Chicago, a lot of us were surprised by The Fire moving back to Soldier Field, not because it was important news, but because we forgot we even have an MLS team.

And, I'm not caping up for baseball; that's been a regional sport for over a decade that is facing nothing but headwinds, but baseball dominates in its markets with its local tv partners, on top of averaging over three times as many viewers for a run-of-the-mill national broadcast.

MLS attendance is tanking this year, with only six of twenty-two markets showing flat or improved attendance (The Fire is down over 20%).

If your business model is convincing billionaires to pony up hundreds of millions of dollars for pub soccer that sports fans in NYC, Chicago, Dallas, DC, Philly, etc. couldn't care less about, you have a Ponzi Scheme, not a product,

Edited August 14, 2019 by Tyrone Wiggum

[Tennessine]

3 hours ago, PruneTracy said:

Well, they are 28th in the show for total attendance (only ahead of perennial empty-stadium teams Tampa Bay and Miami).

Much of the problem there is that the O's are terrible. They had consecutive losing seasons from 1997 to 2011. They fielded a couple of decent teams this decade but proceeded to sink to rock bottom the past two seasons. 

[musiczealot]

In my opinion, if Nashville were to ever get a relocated MLB team it would come from Oakland, Tampa, and possibly Arizona.  All have major stadium issues and attendance issues even while fielding competitive teams.

 

It's a good sign that Nashville continues to get mentioned as a possible relocation market.