Charlotte MLB Team Speculation

[HopHead]

I've heard the Derek Jeter rumor before too... Not specific to Charlotte, just that he may be a prospective owner in the future. He's also good friends with Michael Jordan, who already has a local presence... That guy has a few bucks too. With all his sponsorships and ownership he's the highest paid retired athlete. He made over $100M last year alone.

[jednc]

1 hour ago, ah59396 said:

Well the Rays are the least valuable team in baseball and their 2016 valuation was $650m according to Forbes.

I don't even think A Rod has that kind of dough.  It's going to take an ownership group to bring a team here.

That's an excellent point. I too was really talking about a majority owner. I'm guessing there aren't many teams out there in any of the "big four" leagues that aren't owned by a group of owners rather than a single owner. I could be wrong about that though.

[Skyybutter]

My life would be complete if Charlotte finally landed its MLB team!!!!!!!! 

[Deleted.]

4 hours ago, Skyybutter said:

My life would be complete if Charlotte finally landed its MLB team!!!!!!!! 

Well then, you better be fairly young. 

[HopHead]

During fanfest today for the MLB All Star Game, Commissioner Manfred explicitly said Charlotte as one of 3 cities for expansion. They need to resolve the issues in Oakland and Tampa first, bit interesting to hear it as the only US city mentioned. If we do go after a MLB team, hopefully it's run better than the MLS bid. 

 http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-expansion-wont-happen-right-away-but-rob-manfred-has-three-cities-in-mind/amp/

Edited July 11, 2017 by HopHead

[KJHburg]

Montreal, Mexico City and Charlotte? Interesting for MLB to consider us but they are lacking some teams in the fasting growing south. 2 teams in Florida 1 in Georgia, 1 in DC but the Carolinas are a huge gap. Could BB&T ballpark even be expanded?  I hope we were not mentioned just to get a proposal for some existing team to possibly move to but they have to be looking at the population growth in the Carolinas. I learned to never say never. 

[cltbwimob]

2 hours ago, KJHburg said:

Montreal, Mexico City and Charlotte? Interesting for MLB to consider us but they are lacking some teams in the fasting growing south. 2 teams in Florida 1 in Georgia, 1 in DC but the Carolinas are a huge gap. Could BB&T ballpark even be expanded?  I hope we were not mentioned just to get a proposal for some existing team to possibly move to but they have to be looking at the population growth in the Carolinas. I learned to never say never. 

BB&T ballpark cannot be expanded; however the land that BB&T is on plus the area across Graham bounded by MLK, Graham, 4th, and the NS tracks would be more than ample space for an MLB stadium.  Of course that would require tearing down BB&T ballpark and Circa apartments as well as closing Graham between MLK and 4th street, but the plot of land itself would be ideal for an MLB stadium.  

The view from BB&T is one of the best in all of baseball, minors or majors.  Think about that view being shown on Sunday night baseball, and think about 2-2.5 million fans per year milling about downtown eating at restaurants, drinking at bars, traversing Romare Bearden, and of course, taking in that beautiful view live and in person.

MLB in downtown Charlotte would be fantastic.

[videtur quam contuor]

Charlotte is in the team broadcast area for Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore and Cincinnati (!?). Thus those teams would require a major payment to forego their current broadcast zone and viewer numbers. Even if those numbers are small to vanishing. Montreal and Mexico City have no broadcast sharing areas, except all Canada is Jays and thus easily divisible and not a US decision in in any case.

[ah59396]

I still think we will end up with the Rays.  The Trop loses its naming rights in 2026, but I think they'll be moving out of there before then.  I'm not confident they will get a deal done, especially after the way the Marlins fleeced Miami so badly.  I went to a game at the Trop earlier this season on a Saturday and it was basically empty...and creepy silent.  

I'm still confident if we landed the Rays in Charlotte, the initial growing pains of a new franchise would be offset by being in the AL East and getting to host the Red Sox, Yankees, Orioles and Blue Jays, all teams with huge fan bases that travel well.  Out of the 81 home games the Charlotte team would have, 38 of them would involve those 4 teams.  At least for the first decade or so until the team began to build a real fan base.

Anyways, it's not unrealistic to imagine that they Rays opt to move in the early 2020's when the city of Charlotte population crests the million mark.  The Knights Stadium will be close to a decade old (crazy, I know) and the city can probably sell the people on either turning into a multi-use facility or tearing it down and rebuilding a major league field.  Especially if we are getting a $500 - $700m park, I think it'd be pretty easy to justify tearing down a $54m one.

[cityboi]

I question if there is even a political will on tearing down BB&T Ballpark after it was just built. Its a spankin brand new ballpark. They tore down the Charlotte Coliseum but it was a good 20 plus years old and even then people complained about that.  Id love to see major league baseball in Charlotte but maybe city leaders should have listened to Jerry Reece who filed law suit after law suit to stop the construction of BB&T Ballpark. Charlotte could have stuck it out another 5 years or so in Ft Mill. It seemed like Charlotte wanted to quickly jump on the bandwagon of having a downtown ballpark after several cities in the state built them. A little patience and we could be talking about a plan right now for a state-of-the-art major league ballpark in uptown Charlotte. Jerry Reece saw it coming. At the very least the city or county should have purchased additional land and closed down a street or two so the stadium could have been designed for expansion. I agree that location is great for a ballpark and I would have supported closing down some streets for that location. I do think once the stadium has aged some years there will be an appetite to tear down and rebuild. Charlotte will eventually get a major league team. Its only a matter of time. Charlotte is a hot market and is one of the largest cities in the nation without a major league baseball team. 

Edited July 11, 2017 by cityboi

[DMann]

WOW, hard to respond to that!

First, Don Beaver built the park.  While the city and county contributed funds, it was for infrastructure improvements.  The growth of the Third Ward around the ballpark has been incredible and largely tied to the BBT Stadium and Romare Bearden Park.  The Tax revenues coming out of that area now bound by Trade, MLK Jr Blvd, Tryon and the rail line have to be significant.

Any thought of a MLB team here is probably realistically 10 years away, the city will look significantly different by then.  I was at a meeting with Jerry Reese and he stated that his decision to fight for a MLB Team was founded in 1989 when he was washing his pickup truck and God told him to fight for a MLB team in Charlotte.  I am not kidding about that.

[cityboi]

If they had closed a portion of Mint St and cut down the size of Romare Bearden Park by one third, they could have fit a major league park on site. They could have built the minor leauge park inward  and designed it for expansion. Then they could have created a temporary plaza outside of the ballpark. 

Edited July 12, 2017 by cityboi

[ah59396]

Actually, if Jester Jerry hadn't of gotten in the way, we'd probably have a 10-12 year old park in uptown right now.  Would be even easier to justify ripping it down for an MLB stadium in a couple more years.

13 hours ago, DMann said:

WOW, hard to respond to that!

First, Don Beaver built the park.  While the city and county contributed funds, it was for infrastructure improvements.  The growth of the Third Ward around the ballpark has been incredible and largely tied to the BBT Stadium and Romare Bearden Park.  The Tax revenues coming out of that area now bound by Trade, MLK Jr Blvd, Tryon and the rail line have to be significant.

Any thought of a MLB team here is probably realistically 10 years away, the city will look significantly different by then.  I was at a meeting with Jerry Reese and he stated that his decision to fight for a MLB Team was founded in 1989 when he was washing his pickup truck and God told him to fight for a MLB team in Charlotte.  I am not kidding about that.

I love when God talks to me while I run errands.  "Don't forget to get some cat litter...litter...litter"

[kermit]

While I really don't have a dog in this fight I thought this graphic was interesting. It shows the closest MLB park for each portion of the US. The most salient aspect of the graphic is the bar chart at the right which shows the population of each catchment area. Atlanta is at the top of the list with approximately 30 million and DC is the 4th most populous region with approximately 15 million people. (I think the DC area should actually rank 3rd on the list since drivetime is an inappropriate way to split  NYC market fans and the Houston market appears to include a large chunk of Mexico).

NC's 10 million people appear to be (more or less) evenly split between the two market areas.

Edited July 28, 2017 by kermit

[ah59396]

19 minutes ago, kermit said:

While I really don't have a dog in this fight I thought this graphic was interesting. It shows the closest MLB park for each portion of the US. The most salient aspect of the graphic is the bar chart at the right which shows the population of each catchment area. Atlanta is at the top of the list with approximately 30 million and DC is the 4th most populous region with approximately 15 million people. (I think the DC area should actually rank 2rd on the list since they way they split  NYC market fans is BS and the Houston market appears to include a large chunk of Mexico).

NC's 10 million people appear to be (more or less) evenly split between the two market areas.

The Houston market is only counting US population, that's just how many people live in southern Texas/Louisiana.  Houston - Austin - San Antonio - Corpus Christi - Brownsville, Mcallen, Laredo, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Lafayette.  All have metros at least 500k, save Laredo.  Texas just has an absolute crap load of people. 

If it were counting non-US population, Toronto would be way higher up on this map since it dominates southern Ontario, which pretty much houses all 14 million of our floating heads.

[atlrvr]

Was trying to imagine what Charlotte's market would be like based on the above map....would def be in the top 1/2 of the league...I suspect at least 12mm, with 8mm being stripped from Atlanta and 4mm from D.C.....plus < 100k each from Pittsburg and Cincy.

[videtur quam contuor]

How can the Mets be half of the Yankees? Anyway, this is an unrealistic measure of a market, or ticket sales zone or, really anything.

[CLTProductions]

17 hours ago, atlrvr said:

Was trying to imagine what Charlotte's market would be like based on the above map....would def be in the top 1/2 of the league...I suspect at least 12mm, with 8mm being stripped from Atlanta and 4mm from D.C.....plus < 100k each from Pittsburg and Cincy.

That's assuming those people abandon their current allegiances. 

I still don't see a world in which we have a successful MLB team. One that operates in the top half of attendance and revenue 

[nowensone]

19 hours ago, kermit said:

....

Which Maptitude product/mapping did you use to create this?  Checked the long list and didn't see anything for "Sports", "Major", "MLB", etc.

[kermit]

10 minutes ago, nowensone said:

Which Maptitude product/mapping did you use to create this?  Checked the long list and didn't see anything for "Sports", "Major", "MLB", etc.

I didn't create it, I just stumbled across the graphic on the interwebs. Having said that, it takes nothing special to create the map, its a simple nearest-neighbor tessellation routine, any basic GIS can do it.

Edited July 29, 2017 by kermit

[nowensone]

Ahh... thank you, but a simple "nearest-neighbor tessellation routine" huh?   I'll google that as well, though just realized it's a nearest drive time calculation, not an allegiance map.

[kermit]

23 minutes ago, nowensone said:

Ahh... thank you, but a simple "nearest-neighbor tessellation routine" huh?   I'll google that as well, though just realized it's a nearest drive time calculation, not an allegiance map.

it just means "a collection of polygons which fill all the space but don't overlap." Sorry about the jargon, but that is what you would look for in a pulldown menu if you were going to make such a map.

And yes, its just a drive time map. The problems with this approach are most evident with the Mets, Giants and especially the WORLD CHAMPION CUBS! However the nearest neighbor analysis works pretty well in the non-Florida Southeast.

but why haven't I ever met a Nationals fan?

Edited July 29, 2017 by kermit

[nowensone]

Don't think I've met a Marlins fan myself, and for that matter when I lived in Houston, Astros games might as well have had tumbleweeds blowing through the stadium, it's not possible to exaggerate how empty the stadium was (pre-move downtown).  If we're to fight for MLB better locate it very near uptown and bar any adjacent parking lots, to encourage an entertainment/residential district to compliment the stadium.

[Boricua]

On 7/28/2017 at 5:23 PM, kermit said:

While I really don't have a dog in this fight I thought this graphic was interesting. It shows the closest MLB park for each portion of the US. The most salient aspect of the graphic is the bar chart at the right which shows the population of each catchment area. Atlanta is at the top of the list with approximately 30 million and DC is the 4th most populous region with approximately 15 million people. (I think the DC area should actually rank 3rd on the list since drivetime is an inappropriate way to split  NYC market fans and the Houston market appears to include a large chunk of Mexico).

NC's 10 million people appear to be (more or less) evenly split between the two market areas.

Charlotte is the right spot for an American League team. 

[DMann]

Let's switch the Knights and the White Sox.