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Major League Baseball Strikes Out Again on Black America

By moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver because Georgia is protecting peoples’ votes, Major League Baseball is hypocritical in its rationale.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stated that the “best way to demonstrate our values as a sport” would be to move the upcoming All-Star Game and its Entry Level Draft out of Georgia. The decision came after the state’s legislature passed and Governor Brian Kemp subsequently signed the “Election Integrity Act of 2021” into law. Opponents of the new law decried it as racist, oppressive and disenfranchising. 

This voter integrity measure has been attacked for allegedly denying persons of color the ability to vote. It’s claimed it will punish those who simply want to offer comforts such as food or water to voters standing in line or those without identification. But these premises are based on the bigotry to low expectations that blacks cannot obtain identification or get to the polls without the aid and protection of government.

MLB nonetheless abandoned Atlanta, becoming the third league to move an event to exert political pressure. The NFL moved the 1993 Super Bowl from Arizona to Los Angeles after Arizona voters rejected Martin Luther King Day as a state holiday, and the NBA moved its All-Star Game out of Charlotte in 2017 after the North Carolina legislature passed a law requiring transgender persons to use public restrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate.CARTOONS | AF Branco View Cartoon

While the governing bodies of a professional sport are well within their rights to put their events anywhere they want, doing so under the premise of being socially responsible is flawed at best and inherently wrong at worst. It is hypocrisy more often than not, and it usually affects the same groups of people it purports to respect and want to protect. 

That’s why the All-Star Game moving to Denver has led to a lawsuit on behalf of local Atlanta businesses.

Atlanta and its metro area will no longer have the anticipated major economic infusion that they bid for and had been awarded long ago. Cobb County Georgia officials are now speculating a loss of nearly $100 million in potential revenue.

There are far-reaching implications for the decision beyond the virtue-signaling affirmation for Manfred and his colleagues that will soon be forgotten by the rest of America. Keep in mind that nearly a third of all businesses in Atlanta are owned by black Americans. Nearly 8,000 hotel rooms in the metro area had been on standby for the League, its fans and the media who would have been there to cover everything surrounding the event.

And some of that revenue would have been used to repay the financing of Truist Park, which benefitted from nearly $400 million in public funding for its construction. Cobb County and its taxpayers are on the hook annually for nearly $23 million to retire that debt. 

That’s why the Job Creators Network (JCN) sued MLB  – albeit unsuccessfully – for $100 million in economic damages to Atlanta businesses and a $1 billion punitive fine. “MLB robbed the small businesses of Atlanta,” said JCN CEO and president Alfredo Ortiz, “many of them minority-owned… we want the game back where it belongs.”

Think about it. If the rationale for moving the All-Star Game out of Atlanta is to protect the integrity of the game and stand in support of “disenfranchised” and “suppressed” – meaning black – voters, then why is MLB now rewarding Denver with all of the economic benefits of hosting the game…which is nearly 76 percent white.

Hypocrisy much?

 

Major League Soccer is replacing Major League Baseball

The sport is experiencing its lowest levels of support since 1937. The reasons are obvious, but owners and executives have no incentive to look for answers. Baseball attendance Major League Baseball's average attendance of 26,854 is 1.4 percent below the 27,242 through the similar point last season, which was below 30,000 for the first time since 2003. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox just played a historic series in London, bringing the national pastime across the pond. Two of the greatest rivals in the history of sports competed in two games over the weekend, and it felt like much of the sports world barely noticed. There has been far more buzz about the US women’s national soccer team, currently advancing to the semi-finals of the World Cup in France, and the wild and wacky NBA free-agency period. People—particularly young people—appear to be more interested in where NBA players are going than what Major League Baseball players are doing. This past weekend is not just a snapshot, or an unrepresentative sample. It speaks to a broader problem about the future of the sport. For years, articles bemoaning baseball’s ability to attract a younger audience have shot up like weeds, but in 2019 they have more currency, because we have more data. A recent Gallup poll shows that only 9 percent of people in the United States are listing baseball as their favorite sport. That’s the lowest number since Gallup started asking the question in 1937. Recent statistics also show that ballpark attendance is down in 19 of the 30 stadiums around the league. Camera shots of games being played in front of near empty crowds are now plentiful. There is also the embarrassing spectacle of the sparsely watched Tampa Bay Rays looking to play half their games in Montreal. Baseball also has the oldest average fan base of any of the major sports. As Market Watch wrote in 2017, “The average age of a baseball viewer is 57, up from 52 in 2006. There won’t be a youth movement, either, as just 7% of baseball’s audience is below age 18.” The facts demonstrate with clarity that the game is in a humiliating state of decay. The question is why. The typical answer given is that young people are just too distracted with their dang smart phones, which have conditioned the kind of short attention span that keeps people from going out to the ball game. This lets the powers that be in baseball—and their inability to proactively make the sport more appealing to a younger audience—off the hook. As someone who grew up loving baseball (tragically, as a diehard Mets fan) and whose own kids would sooner make their beds than go to a game, I feel like I have an answer to the question of why young people want no part of this. The games are too damn long. On Saturday, the Red Sox-Yankees contest, for example, lasted four hours and 42 minutes. The Sunday game was a brisk four hours and 24 minutes. Though a typical game falls more in the three-hour range, this is too damn long. Last year Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Kenley Jansen scoffed at this notion, saying, “The Super Bowl is four and a half hours.” That is undoubtedly true. The Super Bowl is also once a year. It is not part of a 162-game dirge, many of the games played outdoors in a summer heat that—thanks to climate change—isn’t getting any cooler. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has only begun this year to address the bloated length of games. He said that 2019 would be the year when changes were adopted to make them move faster. So far, this is not working. There are myriad reasons given for the expanded length of the games: Analytic approaches to hitting have now become conventional wisdom, with players trying to extend pitch counts, draw walks and swing for the fences, going for a home run or a strike out. The first-ball hitter or the sacrifice bunt are considered antiquated. This slows the game down. It also decreases the number of fielding possibilities, which not only grinds the game down, but makes it more—and here is that word—boring. No one loves baseball like ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian. He says, after a half-century love affair with the sport, that he has never found the game to be more of a chore to consume. But it is more than just how the game is being played. There are also more commercials, which speaks to why franchise owners have been so undynamic about searching for ways to improve their product: They are getting paid. Despite shrinking attendance and ratings, baseball is flush with cash. This is for reasons that have little to do with the free market that these billionaires champion. Stadiums are built with public funds, and many teams now sign sweetheart cable deals with local providers, who are itching for content—any content—that people will actually sit through commercials to watch. Public welfare has created a situation where decay and wealth coexist, to the detriment of the sport. Baseball’s problem remains existential. But in the years to come, owners will feel the bite. The number is at 9 percent. And it’s dropping. The cable deals will end. There is less of an appetite to fund stadiums with taxpayer money. Baseball now needs to address a future where it will actually have to produce a product people want to watch. But if baseball doesn’t care, it raises the question: Why should anybody else

Major League Baseball: Less is More when Stadiums are Aging and Almost Always Half-empty.

 they build a new stadium within Maricopa County; the team gained that right by agreeing to drop a lawsuit claiming the county owed $187 million in repair and renovations to Chase Field, which opened in 1998.

Failing that, the Diamondbacks could follow the lead of the Rays, Cleveland Indians and others, and simply transform their 48,000-seat stadium into a smaller venue that reflects an environment where attendance across MLB is projected to decline for a fourth consecutive year, mirroring trends in several sports.

“We are definitely keeping our options open as it pertains to remaining at Chase Field,” Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall said in an email to USA TODAY Sports. “We have said for years that our ballpark capacity is far too large.

“In a market like ours, it is not realistic to believe we can fill Chase Field on a regular basis.”

For the Diamondbacks, A’s and perhaps a significant number of clubs that may replace – or revamp – their Camden Yards-era parks, finding the sweet spot of atmosphere, accessibility and inclusion will be paramount in a sport with an aging and occasionally alienated fan base.
Less is more

It seemed like a good idea in the 1960s and ‘70s: Build massive, multi-purpose stadiums for your local football and baseball team. Lay down some AstroTurf – it doesn’t even need water! – and your facility is suddenly a year-round destination for sports, concerts, religious revivals or monster truck pulls.

But as the 1990s dawned, Major League Baseball’s 26 stadiums were aging and almost always half-empty.

In 1990, the year before Chicago’s new Comiskey Park kicked off a wave of 21 new or heavily renovated stadiums in 20 years, the average major league park seated more than 54,000 fans.

Eleven teams had capacities of at least 57,000, with football-inspired expansions creating enclosed ghost towns in cities like San Diego (59,000-seat capacity), San Francisco (62,000) and Anaheim (64,000).

In the median ballpark, 53% of seats were empty.

By 2009, when the Yankees and Mets rolled out new stadiums in New York, the wave of new ballparks lopped nearly 20% off MLB’s ticket inventory: Average stadium capacity was 44,000, and the median club enjoyed a 64% occupancy rate.

Since then, the Twins, Braves and Marlins rolled out newer, smaller stadiums. So far in 2019, teams are playing to 66% capacity.

But MLB’s attendance took a 4% hit in 2018 and is on pace for another dip this year. As pace-of-play and other concerns roil the game internally, and bottomless entertainment options threaten it externally, it’s easy to imagine other markets following Cleveland’s lead: Shrink the stadium.

With Cleveland suffering a population decline and the 2009 recession hitting it particularly hard, the crowds that jammed then-Jacobs Field beyond its 43,000-seat capacity in the late ‘90s were unlikely to similarly fill rebranded Progressive Field.

So before the 2015 season, the club chiseled away.

After surveying its fans and season-ticket holders, unused suites were converted into a two-story indoor-outdoor family area with baseball-related activities. The right field corner was turned into a “social space,” with a large outdoor bar and gathering area. The right-center field area opens up to the city around it.

Nearly every change in the refreshed 34,000-seat park was geared toward a nebulous concept viewed as crucial to resuscitating the ballpark experience: Engagement.

“It’s incumbent on us to create an environment in ballparks to give people compelling reasons to make that trip,” says Alex King, the Indians’ senior vice president of brand and marketing. “There are no barriers for fans to engage in our game in a living room.

“In the ‘90s, it was creating intimacy, it was the architecture. I think those changes were fantastic. And now, how do we make those micro changes – the social changes, the experience. That’s the regular work the industry needs to do to make sure that experience is compelling enough to come out.”
Cleveland's Progressive Field underwent renovations that dramatically reduced the stadium's capacity.

Kaval has racked up a few miles in service of that mission. He’s visited all 30 ballparks, as well as stadiums overseas, and as president of Major League Soccer's San Jose Earthquakes played a central role in developing 18,000-seat Avaya Stadium.

The A’s are aiming for distinct in their desired home, hiring a Danish firm to design a stadium that would include a rooftop park that encircles the stadium. A panoramic view of the bay – not visible from stadium seats for myriad reasons – would be the catnip to encourage fans to circulate throughout the game.

For now, they’re using antiquated Oakland Coliseum as a petri dish for that concept, selling monthly passes to “The Treehouse,” an area above left field with 1,500 seats and nearly as many libation options. The idea is to roam during the ballpark and enjoy “multiple experiences,” Kaval says, during each game.

Yet for all of Kaval’s globetrotting, his vision of a new stadium is largely driven by a development just a few miles from home.

“The iPhone has ushered in a whole new era,” says Kaval. “We just found the fans wanted – younger fans, Millennials and Gen Zers - experiential things they can show on their Instagram, their Snapchat. Live sports are changing. Entertainment is changing.

“When we’re thinking of deploying hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure, we need to stay with the times. Stadiums are iconic gathering places. You have to do it in the context of the way people are experiencing entertainment today.”

It all sounds a bit like a stock-art photo touting a new mixed-use development come to life, with baseball subbing in for trivia night or ax-throwing as the backdrop for young and old alike to sip IPAs and preen for the ‘Gram.

Yet, the industry also knows it must be wary of the price tag – to build the stadium and access it.
Access is everything

Baseball has five franchises essentially invulnerable to sagging attendance – the Red Sox, Cardinals, Cubs, Yankees and Dodgers. All have sold at least 87% of their 2019 ticket inventory and drawn at least 2.6 million fans every season this century.

For most of the 25 other franchises, team performance, the economy and the limitations of their stadium can have a far greater impact.

Right now, 15 teams are on pace to draw fewer fans than a 2018 season that saw a 4% overall drop; with September likely to mirror an ugly April at the gate, it wouldn’t be surprising if up to 20 teams’ attendance declined.

Not that some haven’t tried.

The Tampa Bay Rays sold 5,000 tickets to five June home games for $5, selling out the allotment for just two of the games. After announcing their intention to explore playing half of their home games in Montreal, the Rays – who declined comment for this story – held a $2 flash sale for a three-game July series against last-place Baltimore.

The San Francisco Giants – suffering through a 17% drop at the gate in the first year of an expected rebuild – also offered $5 tickets during a one-day flash sale.

With the in-game experience so key to building fan loyalty, wouldn’t it behoove teams to fill up empty seats at discount prices?

Perhaps not at the expense of undercutting season-ticket holders.

“Is value important? Certainly. But it’s not a silver bullet in terms of a single solution to ensuring we have the attendance that we want,” says the Indians’ King. “Our season ticket holders are investing a significant amount in us and shown a lot of loyalty. We really value that and want to ensure that as the lifeblood of our organization, we protect the investment they’ve made.”

On the other end of the spectrum, smaller, successful stadiums can breed ticket scarcity, tempting teams to increase prices and potentially squeeze out fans of lesser means.

The A’s will be the only game in town on that side of the bay, with the Warriors gone and Raiders going. Proximity to Silicon Valley means no shortage of wealth – corporate and otherwise – to tap.

But will 34,000 seats be enough for fat cats and working families?

“Inclusiveness and making sure we have product available to fans at all income levels is critical,” Kaval insists. “The family of four has been priced out of (a lot). I think baseball can own that spot where just regular folks can access affordable options.”

Says the Diamondbacks’ Hall: “We need to check ourselves constantly to ensure affordability for fans. We base this on history and market demands. A new stadium should not be a launch pad for ticket prices if previous levels are already deemed appropriate.”
Who’s footing the bill?

The A’s are already navigating perilous waters. Their proposed stadium deal would allow them to recoup construction costs by developing the land on their current Coliseum site, no small ask given the Bay Area’s ongoing housing crisis.

Alameda County agreed in April to sell the A’s its share of the Coliseum site for $85 million, while the club is negotiating for the other half with the city of Oakland, which desires to bake affordable housing, environmental mitigation and living-wage jobs into the project.

In a cruel twist, Alameda County is expected to use money from the A’s to pay off debt on its 1995 renovation of the Coliseum for the Raiders – widely considered one of the worst financing deals in stadium history, particularly for a team that stayed just more than two decades, anyway.

Though the Rangers’ and Braves’ new stadiums show the public-funding spigot may never be turned off – particularly if taxpayers have no say – municipalities may be warier to fund the palaces of billionaires. While the Braves’ park got funded essentially behind the public’s back, it also cost Cobb County politicians their jobs.

More than $12 billion in public money was spent on stadiums across all sports in the first 15 years of this century, that on the heels of billions more spent to fund many of the ballparks in the Camden-inspired wave.

It would be unsurprising if public sentiment sounded something like, “Didn’t we just buy you a stadium?”

That won’t stop teams from trying – particularly when the bar for entertainment only seems to rise.

“If you’re going to come out to the park,” says Kaval, “it has to be special, it has to be different.”

And in the future, probably a lot more cozy.