On the basis of the MLB-MiLB discussion, the Seadogs, Hops, Aviators, etc. don’t have as much historical significance as the Bulls (at least that I know of). The Bulls have been in the Triangle for ages. They made a movie about them. We can’t just let an MLB team/stadium either:
Sit half empty because people are going to Bulls games instead, which is money down the drain,
or:
Take the audience away from the Bulls, uprooting their roots and, worst case scenario, causing them to leave the area.
I agree with @Straggler, quarantining the baseball talk was the best thing that ever happened to the other stadium threads.
I don’t think we can generalize from one example in Seattle and Tacoma and say that the same scenario would necessarily play out here. Relative to the size of the US population, Raleigh/Durham is and always has been a much smaller market than Seattle/Tacoma, so we really don’t know what would happen to the Bulls if MLB came to the area. There’s certainly the very reasonable chance that the Bulls would have to drop down to either AA or even Class A ball.
The problem with relocating the Rays is at least three-fold. The Rays have a use agreement (which is different from a lease) that locks them into St. Petersburg through the 2027 season, and the city has taken a very, very hard line enforcing that agreement. The Rays aren’t even allowed to talk to cities outside the market until the agreement expires. Maybe they could get bought out a year or two early, but they’re not moving anywhere anytime soon. Second, the team just signed a $1.23 billion TV deal. It’s an average of $82 million a year, but it’s backloaded, so they’re due to get more than $100 million a year in TV revenue beyond 2027, which is average-to-above-average for MLB, and more than they’re likely to get in either Montreal or Raleigh. So that’s an incentive for the Rays to strike a deal that keeps them somewhere in central Florida. And the third problem is that central Florida is a huge market, and MLB would very much like to have a team based there. So even if the Rays do move to Montreal, MLB would immediately be on the prowl for an ownership group that could put a team right back in that area.
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That’s true if you only care about the Triangle’s local market (1902 for the Bulls vs 1960 for Tacoma, WA’s team). But wouldn’t an MLB team attract a broader fanbase (eastern NC, Greensboro, maybe even Charlotte, Norfolk/Virginia Beach/Williamsburg, and Myrtle Beach?), too, to the point that the Bulls kind of have their own, distinct, local market?
I really don’t think self-cannibalizing is as big of a concern, especially once you read @Loup20’s posts.
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I will just re-state…
There are clear examples of MLB and MiLB successfully coexisting within a 30 mile radius. Read above.
We are living in one of the fastest growing metros in the country. If you follow this forum you probably know the stats. If projections hold, this is a mid-market region in 5-8 years. Baseball expansion isn’t for another 3-5 years and THEN you have to build the stadium (so possibly another 2 years).
At that point, you are really going to argue that the Triangle wouldn’t be able to support both the Bulls and an MLB team? Based on what data/examples?
A counter-point would be that the Bulls are a top 10 in all of MiLB attendance every single year. They average 7,200 fans per game. They are 70% sold out every night. Their stadium capacity is 10k. That is current data.
Now, couple that with the fact that in 2016 a study showed that based on projected growth, the Raleigh metro area alone will grow by 72% in 25 years. That doesn’t even include the Durham and Chapel Hill growth projections. So even if you conservatively project just 65% growth for the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill combined statistical area, you come out to 3,629,107. To put that into perspective, Seattle’s metro area today is 3,733,580.
If we continue to use the Durham Bulls as a non-starter as to why we shouldn’t court MLB, at some point (likely in the next 10 years) we’ll be on the outside looking in, with a market ripe for pro-baseball but a city that denied it because … we were worried about attendance for a AAA team.
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Please believe me when I tell you that I read your material carefully, and that much, at least, should not be in doubt at this point.
There is one example of an MLB team and a AAA team coexisting in a 30-mile radius, and it’s in a much larger market than Raleigh-Durham. (Pointing out that a metro area has a similar population today to what another metro area had 30 years ago is not really helpful or useful since the US population as a whole grows a lot in 30 years.)
My position is that we don’t know for sure whether an MLB team and an AAA team could co-exist in this market. Maybe they could, but there’s also the very reasonable chance that they couldn’t. If you want to take the rebuttal position and argue that, no, we absolutely, positively know for sure that they could coexist just fine, no doubt about it, you’re free to do so, but you’re probably going to need more evidence than finding one example of it happening in a much larger market whose circumstances may or may not extrapolate to ours.
BTW, I’m not in any way arguing that anyone in Raleigh should be opposed to bringing a team to Raleigh simply because it might negatively impact the Bulls. But I totally understand why people who live in Durham would be opposed to bringing a team here, and so that’s the political reality that the effort would face.
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Of course people here want the MLB team in Raleigh instead of Durham, but I think making the Bulls the MLB team and putting it in Durham, with the story “America’s favorite minor league team finally gets called up to the majors!” would be pretty compelling.
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why do we keep talking about major league baseball when there is NOBODY with actual money who has indicated any willingness to try to bring baseball to Raleigh? I get it, a lot of you like baseball. Hell, I played it for a long time but the fact that no person in or around Raleigh has indicated any interest in bringing a baseball team here seems like a complete an utter waste of time on these boards. Unless all of you baseball proponents have a combined $1B and collectively want to form an actual ownership group instead of just posting how much you want a baseball team and pondering where such a hypothetical and yet unlikely event will happen…find something else to discuss that might actually materialize in downtown Raleigh in the next decade!!!
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I’ve always thought that’s a possibility too, but it’d have to be a whole new stadium probably around RTP, since DBAP is considerably landlocked from expanding to MLB-size in both capacity and field dimensions (guys like Giancarlo Stanton made the left field short porch look like a joke while he was here on rehab). Perhaps the biggest hurdle to that arrangement would be whether to still keep the name “Durham” or call them the Carolina Bulls, or Triangle Bulls. That’s a double-edged sword because Durham will want to keep its name on the team, but that considerably limits the team’s marketability to other cities outside the Triangle (Triad, Charlotte, Norfolk, etc.).
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Because it’s fun. If you don’t like it, don’t read the thread.
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I’d argue that this example is pretty appropriate considering the Mariners began their cohabitation with the Rainiers in 1977, back when their metro size was pretty comparable to ours.
Might be a good time to remind folks that you can mute threads if it doesn’t interest you. Simply change it to Muted here at the bottom. Done.
Let’s keep it positive. This is a great running thread. The whole point of this site is for conversation.
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But this is literally the fallacy that’s pointed out in the comment that’s quoted, though. In 1977 the population of the US was about 220 million, or about 2/3 of what it is now. So saying that Raleigh’s metro size now is comparable to what Seattle’s was 42 years ago doesn’t tell you anything useful–except that, relative to the US population, our market is about 2/3 the size of what Seattle’s was in 1977. Would it be useful or relevant to know that Durham’s population is larger than what Cincinnati’s was when the Reds started play in the 1800s? If not, where’s the cutoff where these comparisons cease to be useful?
And market size isn’t everything. If it were, the Miami franchise would be thriving and the St. Louis franchise would be struggling. But of course we know that the reality is the other way around. (And of course, you can find examples of this in other major sports leagues, too.) Even if you accept the premise–which you really shouldn’t–that Raleigh is somehow equal in size to a market that’s actually much larger, that only gives you a very vague insight into what conditions on ground might actually look like.
Again, I’m not arguing that we definitely know for sure that the Bulls would have to drop down from AAA (or that this would be a reason not to welcome an MLB team here), but arguing that we definitely know for sure that they wouldn’t have to drop down is quite the leap of faith based on the limited evidence presented.
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Basically what I’m trying to get at.
NC State dug a hole and paved the parking lots around the hole. There was no thought of DTR, because the hole was there. It sat for quite a few years. They planned a much smaller arena until Karmanos came calling with a failing hockey team. Then came corporate suites, club etc. The arena should have been in DTR and a short rail ride for students. The mayor/council watched as DTR became a ghost town after 5.
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No one is guaranteeing anything.
One argument about the Bulls coexisting with MLB is that it won’t work because of market size and overlap. We answer that with proof that a market similar to ours in SIZE (and growth trajectory) successfully supported both a AAA and an MLB team.
That’s it. There it is. It’s happened before. Doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to happen again, but it should end the conversation that it’s impossible or a good reason to shut down a group looking to build and organize for a potential future run at a team.
But as you said, market size is not the end-all-be-all for baseball succeeding. Which is the entire reason we went forward with this campaign to begin with. The data is there to show we QUALIFY as a small market team in population, income and media market (things MLB cares about when asked about viability). But just because you have market size, doesn’t mean your region wants a baseball team.
So, this whole campaign has been about testing the hypothesis that the Triangle is a baseball region and that people care.
I know you disagree with just about everything we’ve done with this campaign, but in 4 months we’ve sold hundreds of hats, hundreds of shirts, brought together talented people and companies to help fix up a baseball field in East Raleigh, put our areas top brewery at capacity for a kick-off event, ,connected with over 10k people via social & email, and have been written up in Forbes, CBS Sports, NBC Sports, Sporting News, etc… all in the name of baseball coming to Raleigh.
Not to mention, we did this organically with no investors. A total of $0 in marketing spend and without ties to any organization or entity. So while I understand that doesn’t prove our area as a whole wants a baseball team, its certainly a step in the right direction.
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the Triangle already has baseball. Look 20 miles to the east and west. Is Raleigh so insecure it’s residents won’t be happy until we get our own farm team? I’m voting Uncle Jesse (said nicely of course)
I don’t disagree with everything the MLB to Raleigh campaign has done, actually, and that’s the sort of strawman argument that unfortunately has pervaded a lot of the responses here. The baseball field in east Raleigh really, really is a great cause, and I commend the group for that. The kickoff event was very nice. And in principle, I agree that the Research Triangle market is rapidly approaching the point where it could possibly support an MLB team.
My frustration has been that every time anyone (not just me), has raised any sort of criticism with some of the specifics, the response has always been “hey, we’re just starting a conversation” or “stop being so negative, okay?” There’s been a real reluctance to meaningfully engage with any sort of concerns in any way. Just looking exclusively at stuff that’s been written on this thread in the last 24 hours, it’s been totally dismissive of the idea that the concerns of people who have questions about how this will impact the Bulls are in any way meritorious. (And by the way, to illustrate why an example from 1977 may not hold water in 2019, Seattle drew fewer than 1,000,000 fans in six of their first eight seasons, which would be last-in-the-league attendance today. The growth of the game since 1977 makes the analogy faulty. The two markets are not the same in size and never have been.)
If an ownership group ever did come in and try to bring an MLB team to Raleigh, their success or failure would probably largely depend on their ability to effectively respond to constructive criticism and display flexibility.
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Good point. Maybe I just prefer to live in reality not in the fantasy of a “what if”
Well, we’re not an ownership group and never have set out to be. We have a very clear reason for existence. We want to put Raleigh in the conversation for Major League Baseball.
We want to do that by educating the population on the data. Dispelling some of the myths around why MLB wouldn’t work here, and organizing a large and loud following. All while using that organized group to not just tweet their support, but put it into action by promoting the game in underserved communities around Raleigh.
I’m wide open to discussing why you disagree with our data or our approach, in fact, we’ve been discussing it on here for the past few months. But what type of ‘meaningful engagement’ do you want? Do you want me to talk about how MLB COULD kill the Bulls if they came? That’s a hypothetical and not a great one. We looked for examples of an MLB team dropping within 30 miles of a successful AAA team and hurting that team in any significant way. Couldn’t find it. If you find it, then we can discuss. But until then, it makes no sense for a pro-baseball group to come on a forum and discuss negative hypotheticals.
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Well, only five markets that didn’t have an MLB team in 1977 have one now, and of those, two forced the relocation of successful AAA teams in their markets. The Colorado Rockies brought an end to the Denver Zephyrs, and the Arizona Diamondbacks did the same for the Phoenix Firebirds. Sure, in both of those cases the AAA team was actually in the same city as the new MLB team. But it’s not surprising that there aren’t many examples of MLB setting up a new franchise in a city that just so happened to be roughly 25-30 miles, but no closer than that, from the closest existing AAA franchise.
Most things in life involve trade-offs. If an MLB team came to Raleigh, it would have a lot of consequences. Many of those consequences would be positive! But some of those consequences would be negative, or at least be perceived as such by significant numbers of people. Refusing to even acknowledge that there might actually be trade-offs is not really an effective strategy in the long run.
I think the very first thing that I wrote in response to the MLB to Raleigh campaign was that I had concerns about how a stadium would be funded. This is not really a hypothetical–surely we can both agree that a new stadium would have to be paid for somehow. And of course it would fall to the taxpayers to pay for it. We’re seeing that play out right now, in our own city, with the request for funding for a soccer stadium, where the ownership group is asking for at least $325 million in public money to build a stadium, and if the city/county doesn’t cover the whole cost, then they’re just going to cancel the whole project. If MLB ever considered putting a team in Raleigh, they would likewise demand that the taxpayers pay to build them a stadium–except that a 40,000-seat baseball stadium would cost at least twice as much as a 20,000-seat soccer stadium. That’s a lot of money, and your group’s position has always been that talking about how we would pay for a stadium just doesn’t feel awesome, so you’re not going to do it.
Candidly, if we can’t have meaningful conversations about whether it was really a good idea to propose putting a baseball stadium in what is already the most rapidly gentrifying part of Raleigh, or whether there might possibly be some downside here for the Durham Bulls because you don’t think it makes sense to “discuss negative hypotheticals,” there doesn’t seem to be much hope of having a reasonable discourse about whether spending $600 million to $700 million to build a baseball stadium would be the best use of public money. But ignoring the issue doesn’t make it go away. The issue is still there, whether you feel like discussing today it or not.