I think it was a stupid, short-sighted move of MLB to select DC as the sight of the new home for the Ex-Expos (future Senators)? What swindling and underhanded dealings went on here? If anything, if you are going to pick this area, at least pick N. VA! What % of fans are really “home team fans” here?
This deal went down over convenience so politicians can be schmoozed at the local home game just a stone’s throw from Capitol Hill. How convenient! 
I don’t think there was another city that was a clear “leader” that was robbed of a team in the process. Certainly they couldn’t leave them in Montreal (they were losing too much money, and owners hate that!) drawing 7,000 or so fans a game. I’m a Baltimore Orioles fan and I’m hoping that this move incites Peter Angelos to invest more money into making the Orioles a winner again, if only to retain corporate sponserships and not lose them to the DC team.
Here is how I break down the DC baseball situation:
There are a lot more people living in the DC region now then there was when the Senators were in town.
The town could use the revitalization in the Anacostia area if they choose to put a stadium there.
The traffic around DC is a nightmare (I drive in it daily) and this will not improve it. They need to make sure mass transit gets you to the stadium and they need to make sure it is easily accessable like RFK Stadium and Camden Yards in Baltimore are and not like JKC Stadium where the Redskins play where it is a parking nightmare.
I think both Baltimore and DC can support baseball teams, but unless there is a winning team in the parks, people will not come out. The novelty will wear off soon in DC if the Expos are not improved drastically. This will hurt Baltimore’s attendance if they keep playing at their current sub .500 levels.
The only team Washington DC seems to get behind are the Redskins. The Bullets (Wizards) and the Capitols don’t see much support at all. I don’t know how this will translate into support for a baseball team.
I’m pretty ambivalent to the whole thing, as long as Baltimore beats Washington during interleague play! 
It is probably a good thing.
Mexico wasn’t going to get a team. Portland, OR might have been a contender for the team. However, the economy is hurting and I don’t think people there were too keen on spending money for big league ball. A stadium in the district itself would be a good thing. When I go to DC, I don’t rent a car. Thus, going to the Orioles has been out. DC gets a lot of business/government travel year round. Both the Redskins and Ravens have been supported. I don’t think the area could support two hockey or two basketball teams, though.
I was reading in the Post that NoVa’s bid for the team started to fall apart when VA decided not to guarantee all of the bonds for the project. DC is putting up a lot of money for the team. The stadium might not be a bad place to see a game if there is a metro stop nearby that iis accessible.
The drawback to locatiing it out in the suburbs would be that you would have to drive out to see a game, which would make the already bad traffic situation even worse. At least with the stadium in the city, you have the hope of taking the metro in to see a game.
They need to compete right off the bat. Novelty will only put so many butts in the seats. The team needs to field a quality product straightaway. I’m not saying they need to sweep the Yankees (but that’d be nice) or win the Series in their first season, but they need to play at least .500 and make a few legitimate runs at the playoffs until they are established (a la Arizona, Florida, Colorado to an extent) or the franchise won’t last 10 years.
Baseball failed in DC twice because of the Orioles; once the Browns moved to Baltimore, the fans in that area stopped coming to DC. It cut drastically into the DC area fan base. It wasn’t just quality of play – Baltimore during 1954-60 had only one winning season (1960), though they never finished last like the Senators did three times. Of course, when the expansion Senators started in 1961, the only finished over .500 once before moving to Texas, while the Orioles were an AL powerhouse.
There’s also the question of support. Teams get much of their attendance revenue from season ticket holders and, especially, from the sales of corporate boxes. And who is the biggest employer in DC? Yup. And they are not going to waste taxpayer’s money buying baseball tickets. So that is a big disadvantage.
OTOH, there aren’t many other good places left. Most major-league-sized cities have teams. In addition, the DC/Baltimore/NoVa area is the 4th largest Metro area in the US, bigger than San Francisco/Oakland, which supports two teams.
If the stadium is in DC, it’s essential that it’s near a Metro stop, though.
Regarding revenue, how much comes from merchandising, like caps, jerseys, t-shirts, mugs, etc.? Is this used for team payroll, or operating expenses? Genuine question, not being a smartass.
Sure, they’ll kick ass at first selling Washington Monument (mark my words, I’m telling ya!) swag, because of the novelty, but if the Monuments aren’t competetive, that stuff isn’t going to sell. When was the last time you saw an Expos cap or t-shirt on the streets? Now, when was the last time you saw a Yankees cap?
Here is each Teams revenue stream in 1996 - what could be more accurate than 8 year old Data?
http://www.baseball1.com/bb-data/96-biz.html
MLB centrally licenses Official MLB products and distributes it fairly equally to a pool for distribution to the Teams.**
Each Team keeps Gate revenue (and shares a portion with the opposition) and usually (but not always) keeps all the Revenue from its stadium (Ads, parking, beer, food etc.). There is a share of the National Baseball TV contract. They have local Radio revenues.
By far the biggest revenue stream though is the local TV rights – and this is where Angelos was screaming. The MLB teams make money by either selling their broadcast rights to a cable company or network or by running the network itself and charging the cable company a fee to carry the games. The broadcasters and cable companies make money from subscription fees and advertising sold on the regional network. **
There are other ways they make money – the Yankees have a $95 million, 10-year agreement with Adidas for instance (big part of that is in-Stadium Advertising though).
**The DC Baseball team is already at a disadvantage because the Rangers own the Senators copyright and because they need to give Angelos and the Orioles a cut of their regional sports network (local TV/cable deal) Exactly how much they need to cough up is unclear. It should still be more that the Brewers or Pirates though – plus the sale of seats and boxes will make Washington viable – even down the road
Look, baseball could thrive in MONTREAL. That it didn’t isn’t a reflection on Montreal, it’s a reflection on the terrible way the team was run. You could run a whiskey bar in central Dublin into the ground if you were sufficiently inept, and Montreal’s ownership was that.
Washington is not a great baseball market, but if its ownership is smart they can keep the team afloat. I’m not convinced that the Malek group is very many steps above a pack of lobbyist shysters so I’m not optimistic; as I said in another thread, I think they’ll be the Portland Wolves or the Monterrey Toros within fifteen years. But it won’t be the fault of Joe Baseballfan.
The NoVA bid started falling apart long before that. Matters started going downhill from the moment their initial stadium site proposal became public knowledge. (It was leaked by the Washington Post in late March 2003, and officially unveiled a few days later.) The proposal included five sites, but it was clear from the beginning that the stadium boosters were really aiming for one of two south Arlington sites in Pentagon City.
The prime Pentagon City land was owned by a developer who could easily make double or triple the money by putting up the usual office and residential buildings, just across a traffic-jammed road from the Pentagon, and a few blocks away from neighborhoods full of high-six-figure houses. The stadium boosters never knew what hit them, and their ham-handed attempts to belittle and dismiss the opposition only made matters worse.
By July, the Arlington County Board decided to take shelter from the political shitstorm, and sent a letter to the state stadium authority requesting that Arlington be removed from cosideration. The authority rejected the request, but it still turned out to be a fatal blow. In November, the incumbent Board members were handily re-elected, and the sole pro-stadium candidate got drubbed even by the usual anemic standards of GOP challengers in Arlington.
The recent revival of the NoVA bid dusted off one of the other five sites (out near Dulles Airport), but never really got much traction. As noted in the original post, the state’s refusal to back stadium bonds with its “moral authority” (i.e. Virginia isn’t legally obligated to pay the bondholders if the investment goes south, but it does have to formally consider doing so during the budget process) served as the political coup de grace.
Puh-leeze. The site proposed in NoVa was as distant from downtown DC as is Camden Yards. Why not just move a team to Martinsburg, WVa?
DC is the right spot for a team. The traffic argument is baloney. The days of suburban baseball are gone. If the suburbanites want to drive their SUVs to a stadium that one could also take public transit to, it’s their own fault. Don’t blame Major League Baseball just because some fans might instist on driving everywhere.
There was a great article about this in the Post the other day.
Washington DC and the suburbs surrounding it are awash in money and the population is going through the roof. There’s money to be spent and asses to go in the seats. In addition, there hasn’t been a National League team here in a long time and lots of people who wouldn’t care to make the trip to Baltimore would go to see a visiting National League team playing the Senators (or Monuments, or whatevers).
All bets are off, however, if the team sucks on the field. Washington is a city that loves, loves, loves a winner.
Washington would still have a baseball team if it wasn’t for the greed of the baseball owners. We can thank Bob Short and his Texas Carpetbaggers for taking the Senators away from DC. I was a big Senators fan, even when they lost, which was most of the time. With a few isolated exceptions, they were a fine group of players and sportsmen. They were our team, even if they sometimes struggled to stay out of the basement.
Ridiculous. Where in the hell were they gonna put it? Arlington didn’t want it. And nobody is going to drive to freaking Dulles. DC is the best site. You get the NoVA populace, the DC populace and the surrounding MD populace.
Are you kidding me? Do you know how many businesses there are in the area that will snatch up luxury boxes? Lobbying firms, law firms, defense contractors, etc., etc., etc.
That’s interesting but I’m not sure it’s accurate. I’m not sure it’s inaccurate either. though. From what I understand, the Washington team under the Griffith family did poorly because they integrated the team way too slowly, which naturally enough did not sit well with DC’s very large black population and not because the Orioles were stealing their fan base. Further, I doubt that many people in Baltimore supported the Senators at any time. Baltimore was noted for having an inferiority complex about DC and as such its fans were unlikely to support a team in Washington under any circumstances.
I think that’s going to be the bottom line – if the team sucks, it’ll die on the vine in a decade or so. (OTOH, if it has a few good years and then sucks, I think it’ll be able to hang on.)
DC is crawling with lobbysits. The drug industry alone has nearly one lobbyist for every member of congress. Every one of them will want the ability to take lawmakers out to the ball game. I don’t think the team will have any trouble selling season tickets.