New Baseball Parks-Have We Gone Overboard?

[Mitchell]

When the Florida Marlins new ballpark opens, every team in the National League East, except the Braves, will then have had a new ballpark open for them in the last 10 years. As we baseball fans know, Turner Field, the Braves stadium, is an old man. It is all of.. fourteen years old, having opened in 1997.

These parks, along with new Target Field in Minneapolis, New Yankee Stadium, etc, have to make me wonder. Has baseball gone a bit.. overboard, with building billion dollar new ballparks for so many teams? Especially considering the fact that many of these parks have at least 10,000 less seats than their predecessors. Veterans Stadium in Philly, the Phillies park from 1971 to 2003, seated over 62,000. Their current stadium, Citizens Bank Park, seats all of 45,000. The same holds true of parks like Citi Field, etc.

With the world economy still struggling to recover from the severe recession, does it show... conspicuous consumption... to open these new billion dollar ballparks on a regular basis? Additionally, the ticket prices and concessions for these stadiums are usually out of sight?

Thoughts on this?

Mitch

 

[Dave Pavet]

Free market economy they can build what they want. As long as the tax payers don't have to foot the bill. Capitalism is all about consumption and opening up new markets.

 

[Cy/MiG]

The first red flad was Jerry Jones' collossal new Texas Stadium and the new Yankee Stadium.

With a high potential for Personal Seating Licenses (PSL's) and high season ticket and single-ticket prices rising the big problem on the horizon is pricing out the average fan.

State of the art stadiums are nice and will get paid for if the team wins, but if the owners price out the fans then the bubble will burst.

Free market economy they can build what they want. As long as the tax payers don't have to foot the bill. Capitalism is all about consumption and opening up new markets.

Therein lies the problem. The Twins owner was notoriously cheap which caused numerous delays in the building of a new stadium.

In Seattle the taxpayers put up at least half of the cost of SafeCo back in 1999 (around $150-220 million at the time) and were later screwed when Clay Bennett demanded that they pay at least 1/2 of a new $4-500 million Basketball only arena.

The major problem is that owners have hold cities hostage and bleed them dry for new venues whenever they wish.

Because like you say,

Capitalism is all about consumption and opening up new markets

But now that owners are getting greedy they are becoming more willing to drink until the well is dry and then move on to a new market. There's a dangerous potential for corporate greed.

 

[SamuelKhan]

The Truman Sports Complex got it right during the time when other towns were erecting multi-sport stadiums (Busch Memorial, Three Rivers, Riverfront, Veterans (What. A. Toilet.) and RFK.

Arrowhead Stadium opened in 1972, and Kauffman Stadium (then Royals Stadium) in 1973. KC was one the only towns that had separate stadiums for their teams, after both had played in old Municipal Stadium.

Kauffman was hailed as a beautiful park with its trademark water fountains in center field and the huge crown shaped scoreboard in the middle. And Arrowhead in recent years became one of the loudest cribs in the NFL (I hope its like that again...soon).

Now both parks have received big upgrades and renovations. There was no need to build brand new stadiums.

Now...if the Royals can replace that gas can-infested bullpen with some real firemen...and the Chiefs can have a good draft this coming weekend...

 

[Knox The Hatter]

Baseball was a whole lot better when the expenditure for the entire experience didn't surpass $10. Nothing they can do can get around that.

 

[mass1926]

You know the saying by now: "If you build it, they will come"

There's your answer. People wanna see the games, and they're willing to pay.

 

[obama666]

Corporate Greed = Capitalism... Government Greed = Socialism... I think both systems suck. If I had to pick one it would be Capitalism. Socialism is many times just about the lazy milking the government without working. I hated big government even when I was a Democrat... Corporations pay for it they can build all the Stadiums they want! I don't like government getting into private industry all that much.

 

[shark]

Interesting question. Alot of these parks are built using some level of taxpayer funds.

Living near Pittsburgh, I'll discuss PNC Park, home of the Pirates. It was built using a large amount of taxpayer funds, with at least some of the justification being that the state will recoup the expenditure over time. Factoring in the wage, sales, and business taxes during construction, plus the ongoing revenues from activities, the theory is that the state will show a profit in the long run.

It is rated as the best stadium in the majors, holding about 38,000. While that is substantially lower than its predecessor, Three Rivers Stadium, baseball in Pittsburgh doesn't have the draw it used to, and the excess capacity in Three Rivers was wasted. Currently, there are numerous sellouts every year in PNC, and I've personally seen more games in PNC since its opening than I have in Three Rivers or Forbes Field combined.

Forbes Field was replaced by Three Rivers, which was literally falling apart by the late 1990s. The question was whether the Pirates, a bad team for years, could draw crowds with a new stadium. Their last winning season was 1992.
Currently, the team shows a profit, no doubt with some revenue sharing involved. It will take time to see if the strategy of increased revenues will pay off.

You can get tickets for as little as $9, the $15-20 range being the favorite of me and my buddies (if you're really interested). I know people who go to games more for the party atmosphere than the game itself, so one could argue that the new stadium draws more people. Again, time will tell if the expenditures for this particular stadium are sound planning.

 

[Dave Pavet]

Never been to Forbes. Though I remember the Maz HR in game 7, 1960, 10-9 Bucs, Ralph Terry in relief, Yogi in LF. Three Rivers was one of those cookie cutter, one size fits all stadiums, much like Cincinnati's Riverfront (both stadiums had no character what so ever!). I may check out PNC in a year or so. I have no problem with some lower tax rates for the Corporations that invest in the stadium but I don't like huge funding by the taxpayers. The Government is going to have to start cutting back. I never thought I would see this country turned into a welfare state. The way to a sound economy has always been to lower tax rates and reduce government spending. Especially in a recession.

 

[Mitchell]

The only new ballpark I've been to is Citizens Bank Park. When I first moved here, I went to the Vet three times, and then since 2004, to Citizens. While Citizens is nicer than the Vet, the concession prices at Citizens are outrageous.

As I've posted on here before, I lived in the NYC area for nearly thirty years, before moving here in 1999. I went to Shea Stadium, and Yankee Stadium, many times. I have yet to visit Citi Field, and New Yankee Stadium. If all goes well, I'm planning on moving back to NY next year, so I hope to make visits to Citi Field and New Yankee Stadium soon after I return to NY. I can only imagine what ticket prices and concessions cost at those stadiums.

Mitch