Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
[quote=MUTGR;42706530]I agree. Now that I've cooled down a bit and I can think a bit more rationally about it, I'm not as angry as I was (Kroenke is still an a-hole) and I think St. Louis dodged a bullet.
St. Louis and Missouri could not afford another stadium.
With St. Louis civic leaders proposing to build this Riverfront stadium just to keep the Rams. A stadium that may have cost up to 1.5B to build, and it not even be a dome stadium thus no conventions or other events requiring an indoor venue without a public vote.
Is it possible the NFL saved the citizens of St. Louis from their own civic leaders???
Last edited by Just One of the Guys; 01-21-2016 at 01:23 PM..
If you include the population within one hour of Cleveland, it likely would be considerably higher than the population within one hour of Denver as it includes all of the Cleveland CSA.
I suspect the Denver area GDP has been greatly inflated by high energy prices. The recent collapse in energy prices likely will greatly benefit the Cleveland GDP (and the GDPs of Chicago, Milwaukee and other northern cities not participating in the shale boom) and depress that in the Denver area and other regions with large energy sectors. It will be interesting to see the impact in coming years, as the associated multiplier effects work their magic.
E.g., I know persons in Boulder County that have seen their royalty checks slashed.
I get that you like and are loyal to Cleveland. I grew up in another Midwestern medium sized metro (AKA not Chicago). I get it. My hometown will face the same sports poaching issue at some point I'm sure. Maybe even sooner, although the growth trends aren't as dire. I'm just sticking to facts rather than completely random speculation here. To clear up a few things:
1-You can't get from anywhere in the Cleveland CSA to a sports venue in downtown Cleveland in under an hour. You can get as far as N Canton. Which is 20 minutes further than Boulder.
2-The GDP of Denver is not impacted materially by mineral rights. There are some people who I am sure are impacted, but if you own mineral rights, you aren't hurting for discretionary income to go to sports games. I know a couple of those folks myself. I would trade places with those individuals now financially, and my family isn't hurting when it comes to coughing up coin for sports.
3-Most of the boom in Denver is centered on communications, aerospace/technology, logistics (not only for moving mined materials, but cross country logistics for things like food that never go out of style), insurance, financial services, construction, and so on. It's wishful thinking to think that this is going away. FWIW, less than 1% of employment in Denver is in the field of mining (metal or non-metal) and energy/oil. Those are where you'd see multipliers if those industries went belly up, and there isn't much employment in those areas anyway, nor has it grown appreciably in the last 15 years.
Growth could definitely taper some, but if we were to assume that the difference in growth drops by half, then their economy will be 70% larger than Cleveland's in 15 years, not 50% larger like today. They'll also be about 35% larger than STL rather than 25%.
That's just what's on the horizon. It's not Denver that cities should be worried about anyway, because they've successfully attracted their full slate of sports teams. It's the next growing city on the horizon: Austin, San Antonio, Charlotte, Research Triangle, Vegas, Omaha (yes, I said Omaha), etc.
Teams are going to need to relocate to the growing markets that are pushing 1.5 - 3 million to get the revenues they need.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicago76
CSA's aren't really indicative of who has the greatest affinity for going to games though. Nor is being the only NBA team in OH really that valuable when we're talking about a hypothetical basketball fan in Cincinnati. Generally, the closer you are, the more valuable you are. On that count, Denver's MSA is 25% larger than Cleveland's, and the region is growing considerably. When you get down to it, money in the area is even more important, and the difference between Denver and Cleveland is even greater: $187.1 billion of GDP to $124.6 billion. If you want to expand things regionally a bit (or a lot):
Cleveland MSA+Akron+Youngstown+Erie regional GDP is still less than Denver+Boulder by about 11%.
I do think Cleveland, per person, considering their income levels, probably supports professional sports about as well as any metro in the country. So there is that compared to Denver, where people are probably also more inclined to spend money+time on outdoor activities like skiing and hiking.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicago76
I get that you like and are loyal to Cleveland. I grew up in another Midwestern medium sized metro (AKA not Chicago).... I'm just sticking to facts rather than completely random speculation here.
You aren't sticking to facts. You're making up theories and positing that they are facts. The facts are exactly as I presented them -- Cleveland-Akron is a larger a CSA than Denver and Pittsburgh, and Cleveland pro sports franchises have an immediate market of over 3.5 million.
The CSAs do matter. Not only that, but the Cavaliers, Indians, and even Browns have sizable television markets in those nearby CSAs, including in Columbus. The Columbus Dispatch covers all three of Cleveland's pro sports teams in detail and the Cavaliers, Indians and Browns do draw from the entire region. The Browns likely will move part of their training camp to Columbus. The Cavaliers play pre-season games in both Cincinnati and Columbus.
I don't know how the Cavaliers are covered by the Pittsburgh media.
Even two years after LeBron left, and the first LeBron era season ticket holders had faded away, the Cavaliers still had respectable attendance despite a bad team.
1-You can't get from anywhere in the Cleveland CSA to a sports venue in downtown Cleveland in under an hour. You can get as far as N Canton. Which is 20 minutes further than Boulder.
Canton is 60 miles from Cleveland and connected by an interstate. The entire Akron area is easily within an hour of Cleveland's pro sports venues, as Akron is 40 miles from Cleveland. Cleveland's pro sports venues are easily accessible with great parking, especially if you know what you're doing. It's easy to drive to home games in Cleveland from all areas of the CSA and return in the same day. Many persons even do so from outside the Cleveland-Akron CSA.
Coming north on I-71 from Columbus or Mansfield, you can even stop at a large and free park 'n ride immediately off I-71 at West 150th St. and take a rail rapids to all three pro sports venues in downtown.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicago76
2-The GDP of Denver is not impacted materially by mineral rights. There are some people who I am sure are impacted, but if you own mineral rights, you aren't hurting for discretionary income to go to sports games. I know a couple of those folks myself. I would trade places with those individuals now financially, and my family isn't hurting when it comes to coughing up coin for sports.
That's simply not true, as you'll see in the next coming years if prices stay at current levels. Denver has major energy conferences and major exploration companies including Cimarex, Encana USA and Bill Barrett, just off the top of my head. Colorado is the 7th-largest energy producing state, and you don't think Denver is deeply affected by low energy prices????? Laughable. Really, really laughable.
With current prices, Colorado severance tax revenues likely will collapse along with royalty and dividend income from energy production. The negative multiplier effect will be large as well.
That's just what's on the horizon. It's not Denver that cities should be worried about anyway, because they've successfully attracted their full slate of sports teams. It's the next growing city on the horizon: Austin, San Antonio, Charlotte, Research Triangle, Vegas, Omaha (yes, I said Omaha), etc.
If Denver is such a great sports market, and if the economy is so robust, why has attendance at Nuggets games been so pathetic for the 2015 and 2016 seasons?
Even after the LeBron James exit fiasco and the total disillusionment in Cleveland with the Cavaliers and the NBA, and with lousy teams and ridiculous drafts, Cavaliers attendance was never as pathetic as the numbers posted by the Nuggets in the last two years.
Also, local enthusiasm for teams and pro sports is important. Having great facilities and a large market is meaningless if there is no enthusiasm for the product. How amazing is it that a pro sports franchise would abandon LA for St. Louis in the first place?
This may be an advantage that the likes of Cleveland and St. Louis have over Los Angeles, or even Denver.
Especially given the heavy Hispanic influence in the LA area, I wonder how many persons will ante up the license fees and ticket costs for the Rams.
I attended a play-off high school football game in a wealthy LA suburb with a large high school, and the stands were half empty. Some regular season high school football games in Ohio draw 10-20,000 fans.
Give cred to Los Angeles for refusing to cave in to pro sports blackmail.
My belief is that we a national law banning public subsidies, direct or indirect, of pro sports franchises. We should not see governments diverting scarce resources from education and infrastructure to subsidize private business enterprises.
Instead there should be a national tax on all sports revenues, including TV advertising, employee salaries, and athlete salaries over a certain floor. The funds would be distributed based on a formula of where and how the revenues were generated. Tax revenues on ticket sales would stay in the community where the stadium was located. After all, there are many costs involved in supporting games, such as traffic cops and additional security.
TV revenues would be distributed based on viewership. E.g., Montana would get some portion of the revenues on national TV advertising even though it has no MLB, NFL, or NBA teams.
These tax funds would be collected in special purpose, dedicated funds.
State & local governments could use these funds as they pleased to support directly athletics.
There would be an exception to the general ban on public support of pro franchises that would allow these funds to be spent only on pro sports facilities, not to subsidize operating costs. However, pro sports teams in all cases would be required to pay market rents.
However, state and local governments instead could use the funds to support amateur athletics, including at high schools.
One of the saddest things that I've seen is that, at least in Ohio, cash-strapped public schools are instituting "pay-to-play" fees on students, and not just for athletics. Some sports programs have been eliminated when sufficient numbers of students couldn't afford the fees.
Most universities don't have access the tens of millions that the likes of Nike annually pay powerhouses such as Ohio State, and college and university athletics are struggling. It's sad to see the elimination of wrestling at so many institutions, partially due to Title IX considerations (e.g., men's wrestling eliminating, women's lacrosse added).
Pro sports depend greatly on amateur sports, high schools, and colleges and universities to develop their talent and fan bases. They should bear some of the burden of maintaining this ever more costly foundations for their businesses.
What is the liklihood that the reason the Rams were chosen as the team that was sent to LA is because the Rams with their LA history would have the greater chance of success than either the Chargers or Raiders?
What is the liklihood that the reason the Rams were chosen as the team that was sent to LA is because the Rams with their LA history would have the greater chance of success than either the Chargers or Raiders?
Approximately zero. It's because Kroenke had a ton of money to throw at a ritzy stadium. I don't think there's any more to it than that.
Wow! I knew there was some leftover debt/maintenance costs on the dome but I didn't think it was $144M!
The NFL and Kroenke really did a number on St. Louis.
Approximately zero. It's because Kroenke had a ton of money to throw at a ritzy stadium. I don't think there's any more to it than that.
Yes, a man who married into the Walmart family and then "made" his fortune by building strip malls in rural/suburban American in which Walmart was the anchor tenant decided being rich by marriage using his in laws' connections wasn't enough, he needed a legacy beyond the standard cookie cutter Walmart anchored strip mall that looks the same all over the country. He needs to build his Taj Mahal, his Trump Tower. Doesn't hurt too that the value of his franchise doubles or triples just by virtue of being in LA. Added bonus is he gets to stick it one final time to the St. Louis Country Club snobs who snickered at him all these years because he's a "married well" hick from "out state" Missourah.
Yes, a man who married into the Walmart family and then "made" his fortune by building strip malls in rural/suburban American in which Walmart was the anchor tenant decided being rich by marriage using his in laws' connections wasn't enough, he needed a legacy beyond the standard cookie cutter Walmart anchored strip mall that looks the same all over the country. He needs to build his Taj Mahal, his Trump Tower. Doesn't hurt too that the value of his franchise doubles or triples just by virtue of being in LA. Added bonus is he gets to stick it one final time to the St. Louis Country Club snobs who snickered at him all these years because he's a "married well" hick from "out state" Missourah.
Wait...what do you mean about this Country Club?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Proof is in the pudding
