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I hate to break this to you, but Sacramento's large metro population is only because of its proximity to the bay area, and not to mention the Sierras. Nobody moves to Sacramento to live in Sacramento...except for people trying to get AWAY from big cities. Everyone else is moving here due to our proximity to SF, the ocean, the Sierras, and not to mention only a half day's drive from Los Angeles. That's fine by me. But what sucks is how they're trying to TURN Sacramento into a bustling city. They're looking out for their own interests, not us yokals. They couldn't care less if we have to sit in a stack of traffic every day. And, they have the city council and the mayor in their corner. You talked about having to drive to the bay area to see sports. If the Kings got that arena in downtown, and Kevin gets the night life he's planning on putting in there, it will take you just as long to get to that arena as it would for you to drive to the bay area.
Cool, our very own NIMBY right here live in color.
MOD CUT
NewToCa is 100% right, comparing Sacramento to other capitols is ridiculous as we are many times larger than most capitols especially the ones you mentioned. Despite *why* people move to Sacramento it doesn't take away the fact that this is a big metro area and we have the population to support a lot of things that the other smaller capitols could not. Stupid comparison.
We have already proven we can support a major sports team. As soon as the maloofs stopped offering a good product people bailed just like any other business. Not to mention the economy.
Sacramento is already going in the direction of the bustling city that you hate so you might want to move. I'll pay for your plane ticket out of here.
Last edited by NewToCA; 07-07-2009 at 05:50 PM..
Reason: no personal comments, please
Metro Sacramento has 2.1 million folks, making it the 25th largest metro area in the country. If we were discussing areas such as Harrisburg (530K) or Albany (850K) I would agree with you, but Sacramento has more folks than Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Charlotte or Kansas City, and they have multiple pro sports teams.
There are a couple of different factors at work.
In Sacramento we tend to view this area as distinct from the bay area. But that isn't how the leagues view it. Instead they view us as more like the inland empire because the region is only 100 miles away from the bay area. Already people in this region constitute a significant portion of the season tickets for both the 49ers and the Raiders (around 10%, the last time I checked). Additionally these games are often covered locally on tv.
If an NFL team was brought to Sacramento, it would cannibalise ticket sales to 49ers and Raiders. If season ticket holders in El Dorado Hills switch from the 49ers to a Sacramento NFL team, the league is no better off. What matters is how many additional tickets you would sell in this area in addition to the ones you would sell to the current fans of Raiders and 49ers in this region (that market is relatively small). Second locally there isn't much demand to sell additional luxury boxes.
What allowed Charlotte to get a team was first there were no existing teams nearby. Bringing a team to Charlotte didn't hurt the Redskins. Instead it expanded revenue to the league. Second Charlotte is growing much faster than Sacramento. The leagues don't care just about your existing size, but how quickly you will become a much bigger region. Charlotte is much faster growing region. Third, the area had more corporations. When they were getting the professional teams they had both Wachovia and Bank of America. Lastly, in Charlotte, the Combine Statitical Area for Charlotte was about the same as the current msa population for Sacramento. They had a potential fan base as large or larger than in this region. Lastly, they got locals to chip in to fund the stadiums.
If the locals will build a stadium, even small areas like Oklahoma City can get team.
In Indianapolis, they have multiple professional teams because the locals are willing to tax themselves to support building stadiums and because they have fortune 500 companies (Eli Lily and Wellpoint) in the region.
In Kansas City its the same way. When a region is willing to subsidize the stadiums they can attract more teams than there population would suggest they should be able to support. In Kansas City, they built Kemper Arena on speculation without a professional team to anchor it.
Milwalkee is a special case. The Green Bay Packers are publicly owned. The stadium is outdated, but the team itself is owned by the community so it just can't leave. For the other teams in the region, the community was willing to subsidize the arenas and stadiums. This is what keeps the Bucks and the Brewers in the area. It also again helps to have the fortune 500 companies in the area to help pay for luxury boxes.
Stadiums for professional sports teams aren't cheap. I think the cowboys spent over a billion on their stadium. That is something that might get used by the cowboys maybe 7 or 8 times a year.
Other sports are played more frequently, but again the costs vs the benefits are tough for the subsidies. A lot of the fans for the Kings live in Yolo, El Dorado or Placer County, but the taxpayers being stuck with the bill were mostly either the city or county of Sacramento. But none of these other counties were willing to raise their taxes to build a stadium that wouldn't be located in their jurisdiction. For that matter when the voters had the opportunity in Sacramento to consider the matter, they weren't willing to do it either.
This is why you get hidden subsidies, like the deal to bring the Kings to Sacramento in the first place. Officially no public money was spent bringing the Kings to Sacramento. Natomas historically was the site of lake. The area was never intended to be developed because its part of the natural flood plain. Lukenbill got the city of Sacramento to rezone land owned by Lukenbill in exchange for him bringing the Kings to the region. Upzoning that land made Lukenbill wealthy enough to afford to built the first two arenas for the Kings.
But the public costs were merely hidden. The real cost of bringing Kings is the cost of upgrading the levies in Natomas. It would have been much cheaper to directly subsidize the arena than the cost the region will ultimately spend on upgrading the local levies.
My hunch is when all is said and done this region loses the Kings unless it comes up with some sort of subsidy to keep the Maloofs in the area. If you are the Maloofs, they can make more money bringing the team either to the Shark Tank in San Jose to Pond in Anahiem or possibly to Kemper Arena in Kansas City. While they have the money to build a stadium, they have no need to spend that type of money when they can get access to an arena for much less.
But the politics of the matter are such, I think it will probably involve rezoning more land that isn't supposed to be developed. Tsakapolis is a billionaire today because he has bought a lot of agricultural land cheaply that is cheap because it isn't supposed to be able to be developed and they he comes up with offers to upzone his land in exchange for giving the region some perk it desires. He offered to build a university in Placer and Sacramento County if they would rezone land near a proposed highway bypass. He proposed building human genome lab in Davis if they would rezone land near 80.
He is very good with this type of stuff. Since most of the politicians (both republican and democratic) in the area need his money to be able to run for office, he escapes negative press.
We really wont see his magic until the other options for the Kings arena fail. But the region is running out of options. Direct public financing seems politically dead after it lost at the referendum. The proposed redevelopment at Cal Expo seems unfeasible. Hard to pay for an arena based upon a new development consisting mostly of new retail shops when the existing retail in the area isn't doing well and when the local economy is in the tank.
In Kansas City its the same way. When a region is willing to subsidize the stadiums they can attract more teams than there population would suggest they should be able to support. In Kansas City, they built Kemper Arena on speculation without a professional team to anchor it.
Thank you for the well thought out posting, I want to respond with a few comments.
First off, my original concern in this thread was the discontinuation of sports news on KCRA's evening news. I feel this contributes to the marginalization of the pro franchises currently in town.
I also specifically want to comment about Kansas City, and their arena. Kemper was built back in the early 1970's and then expanded/modified over 25 years later. My question is why can't Sacramento do this with Arco Arena? I believe NBA Commissioner Stern mentioned KC as one of the cities having an NBA ready arena, should the Kings transfer:
Kemper Arena was completed in 1974 at a cost of $22 million and is owned by the City of Kansas City, Missouri. Most recently in 1997, a $23 million expansion project added 2,000 more seats, upgraded the lower level seating, added four restrooms, a handicap entrance to the arena floor, an elevator and the new east lobby.
Twenty years ago, you got sports scores from the evening news or found them the next day in the newspaper. Today if you are interested, you are likely to get them online, from sports radio or from one of the several sports networks on cable tv, that provide the scores on a ticker tape feed on the bottom of the screen. On local tv the move to high schools sports reporting was mostly about trying to provide information that wasn't already stale by the time of the evening news.
Modernly few people watch the evening news anymore to get sports scores. The information is too stale by then. Now its better to run more human interest stories.
As for updating the current Kings arena, its not really cost effective. What they need is a lot more luxury boxes. The luxury boxes represent revenue that isn't shared by the league. The more money your team has from its stadium deal, its cable tv deal, the more money it has to spend on free agents and the better your team will be.
Why they want a new arena is that modern luxury boxes are fairly close to the action. To maximise the revenues they try to fit two or three levels of luxury boxes normally between the first and second level of the arena. With the current arena, if they put in this many luxury boxes, it would cut off the sight lines for the people on the back of the first level and if they raised the second level to accomodate that, it would block the sight lines on the second level.
When you start looking at the cost to re-engineer the entire building to provide good site lines for the people in the regular seats plus to provide enough luxury boxes to make your team competitive, its cheaper to rebuild than to remodel. Especially because a lot of the infrastructure in the building is substandard. The locker rooms for the visiting teams are too small compared to modern NBA facilities, there isn't enough space to offer two levels of food and merchandise venders to reduce wait times in line during half time (and increase vending sales).
Also the facility isn't well designed for taking care of bands and other groups. If the arena was configured differently for concerts it would be possible to make more money from that use as well. It takes too long to refrigerate the ice for ice shows. When Disney on Ice comes, they would prefer to book the arena for multiple shows on consectutive days. But if the Kings have a game scheduled in the afternoon when Disney on Ice is coming, the ice may not be frozen enough in the evening to do the show, so revenue from that night's show is lost. If you are Disney and you are trying to figure out which arenas to do your shows from, you are going to book your arenas based upon how many shows you can offer in a given amount of days. This is another area where the Kings are losing money. With a new arena, they would have space for the much bigger condensors needed to quickly freeze large sheets of ice.
Lastly, the Kings have better options. For the Kings, the choice is staying in Sacramento with an outdated arena or moving to some place else that is willing to give them a modern arena or a better arena deal.
The Supersonic went from the much larger Seattle market to the very small market in Oklahoma because in Oklahoma, they got a brand new arena with very favorable terms. As long as there are communities willing to pay for the arenas, why should a team pay for its own new arena or pay to remodel an existing arena?
The Maloofs aren't going to pay for a new arena because they don't have to. They aren't going to settle for a remodeled arena again because they don't have to.
I'm surprised the Maloofs haven't been chomping at the bit to move the Kings to Kansas City's new Sprint Centre.. KC was seriously looking into moving the Pittsburgh Penguins there (the building is puck-shaped anyway). In fact, they're already hosting exhibition NHL & NBA games at the Sprint Centre..
And in reference to civic pride, I'm also surprised there's no mention of the repeat PCL/AAA Champion RiverCats here, who have quietly formed a Minor League Baseball Dynasty underneath our noses.. Also, the Sacramento Sirens women's pro football team who have won several titles including an undefeated season. Not to mention the Sacramento Capitals TeamTennis organization whom bring big name tennis stars every so often to Allstate Stadium. Cripes, we even now have an Australian Rules Football team here, and ARF is one of the quickest growing sports in North America..!
Is there anyone here who can remember or have heard of the Knights? The River Rats? The Steelheads? Maybe the one-year stint of arena football we had called the Sacramento Attack? Also, do remember we had pro football with the Surge, then the GoldMiners..
Why do we have to rely on what the big media spoonfeeds us locally when it comes to sports?
The Kings blow and I hate basketball so their move would effect me in absolutely no way.
We're not a big enough market to host a major sports team. That's just how it is. Bay Area is close enough and Lord knows we have more than our fair share of Raiders "fans".
The Kings blow and I hate basketball so their move would effect me in absolutely no way.
We're not a big enough market to host a major sports team. That's just how it is. Bay Area is close enough and Lord knows we have more than our fair share of Raiders "fans".
I think 25 years of a (mostly) subpar basketball team being supported is proof that Sacramento can support a sports team...The Kings have been here 25 years, and it's only in the last 3 that attendance has struggled. That's just REALLY how it is.
I'm surprised the Maloofs haven't been chomping at the bit to move the Kings to Kansas City's new Sprint Centre.. KC was seriously looking into moving the Pittsburgh Penguins there (the building is puck-shaped anyway). In fact, they're already hosting exhibition NHL & NBA games at the Sprint Centre..
And in reference to civic pride, I'm also surprised there's no mention of the repeat PCL/AAA Champion RiverCats here, who have quietly formed a Minor League Baseball Dynasty underneath our noses.. Also, the Sacramento Sirens women's pro football team who have won several titles including an undefeated season. Not to mention the Sacramento Capitals TeamTennis organization whom bring big name tennis stars every so often to Allstate Stadium. Cripes, we even now have an Australian Rules Football team here, and ARF is one of the quickest growing sports in North America..!
Is there anyone here who can remember or have heard of the Knights? The River Rats? The Steelheads? Maybe the one-year stint of arena football we had called the Sacramento Attack? Also, do remember we had pro football with the Surge, then the GoldMiners..
Why do we have to rely on what the big media spoonfeeds us locally when it comes to sports?
The Kansas City region is a little smaller than the Sacramento region. Unlike Sacramento, Kansas City also has the Royals and the Chiefs, so any team that moves to Kansas City is probably going to be number 3 in a very small market. Kansas City can support more teams with a smaller population base because it has more corporations headquartered there who will buy box seats in an arena. But Kansas City is still a pretty small area and there are only so many corporate dollars to go around.
In a place like San Jose or Anahiem, there are a lot more corporations and there are much bigger markets with bigger cable tv deals.
Lastly, its a lot more difficult to fly from Vegas to Kansas City than from Anahiem or San Jose.
While the Kings possibly could relocate to Kansas City, I think Anahiem or San Jose are much stronger contenders.
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