To have MLB in San Antonio or not to have MLB in San Antonio? That is the question! (Austin: costs, move)

[Bo]

Originally Posted by brajohns81

Mid-size market? San Antonio has a bigger metro than Cincinnati, Cleveland and Kansas City. Not to mention San Antonio proper is much bigger than all of these cities.

In this case, media market size matters above population inside the city limits. A lot of the revenue for the team would come from its TV contract. The revenue from that contract will be proportional to the market size.

Outside of Bexar County, the population density of the metro area falls off of a cliff. That's why we're a big city and a medium market.

2012-13 Nielsen Designated Market Area Rankings for Television (Top 50 out of 210)
1 New York
2 Los Angeles
3 Chicago
4 Philadelphia
5 Dallas-Ft. Worth
6 San Francisco-Oak-San Jose
7 Boston (Manchester)
8 Washington, DC (Hagrstwn)
9 Atlanta
10 Houston
11 Detroit
12 Seattle-Tacoma
13 Phoenix (Prescott)
14 Tampa-St. Pete (Sarasota)
15 Minneapolis-St. Paul
16 Miami-Ft. Lauderdale
17 Denver
18 Cleveland-Akron (Canton)
19 Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn
20 Sacramnto-Stkton-Modesto
21 St. Louis
22 Portland, OR
23 Pittsburgh
24 Raleigh-Durham (Fayetvlle)
25 Charlotte
26 Indianapolis
27 Baltimore
28 San Diego
29 Nashville
30 Hartford & New Haven
31 Kansas City
32 Columbus, OH
33 Salt Lake City
34 Milwaukee
35 Cincinnati
36 San Antonio
37 Greenvll-Spart-Ashevll-And
38 West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce
39 Grand Rapids-Kalmzoo-B.Crk
40 Las Vegas
41 Oklahoma City
42 Birmingham (Ann and Tusc)
43 Harrisburg-Lncstr-Leb-York
44 Norfolk-Portsmth-Newpt Nws
45 Austin
46 Greensboro-H.Point-W.Salem
47 Albuquerque-Santa Fe
48 Louisville
49 Memphis
50 Jacksonville

Everything below #10 on this list is considered a mid-size market. Note how many markets larger than San Antonio don't have MLB.

[MLBinSA2017]

Great research Bo! Now were getting somewhere!! However, I believe the market area is larger than inked. In fact, there has been several articles discussing how SA would couple their marker along with Austin due to its close proximity for common travel. That would most likely place SA in the region or above market areas with MLB teams- who have been unsuccessful for some time if not always- such as....
[b]Kansas City
Cincinnati
Milwaukee
and possibly
San Diego
Baltimore
[b]
There's even greater speculation that Lew Wolf's lawyers may get blocked- once again- from San Jose which may urge him to consider selling and/or moving to another city. San Antonio of late has already begun the approved process of planning an extensive downtown river walk area removal of buildings where there is ample acreages and where the conference center and many legal buildings now sit and will temporarily place a park setting. I believe this is very well and strategically placed between two major interstates and spare room for parking garage. Also, will open the door for a team who would be ready to move and place a World Series DYNASTY caliber team on the field on opening day! However, it will be later than 2017...

[chud]

Originally Posted by Bo

Everything below #10 on this list is considered a mid-size market. Note how many markets larger than San Antonio don't have MLB.

Hopefully growth rate is taken into consideration. A lot of people are moving here and S.A. (and the surrounding area) is growing, so hopefully that will help our chances.

[dastexan]

Originally Posted by MLBinSA2017

Great research Bo! Now were getting somewhere!! However, I believe the market area is larger than inked. In fact, there has been several articles discussing how SA would couple their marker along with Austin due to its close proximity for common travel. That would most likely place SA in the region or above market areas with MLB teams- who have been unsuccessful for some time if not always- such as....
[b]Kansas City
Cincinnati
Milwaukee
and possibly
San Diego
Baltimore
[b]
There's even greater speculation that Lew Wolf's lawyers may get blocked- once again- from San Jose which may urge him to consider selling and/or moving to another city. San Antonio of late has already begun the approved process of planning an extensive downtown river walk area removal of buildings where there is ample acreages and where the conference center and many legal buildings now sit and will temporarily place a park setting. I believe this is very well and strategically placed between two major interstates and spare room for parking garage. Also, will open the door for a team who would be ready to move and place a World Series DYNASTY caliber team on the field on opening day! However, it will be later than 2017...

A. Who is paying for this in San Antonio? The city is already on the path to having to make MAJOR budget cutbacks. How are you going to finance a stadium if you assume the city is going to be on the hook for it? The county sure as hell isnt putting a stadium in downtown San Antonio. See the placement of the AT & T Center.

B. People arent driving in from Austin nightly to watch a MLB game. That just isnt happening, place the stadium in San Marcos and you have a greater chance to draw in people from both Austin and San Antonio nightly. Need to upgrade infrastructure in both Austin and San Antonio to really make that feasible however.

[amexicano]

If we combine Austin and San Antonio together, they would rank about #15 in the DMA list. There would also larger potential for corporate sponsorships (Dell, Whole Foods, startup companies) and another big pool of tourists. Perhaps they could build a new stadium in New Braunfels or San Marcos.

I think Central/South Texas really has a lot of untapped potential because we keep thinking in terms of separate cities instead of a whole region...

[Zuul]

Originally Posted by amexicano

If we combine Austin and San Antonio together, they would rank about #15 in the DMA list. There would also larger potential for corporate sponsorships (Dell, Whole Foods, startup companies) and another big pool of tourists. Perhaps they could build a new stadium in New Braunfels or San Marcos.

I think Central/South Texas really has a lot of untapped potential because we keep thinking in terms of separate cities instead of a whole region...

People keep thinking in terms of seperate cities because, quite simply, they are seperate cities. No stroke of the pen, positive thinking or revelation from looking at google maps is going to somehow diffuse the wealthier, better educated and faster growing elements of Austin to the south side.

Sharing a team with Austin would be the geographic equivalent of New York sharing a team with Philadelphia - minus a good 12 million people that live between those two cities. You can gave a mature discussion about San Antonio getting another pro-sports franchise, but please, don't try and assume it will be Austin's team also.

Strangely enough, I have yet to meet anybody in the Austin metro area who obsesses with the idea of how fast the city is growing south down I-35 and how it will reach San Antonio soon.....

[Bo]

Originally Posted by Zuul

People keep thinking in terms of seperate cities because, quite simply, they are seperate cities. No stroke of the pen, positive thinking or revelation from looking at google maps is going to somehow diffuse the wealthier, better educated and faster growing elements of Austin to the south side.

People on a media board I frequent discussed the notion of someday combining the two media markets a while back and they dismissed it as absurd. The biggest reason is that the two cities don't really share any broadcasters. WOAI radio might be the only broadcaster that's receivable in the center of each city and it barely registers in Austin's ratings. The technology of radio and TV doesn't easily lend itself to spanning an area of that size.

This board has discussed over and over how dissimilar the two cities are in demographics and in interests. As Zuul points out, there just isn't enough commonality between the two to force them to share a major sports franchise.

[dastexan]

Originally Posted by Bo

People on a media board I frequent discussed the notion of someday combining the two media markets a while back and they dismissed it as absurd. The biggest reason is that the two cities don't really share any broadcasters. WOAI radio might be the only broadcaster that's receivable in the center of each city and it barely registers in Austin's ratings. The technology of radio and TV doesn't easily lend itself to spanning an area of that size.

This board has discussed over and over how dissimilar the two cities are in demographics and in interests. As Zuul points out, there just isn't enough commonality between the two to force them to share a major sports franchise.

To be honest, the same thing exists between Dallas and Ft Worth.


HOWEVER


they share all media stuff.


Austin and San Antonio can be as different as they want, but until they start sharing resources like this, no chance.

[recog]

Originally Posted by dastexan

A. Who is paying for this in San Antonio? The city is already on the path to having to make MAJOR budget cutbacks. How are you going to finance a stadium if you assume the city is going to be on the hook for it? The county sure as hell isnt putting a stadium in downtown San Antonio. See the placement of the AT & T Center.

The county won't put a stadium downtown but wants to invest 200 million into San Pedro Creek? The former makes no sense with the latter occurring.

Also, the county does want to build a stadium downtown. Well, at least Wolff is.

Ballpark envisioned as part of upgrades downtown - San Antonio Express-News

BTW, the att center wasn't done because the county didn't want to build an arena downtown. It was done because an arena couldn't get done downtown by the city so the county swooped in at the 11th hour and offered the land they owned. If they owned a sizable amount of land downtown or in the urban core, they'd have offered it to them.

[dastexan]

Originally Posted by recog

The county won't put a stadium downtown but wants to invest 200 million into San Pedro Creek? The former makes no sense with the latter occurring.

Also, the county does want to build a stadium downtown. Well, at least Wolff is.

Ballpark envisioned as part of upgrades downtown - San Antonio Express-News

BTW, the att center wasn't done because the county didn't want to build an arena downtown. It was done because an arena couldn't get done downtown by the city so the county swooped in at the 11th hour and offered the land they owned. If they owned a sizable amount of land downtown or in the urban core, they'd have offered it to them.

I know. Bexar County is not going to invest in a stadium downtown. The actual trend (well outside of corrupt Miami) is for more private money put into stadiums than public.

I mean you can say whatever you want, the fact is that Bexar County said, if you want us to fund an arena, its going to be done out in the middle of nowhere (where mind you, they havent done anything to really develop the area, no does VIA have any intention of taking their street car out there, which could actually be nice toward actually building up that area. Development of the downtown core by and large is like this:

a. Pearl/Broadway
b. Southtown











c. anything else.

At least that is the perception for various reasons.

I will eat my hat if this city actually ponies up for a baseball stadium in the next 10 years. Castro doesnt care about one. The citizenry itself doesnt care about one. Only Nelson Wolff and a small group of people really care. When its said that Bexar County wants a baseball stadium its really Nelson Wolff wants one. I'm not convinced one iota that Bexar County Commissioners Court actually wants one outside of Judge Wolff.

That's not enough to make baseball viable in San Antonio. This city has the worst stadium in the Texas League and I wouldnt hold your breath that one in any better part of town logistically is going to get built anytime soon.