Braves leaving Turner Field

[PaladinFan]

http://www.ajc.com/news/sports/baseball/braves-plan-to-build-new-stadium-in-cobb/nbpNQ/

Will apparently have a Cobb County stadium ready by 2017. I'm disappointed only so far as it makes travel to games more arduous for me, but will probably benefit the team on the whole.

[FormerPokeCenter]

The Smyrna Braves just doesn't have the same ring to it...

[dbackjon]

So another 20-year old stadium will sit empty. Brilliant.

Atlanta - Stadiums occupied for 20 years or less.

[clenz]

So another 20-year old stadium will sit empty. Brilliant.

Atlanta - Stadiums occupied for 20 years or less.
I was going to say I thought I remember the Braves moving into Turner Stadium...Hell, I have a couple video game for either the Sega Genesis or SNES that had the Braves in A-FC Stadium.

Wasn't AFC only 30ish years old when they demolished it?

[PaladinFan]

Some of my colleagues are of the opinion, the Braves may be trying to leverage a deal as the particulars have not closed yet.

It's a bit of a strange issue that no other stadiums really endure given its connection to the Olympics. I'm sure that given short time frames, building a 100k seat stadium and then converting it into a 53k baseball park is not ideal. The AJC reports that it would cost over 200m to renovate Turner Field up to par.

Frankly, Turner has its issues. It's relatively inaccessible, no subway access, in a rough area of Atlanta, and was originally built too large (Atlanta is about league average in attendance, but has the fourth largest stadium).

[darell1976]

I guess 20 years is about the time stadiums bite the dust...2014 Progressive field in Cleveland turns 20 I guess that will be next. The NFL said Miami isn't going to host another Super Bowl until they get a new stadium. Sun Life Stadium is only 26 years old. Its something how we need to cut education and cut budgets when cities and states are in the red, but yet there is always money for stadiums.

[TTUEagles]

Unfortunately, 35,000 people don't show up, paying $100+ each 41 nights a year for education. They do for sports, which is where all the money comes from.
I love Turner Field, it's a great facility in my opinion, but I hate going to games there - the area is terrible. Not sure I like them going way out into the 'burbs, but for me, it will be better - most of the fan base, according to the Braves, comes from the North side anyway.

Does this pave the way for Georgia State to make this their own football stadium, altered, of course, to fit football in the 25-30,000 seat range?

[PaladinFan]

Unfortunately, 35,000 people don't show up, paying $100+ each 41 nights a year for education. They do for sports, which is where all the money comes from.
I love Turner Field, it's a great facility in my opinion, but I hate going to games there - the area is terrible. Not sure I like them going way out into the 'burbs, but for me, it will be better - most of the fan base, according to the Braves, comes from the North side anyway.

Does this pave the way for Georgia State to make this their own football stadium, altered, of course, to fit football in the 25-30,000 seat range?

I lament it because Atlanta has always been, to me, one of those underdog-type baseball teams that appeals to a bluecollar type of fan. They blast country music at the games. They have a lot of players from the deep south.

For whatever reason, this feels a bit like a sell out. Let's move the stadium to affluent suburbs to attract more beer drinking business men who laugh at bad jokes during games. I hate that look of yankee stadium elitism that sits down front.

[clenz]

Semi-related to this topic and buried in this article...
http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/political-insider/2013/nov/11/atlanta-braves-moving-cobb-county/

Apparently the braves are also rebranding...and plan to take away all Indian related imagery

[Franks Tanks]

Unfortunately, 35,000 people don't show up, paying $100+ each 41 nights a year for education. They do for sports, which is where all the money comes from.
I love Turner Field, it's a great facility in my opinion, but I hate going to games there - the area is terrible. Not sure I like them going way out into the 'burbs, but for me, it will be better - most of the fan base, according to the Braves, comes from the North side anyway.

Does this pave the way for Georgia State to make this their own football stadium, altered, of course, to fit football in the 25-30,000 seat range?

They don't do that in MLB either.

[PaladinFan]

Semi-related to this topic and buried in this article...
http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/political-insider/2013/nov/11/atlanta-braves-moving-cobb-county/

Apparently the braves are also rebranding...and plan to take away all Indian related imagery

I think the only Indian related imagery used by the Braves is the tomahawk on the chest. Obviously, the topic of native american imagery and professional sports teams is a hot one, though I do not classify the Braves or the tomhawk anywhere in the same class as Cheif Wahoo or the Washington Redskins.

I don't think a "rebranding" for the Braves would be that drastic really. The franchise has used jerseys in the past (1950s and 1970s) where there was no tomahawk on the jersey. A modern day alternate jersey of the 1950s uniform was put into circulation for this year's weekend homegames that lacks a tomahawk. I think the batting practice cap (or the cap the Braves wear with the alternate home red jersey) also has a tomahawk in the A.

[superman7515]

They don't do that in MLB either.

And of course, that's not where all the money comes from either. As study after study shows, the government never sees any return on investment in these stadiums and there is no evidence at all that they help the local economy.

http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/america-has-a-stadium-problem-62665/


If it were its own country, Chester, Pennsylvania’s per capita income would rank between Turkey and Dominica. On average, its residents are poorer than those of Uruguay, Lebanon, and Antigua and Barbuda. The city has been part of a program for economically distressed communities since 1995. And in 2010, PPL Park, a $117 million soccer stadium, was opened in Chester’s southwest corner, overlooking the Delaware River. With 97 percent of funding coming from the public, that’s $3,334.90 for every man, woman, and child in Chester.
Over the past 20 years, 101 new sports facilities have opened in the United States—a 90-percent replacement rate—and almost all of them have received direct public funding. The typical justification for a large public investment to build a stadium for an already-wealthy sports owner has to do with creating jobs or growing the local economy, which sound good to the median voter. “If I had to sum up the typical [public] perspective,” Neil deMause, co-author of Field of Schemes (http://www.amazon.com/Field-Schemes-Stadium-Swindle-Expanded/dp/0803260164/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1) and editor of the blog by the same title (http://www.fieldofschemes.com/)—the go-tos on the ongoing stadium subsidy story—told me via email, “I'd guess it'd be something along the lines of ‘I don't want my tax money going to rich fat cats, but anything that creates jobs is good, and man that Jeffrey Loria sure is a jerk (http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/02/24/jeffrey-loria-posts-letter-to-our-fans-in-miami-newspapers/), huh?’” This confused mindset has resulted in public coffers getting raided. The question is whether taxpayers have gotten anything in return.

Economists have long known stadiums to be poor public investments. Most of the jobs created by stadium-building projects are either temporary, low-paying, or out-of-state contracting jobs—none of which contribute greatly to the local economy. (Athletes can easily circumvent most taxes in the state in which they play (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2013/04/15/pro-athlete-tax-returns-illustrate-complexities-of-u-s-tax-code/).) Most fans do not spend additional money as a result of a new stadium; they re-direct money they would have spent elsewhere on movies, dining, bowling, tarot-card reading, or other businesses. And for every out-of-state fan who comes into the city on game day and buys a bucket of Bud Light Platinum, another non-fan decides not to visit and purchases his latte at the coffee shop next door. All in all, building a stadium is a poor use of a few hundred million dollars.


This isn’t news, by any stretch, but it turns out we’re spending even more money on stadiums than we originally thought. In her new book Public/Private Partnerships for Major League Sports Facilities (http://www.amazon.com/Public-Private-Partnerships-Facilities-Routledge-Management/dp/0415806933), Judith Grant Long, associate professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, shatters previous conceptions of just how much money the public has poured into these deals. By the late '90s, the first wave of damning economic studies conducted by Robert Baade and Richard Dye (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonlinelibrary.wiley.com%2Fdoi%2F1 0.1111%2Fj.1468-2257.1990.tb00513.x%2Fabstract&ei=7azgUYP_MejcyQGrgIHwCg&usg=AFQjCNHj_XMwvlXoX1Wef4iHEgJWtBkaAg&sig2=SUIm21hW6STCZJ108GR_sQ&bvm=bv.48705608,d.aWc), James Quirk and Rodney Fort (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpress.princeton.edu%2Ftitles%2F51 06.html&ei=_6zgUYDLI-nDyQGlvICICw&usg=AFQjCNGr9-zqEjmYdP3K14m0hvcYNKQjDg&sig2=pdpM7FZ_TUmtk_gpx0slGg&bvm=bv.48705608,d.aWc), and Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.brookings.edu%2Fresearch%2Far ticles%2F1997%2F06%2Fsummer-taxes-noll&ei=Z63gUdjkE-jcyQGrgIHwCg&usg=AFQjCNF1b_Fn65M11vvxEvP9ZF57UjSB6Q&sig2=n9_7G7ckm_8Q7mmT4IGYMw&bvm=bv.48705608,d.aWc) came to light, but well afterwards, from 2001 to 2010, 50 new sports facilities were opened, receiving $130 million more, on average, than those opened in the preceding decade. (All figures from Long’s book adjusted for 2010 dollars.) In the 1990s, the average public cost for a new facility was estimated at $142 million, but by the end of the 2000s, that figure jumped to $241 million: an increase of 70 percent.
Economists have also been, according to Long, drastically underestimating the true cost of these projects. They fail to consider public subsidies for land and infrastructure, the ongoing costs of operations, capital improvements (we (http://blogs.denverpost.com/broncos/2013/07/03/broncos-new-video-boards-unveiled-during-outlaws-lacrosse-fourth-of-july-game/20225/) need (http://www.bigcatcountry.com/2013/6/21/4451596/jaguars-new-scoreboard-pool) a (http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/15/3397612/florida-panthers-get-42-million.html) new (http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/06/17/jazz-unveil-plans-for-new-hd-scoreboard-at-energysolutions-arena/) scoreboard (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/blogs/en-fuego/os-gd-jacksonville-jaguars-tim-tebow-20130620,0,6867275.post)!) (http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/03/28/2534526/mariners-unveil-massive-new-safeco.html), municipal services (all those traffic cops), and foregone property taxes (almost every major-league franchise located in the U.S. does not pay property taxes “due to a legal loophole with questionable rationale” as the normally value-neutral Long put it). Due to these oversights, Long calculates that economists have been underestimating public subsidies for sports facilities by 25 percent, raising the figure to $259 million per facility in operation during the 2010 season.

[TTUEagles]

They don't do that in MLB either.

Yes, I was wrong - was thinking Hockey... The Braves averaged over 31,000 for 81 dates this year.
The point was simply that there isn't a pile of money sitting around and cities are picking sports over education - it's that public schools don't bring in any revenue, so it's always going to be hard for "education" to pull in money...

[superman7515]

And private stadiums don't pull in any revenue, they are actually money losers for the public, whereas educating someone allows them to get a job, pay taxes, and make money for the city/county/state.

[Go Green]

I guess 20 years is about the time stadiums bite the dust...2014 Progressive field in Cleveland turns 20 I guess that will be next. The NFL said Miami isn't going to host another Super Bowl until they get a new stadium. Sun Life Stadium is only 26 years old. Its something how we need to cut education and cut budgets when cities and states are in the red, but yet there is always money for stadiums.

I think that you (and others) will enjoy this article. The author really brings the sarcasm. :)

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2013/11/11/5092546/a-desperate-trip-into-the-ruins-of-turner-field

[FCS_pwns_FBS]

And of course, that's not where all the money comes from either. As study after study shows, the government never sees any return on investment in these stadiums and there is no evidence at all that they help the local economy.

http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/america-has-a-stadium-problem-62665/

None of that takes into account what people from out of town or out-of-state spend outside of the stadium when they come into town...restaurants, hotels, tourist destinations like the aquarium and the Coke museum, and other places. All of that puts money in the economy and lot of it creates revenue from sales taxes.

If the governments don't want to help build a new stadium for a sports franchise, those governments are free to tell the franchises to take a hike. But governments usually give in because they know how it impacts the economy.

[superman7515]

None of that takes into account what people from out of town or out-of-state spend outside of the stadium when they come into town...restaurants, hotels, tourist destinations like the aquarium and the Coke museum, and other places. All of that puts money in the economy and lot of it creates revenue from sales taxes.

If the governments don't want to help build a new stadium for a sports franchise, those governments are free to tell the franchises to take a hike. But governments usually give in because they know how it impacts the economy.

It absolutely does. Studies have shown that the more people from out of state come in because of stadiums, the more people from the area stay home and don't spend money. In every case, the studies have shown more money was lost because of the stadiums than gained as people stay home due to traffic, crowds, etc.

[TTUEagles]

There are a lot more benefits to having sports teams in a city/region/state than those that show up (on don't) on the balance sheet.
I totally understand the anger involved when our schools are broke, people are struggling, etc., and some team like the Braves gets pissy with a perfectly good venue and wants to spend upwards of billions (when all said and done, probably) to get a new palace. And, I, a 'die-hard' Braves fan, thinks what they are doing is idiotic...
But, I get a little tired of athletics getting dumped on time after time, when it seems there is ever-growing popularity with pro & college athletics - in other words, there's money to be made with the entertainment industry, I mean athletics, and that's the bottom line.

[PaladinFan]

What amazes me is that they could have had these extremely detailed and complex negotiations and (it seems) no one had any idea it was going on. I'd read where the Braves were unhappy with the state of affairs at Turner, but who could have guessed this would have happened?

[ngineer]

I guess 20 years is about the time stadiums bite the dust...2014 Progressive field in Cleveland turns 20 I guess that will be next. The NFL said Miami isn't going to host another Super Bowl until they get a new stadium. Sun Life Stadium is only 26 years old. Its something how we need to cut education and cut budgets when cities and states are in the red, but yet there is always money for stadiums.

Absolutely. Our priorities as a country are total screwed up.

[FormerPokeCenter]

And private stadiums don't pull in any revenue, they are actually money losers for the public, whereas educating someone allows them to get a job, pay taxes, and make money for the city/county/state.



Yes, but you can't have "bread and circuses," my friend, without a proper venue..

And THAT is precisely why sports teams win the head to head funding wars with education...

[PaladinFan]

Yes, but you can't have "bread and circuses," my friend, without a proper venue..

And THAT is precisely why sports teams win the head to head funding wars with education...

Quite right. It's just insanity to think that human culture will quit doing something they have done almost routinely 2500 years.