carter23
April-7th-2005, 12:24 PM
it's very long (6 pages dble spaced in word) but thanks for checking this out... some of the quotes might be choppy because I had to fit it into 6 pages
thanks
What are the issues?
33 years after the last MLB Franchise left Washington, D.C., Commissioner Bud Selig approved a deal that would send the homeless Montreal Expos to the Nation’s Capital. Along with the team came the issues over whether a team could be successful the third time around in Washington. The debate over the feasibility of whether a MLB franchise could be successful has raged strong over the last seven months. Many different parties are involved, arguing over different aspects of what it takes to field a MLB team. Topics such as stadium funds, competition with local teams, ability to gain fan support and sell tickets, and in a new issue surrounding MLB, reaching the inner-city African American population have dominated discussions concerning the Washington Nationals’ inaugural season.
Each of the parties involved in debating how to have a successful baseball franchise in Washington, D.C. have their own take on whether the issues at hand exist, don’t exist, or how serious these issues are. The Washington, D.C. Council, who votes on how to fund the National’s new stadium, is currently split over whether a problem over funding exists. One Council member, Adrian M. Fenty, believes that the National’s current plan, released March 30th, 2005 by Natwar M. Gandhi, the city's chief financial officer, is too expensive. “We're paying too much [$581 million]… and District taxpayers are on the hook for too much of it.” (Nakamura 2) Fellow council member, Chairman Linda W. Cropp, agrees. “We still should look for opportunities to reduce the costs wherever we can. I still think there's a way to do it cheaper.” (Nakamura 2) In order to help ease the tax burden on the residents of Washington, the council has sought at least $140 million in private money for a baseball stadium. Fenty and Cropp’s opponents in the D.C. Council believe that the current funding system will be successful. “This is a go,” Jack Evans said. “This is what we've been waiting for.” (Nakamura 2) MLB also believes there are other options to correctly fund the stadium. Because Commissioner Bud Selig and MLB currently own the Nationals, Selig’s allegiance is to the franchise, and not the city’s. For MLB, the more the city has to pay, the more appealing the franchise will look for potential owners, who would have to fork over less of their own money to buy the team. Another imminent issue that has plagued the Washington team since the beginning is whether the Nationals will interfere and steal fans from the current local team, the Baltimore Orioles. Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles estimates that the team will lose $30 million in ticket sales, concessions, advertising and parking revenue because of the Nationals' arrival, according to Thomas Heath of the Washington Post. Mr. Angelos has “used the threat of litigation and a flair for brinkmanship to cast a pall over the start of Washington baseball's first season in 34 years,” (“Mr. Angelos's Foul Ball”) and has made it difficult for the Nationals to get a TV deal, but both sides finally came to agreement the last week before Opening Day. MLB believes that the Nationals will not be a problem for the Orioles, because the two areas are considered to be different markets.
Another issue that has plagued expansion teams in recent years has also come up when discussing the Nationals. The ability to sell enough tickets and merchandise is important for all franchises in every sport, and if the Nationals flop, then the team and MLB would look extremely foolish. Peter Angelos and the critics of the move to Washington believe that the franchise will not be able to stay afloat, while the Nationals and MLB believe that the Nationals will have no problems with attendance, as the Nation’s Capital is starved for their own team. The last issue in the debate over the feasibility of a successful MLB franchise in Washington, D.C. is whether the Nationals are reaching out to the inner-city African Americans. The return of baseball to Washington, D.C., a city with a 57% African American population (Pierre and Svrluga), has sparked MLB to focus some of its attention on how to get the black community to stop from “turning away from baseball for the faster-paced games of football and basketball, which have been more in tune with blacks culturally.” (Pierre and Svrluga) National’s Manager, Frank Robinson, an African American himself, says “I will not sit here and try to say that because a major league team is coming to town, it's going to get better. I don't think that's going to get it done. It goes back deeper than that.”
Each party can agree that each issue exists, but they all have their own reasons as to what caused them to arise. The matter of how to properly fund a stadium has been a messy situation from the beginning. The Nationals and MLB originally agreed on a deal in September, 2004, as Murray Chass of the New York Times writes, “The noble politicians in Washington… promised Selig they would build a new ballpark for the team almost completely at their expense… Not only that, but the owner of the team… would get 100% of the ballpark's revenues … Never had an owner been offered such a deal.... Selig was counting on the offer to extract a huge sale price, maybe as much as $400 million, for the team, which MLB owns.” Realizing the mess they had gotten themselves into, the council surprisingly nixed the deal, a move that MLB called “wholly unacceptable,” (Fatsis) and in response shut down the Nationals' business operations almost making the Nationals homeless again, until the two sides agreed on a new deal before the December 31, 2004 deadline. Once the two sides agreed on the deal, the Council now needed to decide how to properly fund the stadium. Mr. Ghandi had certified two proposed deals, one proposed by Deutsche Bank, who was willing to spend $493 million dollars “for control of several revenue streams related to the stadium” and the Gates Group “[who] proposed giving the city up to $175 million in return for annual revenue from a curbside parking district on streets near the stadium.” (Nakamura) These two plans did not convince the council that they would save the city money. Some members, such as Vincent C. Gray, of the council believed that both these plans just gave money upfront to the city, but in the long run these private companies will benefit from recovering their fee. “I was hoping someone would step up and find a way to support this stadium with real private dollars, but these plans do nothing to satisfy me.” (Nakamura) In response to these allegations, Gandhi pointed out that the plans “are willing to take significant risk away from the city.” (Nakamura) Under these plans, the companies would be paying money upfront for the ownership of a number of revenue streams, so if the Nationals do not sell much merchandise, the city does not lose any of their money, because they already received it.
Even before the Montreal Expos were announced to move to Washington, D.C., Peter Angelos was trying his hardest to stop it. Once it was actually approved, he began negotiations with Bud Selig and MLB “regarding compensation” (Bloom), which just ended March 30th, when he and MLB President Robert DuPuy agreed that Angelos would receive $365 million if he sold the Orioles, and if he sold it for less, than MLB would pay for the difference (Heath). Angelos did not want to lose control over the “potentially lucrative Baltimore-Washington television market, which runs from Pennsylvania to the Virginia-North Carolina border, and from West Virginia to Delaware… its potential television revenue could have a huge impact on the financial health of both franchises.” (Heath) In order to maintain the maximum amount of power, he “insisted on a prejudicial television broadcasting arrangement that would hold the Nationals' financial fortunes hostage to his own whims indefinitely.” (“Mr. Angelos's Foul Ball”) The cause for the debate over whether they will get enough fan support is the last two Major League teams in Washington had moved, citing lack of fan support as a reason on both occasions. Critics not only bring that point up, but also argue that Washington is primarily a football city, where the Redskins reign supreme. Yet with the ticket figures for this season, MLB may be validated for its belief in the Washington area, the largest by far that had been without a baseball franchise. Local buzz around Washington has given evidence that this time they will succeed. “I'm glad they're back,” local resident, Steve Achhammer, who grew up a big fan of the Washington Senators, said. “I've waited a long time for this.” Quentin Olson agrees. “There's a real draw to having your own team in your own city.” (Seidel)
The debate over whether the Nationals will bring baseball to inner-city Washington was caused by the underwhelming amount of kids playing baseball. When told that that only 4,000 kids in inner-city D.C. were playing league baseball, James G. Mauro Jr., president of the Northwest Washington Little League, the largest little league in the city, said it's “absurd” the number isn't 10,000 (Pierre and Svrluga). According to Mike McManus, one of the founders of the District's Satchel Paige Little League, black children don’t have baseball players to admire. "It's all reflective… of the number of role models in the NBA and the NFL," McManus said. “In MLB, the kids don't recognize the contribution that African Americans have made to the game and continue to make to the game.” (Pierre and Svrluga) Even players agree that MLB has done a bad job marketing to African Americans in the inner-city. “There's no affiliation to what's cool in the inner city,” says MLB veteran Jeffrey Hammonds (Pierre and Svrluga).
Each party believes there are different courses of action to take over each issue. Regarding the right way to fund the stadium, the split D.C. council agrees that the best thing is for there to be at least $140 million of the estimated 581 million believed to be the final cost of the stadium to be private funded, while Bud Selig would like for the city to pay for a greater fraction of the cost.
Peter Angelos, the Nationals, and MLB finally decided on how to make each party happy. Under the agreement, the newly created Mid-Atlantic Sports, over 50% of which is owned by Angelos, would pay the Nationals a rights fee and distribute 76 of the club's games to two local FOX stations in the area (Heath), giving all the potential rewards to Angelos and the Orioles. This agreement solves the tussle between Angelos and the Nationals for now, and shows that the Orioles and Nationals can co-exist, at least through cathode rays.
The Nationals contend that the interest in baseball is stronger than ever towards baseball in Washington, D.C., and use their ticket sales, more than 50,000 tickets during the first six hours of sales (Yahoo! Sports) and over 20,000 season tickets, more than any other Major League Washington franchise, as proof. With selling so many tickets so fast, there isn’t much the Nationals can do to improve on this. To maintain such good numbers, the National’s PR staff needs to market well. To get more inner-city kids interested in MLB, they have joined the RBI, or Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, program. Two Major Leaguers, Coco Crisp and Carl Crawford, are graduates (Pierre and Svrluga). RBI helps, but MLB plans to heavily market its African American stars, such as Derek Jeter and Torii Hunter, to give African Americans baseball heroes to look up to.
The Nationals, Washington, D.C.’s 3rd attempt at a MLB franchise, are in relatively uncharted territory. No team has relocated since the last Washington team, the Senators, moved to Texas. With issues surrounding the team, the Nationals have, in theory, set themselves up for a successful run. Issues such as what is the correct way to fund the new stadium, set to be open 2008, having a contending fan-base with rival clubs, including merchandise and having good attendance, and the ability to reach the entire community to introduce baseball to a whole new market are all the obstacles the Washington Nationals have to face as they head into Opening Day, April 4th, 2005.
thanks
What are the issues?
33 years after the last MLB Franchise left Washington, D.C., Commissioner Bud Selig approved a deal that would send the homeless Montreal Expos to the Nation’s Capital. Along with the team came the issues over whether a team could be successful the third time around in Washington. The debate over the feasibility of whether a MLB franchise could be successful has raged strong over the last seven months. Many different parties are involved, arguing over different aspects of what it takes to field a MLB team. Topics such as stadium funds, competition with local teams, ability to gain fan support and sell tickets, and in a new issue surrounding MLB, reaching the inner-city African American population have dominated discussions concerning the Washington Nationals’ inaugural season.
Each of the parties involved in debating how to have a successful baseball franchise in Washington, D.C. have their own take on whether the issues at hand exist, don’t exist, or how serious these issues are. The Washington, D.C. Council, who votes on how to fund the National’s new stadium, is currently split over whether a problem over funding exists. One Council member, Adrian M. Fenty, believes that the National’s current plan, released March 30th, 2005 by Natwar M. Gandhi, the city's chief financial officer, is too expensive. “We're paying too much [$581 million]… and District taxpayers are on the hook for too much of it.” (Nakamura 2) Fellow council member, Chairman Linda W. Cropp, agrees. “We still should look for opportunities to reduce the costs wherever we can. I still think there's a way to do it cheaper.” (Nakamura 2) In order to help ease the tax burden on the residents of Washington, the council has sought at least $140 million in private money for a baseball stadium. Fenty and Cropp’s opponents in the D.C. Council believe that the current funding system will be successful. “This is a go,” Jack Evans said. “This is what we've been waiting for.” (Nakamura 2) MLB also believes there are other options to correctly fund the stadium. Because Commissioner Bud Selig and MLB currently own the Nationals, Selig’s allegiance is to the franchise, and not the city’s. For MLB, the more the city has to pay, the more appealing the franchise will look for potential owners, who would have to fork over less of their own money to buy the team. Another imminent issue that has plagued the Washington team since the beginning is whether the Nationals will interfere and steal fans from the current local team, the Baltimore Orioles. Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles estimates that the team will lose $30 million in ticket sales, concessions, advertising and parking revenue because of the Nationals' arrival, according to Thomas Heath of the Washington Post. Mr. Angelos has “used the threat of litigation and a flair for brinkmanship to cast a pall over the start of Washington baseball's first season in 34 years,” (“Mr. Angelos's Foul Ball”) and has made it difficult for the Nationals to get a TV deal, but both sides finally came to agreement the last week before Opening Day. MLB believes that the Nationals will not be a problem for the Orioles, because the two areas are considered to be different markets.
Another issue that has plagued expansion teams in recent years has also come up when discussing the Nationals. The ability to sell enough tickets and merchandise is important for all franchises in every sport, and if the Nationals flop, then the team and MLB would look extremely foolish. Peter Angelos and the critics of the move to Washington believe that the franchise will not be able to stay afloat, while the Nationals and MLB believe that the Nationals will have no problems with attendance, as the Nation’s Capital is starved for their own team. The last issue in the debate over the feasibility of a successful MLB franchise in Washington, D.C. is whether the Nationals are reaching out to the inner-city African Americans. The return of baseball to Washington, D.C., a city with a 57% African American population (Pierre and Svrluga), has sparked MLB to focus some of its attention on how to get the black community to stop from “turning away from baseball for the faster-paced games of football and basketball, which have been more in tune with blacks culturally.” (Pierre and Svrluga) National’s Manager, Frank Robinson, an African American himself, says “I will not sit here and try to say that because a major league team is coming to town, it's going to get better. I don't think that's going to get it done. It goes back deeper than that.”
Each party can agree that each issue exists, but they all have their own reasons as to what caused them to arise. The matter of how to properly fund a stadium has been a messy situation from the beginning. The Nationals and MLB originally agreed on a deal in September, 2004, as Murray Chass of the New York Times writes, “The noble politicians in Washington… promised Selig they would build a new ballpark for the team almost completely at their expense… Not only that, but the owner of the team… would get 100% of the ballpark's revenues … Never had an owner been offered such a deal.... Selig was counting on the offer to extract a huge sale price, maybe as much as $400 million, for the team, which MLB owns.” Realizing the mess they had gotten themselves into, the council surprisingly nixed the deal, a move that MLB called “wholly unacceptable,” (Fatsis) and in response shut down the Nationals' business operations almost making the Nationals homeless again, until the two sides agreed on a new deal before the December 31, 2004 deadline. Once the two sides agreed on the deal, the Council now needed to decide how to properly fund the stadium. Mr. Ghandi had certified two proposed deals, one proposed by Deutsche Bank, who was willing to spend $493 million dollars “for control of several revenue streams related to the stadium” and the Gates Group “[who] proposed giving the city up to $175 million in return for annual revenue from a curbside parking district on streets near the stadium.” (Nakamura) These two plans did not convince the council that they would save the city money. Some members, such as Vincent C. Gray, of the council believed that both these plans just gave money upfront to the city, but in the long run these private companies will benefit from recovering their fee. “I was hoping someone would step up and find a way to support this stadium with real private dollars, but these plans do nothing to satisfy me.” (Nakamura) In response to these allegations, Gandhi pointed out that the plans “are willing to take significant risk away from the city.” (Nakamura) Under these plans, the companies would be paying money upfront for the ownership of a number of revenue streams, so if the Nationals do not sell much merchandise, the city does not lose any of their money, because they already received it.
Even before the Montreal Expos were announced to move to Washington, D.C., Peter Angelos was trying his hardest to stop it. Once it was actually approved, he began negotiations with Bud Selig and MLB “regarding compensation” (Bloom), which just ended March 30th, when he and MLB President Robert DuPuy agreed that Angelos would receive $365 million if he sold the Orioles, and if he sold it for less, than MLB would pay for the difference (Heath). Angelos did not want to lose control over the “potentially lucrative Baltimore-Washington television market, which runs from Pennsylvania to the Virginia-North Carolina border, and from West Virginia to Delaware… its potential television revenue could have a huge impact on the financial health of both franchises.” (Heath) In order to maintain the maximum amount of power, he “insisted on a prejudicial television broadcasting arrangement that would hold the Nationals' financial fortunes hostage to his own whims indefinitely.” (“Mr. Angelos's Foul Ball”) The cause for the debate over whether they will get enough fan support is the last two Major League teams in Washington had moved, citing lack of fan support as a reason on both occasions. Critics not only bring that point up, but also argue that Washington is primarily a football city, where the Redskins reign supreme. Yet with the ticket figures for this season, MLB may be validated for its belief in the Washington area, the largest by far that had been without a baseball franchise. Local buzz around Washington has given evidence that this time they will succeed. “I'm glad they're back,” local resident, Steve Achhammer, who grew up a big fan of the Washington Senators, said. “I've waited a long time for this.” Quentin Olson agrees. “There's a real draw to having your own team in your own city.” (Seidel)
The debate over whether the Nationals will bring baseball to inner-city Washington was caused by the underwhelming amount of kids playing baseball. When told that that only 4,000 kids in inner-city D.C. were playing league baseball, James G. Mauro Jr., president of the Northwest Washington Little League, the largest little league in the city, said it's “absurd” the number isn't 10,000 (Pierre and Svrluga). According to Mike McManus, one of the founders of the District's Satchel Paige Little League, black children don’t have baseball players to admire. "It's all reflective… of the number of role models in the NBA and the NFL," McManus said. “In MLB, the kids don't recognize the contribution that African Americans have made to the game and continue to make to the game.” (Pierre and Svrluga) Even players agree that MLB has done a bad job marketing to African Americans in the inner-city. “There's no affiliation to what's cool in the inner city,” says MLB veteran Jeffrey Hammonds (Pierre and Svrluga).
Each party believes there are different courses of action to take over each issue. Regarding the right way to fund the stadium, the split D.C. council agrees that the best thing is for there to be at least $140 million of the estimated 581 million believed to be the final cost of the stadium to be private funded, while Bud Selig would like for the city to pay for a greater fraction of the cost.
Peter Angelos, the Nationals, and MLB finally decided on how to make each party happy. Under the agreement, the newly created Mid-Atlantic Sports, over 50% of which is owned by Angelos, would pay the Nationals a rights fee and distribute 76 of the club's games to two local FOX stations in the area (Heath), giving all the potential rewards to Angelos and the Orioles. This agreement solves the tussle between Angelos and the Nationals for now, and shows that the Orioles and Nationals can co-exist, at least through cathode rays.
The Nationals contend that the interest in baseball is stronger than ever towards baseball in Washington, D.C., and use their ticket sales, more than 50,000 tickets during the first six hours of sales (Yahoo! Sports) and over 20,000 season tickets, more than any other Major League Washington franchise, as proof. With selling so many tickets so fast, there isn’t much the Nationals can do to improve on this. To maintain such good numbers, the National’s PR staff needs to market well. To get more inner-city kids interested in MLB, they have joined the RBI, or Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, program. Two Major Leaguers, Coco Crisp and Carl Crawford, are graduates (Pierre and Svrluga). RBI helps, but MLB plans to heavily market its African American stars, such as Derek Jeter and Torii Hunter, to give African Americans baseball heroes to look up to.
The Nationals, Washington, D.C.’s 3rd attempt at a MLB franchise, are in relatively uncharted territory. No team has relocated since the last Washington team, the Senators, moved to Texas. With issues surrounding the team, the Nationals have, in theory, set themselves up for a successful run. Issues such as what is the correct way to fund the new stadium, set to be open 2008, having a contending fan-base with rival clubs, including merchandise and having good attendance, and the ability to reach the entire community to introduce baseball to a whole new market are all the obstacles the Washington Nationals have to face as they head into Opening Day, April 4th, 2005.