Ongoing Portland Stadium Thread

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

From a purely mls-fan-viewpoint, a shared stadium would suck big time.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

Now I am very pro-pdx and love my MLS, but I think you're venturing into the realm of the absurd over-exaggeration.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

agreed. american soccer, yes, but american sports, not even freaking remotely close. college football rivalries in america are by far the most heated.

i can see how losing the stream of revenue from roughly 400k people attending baseball games might upset some politicos and other people, but you gotta look at it like this:
MLS in portland generates revenue streams for the city that USL and especially the beavers cant, tourism. for the most part you are not going to be getting much out of town travelers coming into the city and staying in hotels, eating out and shopping with the two teams currently. you plop an MLS team in there and you are getting regular friendlies with bigger name clubs or even national team friendlies or qualifiers. that brings in many thousands of people from out of town who are going to be spending quite a bit of money in the town. take for instance the WCQ in salt lake, that one single game brought millions of dollars in tourism money for the city and state, something they hadnt seen since the 2002 olympics.

people will come from far and away to stay in portland and see exciting MLS games or friendlies, no one is coming from outside oregon (excluding vancouver washington) to catch a beavers game. portland politicians would be extremely foolish to think that they would be losing a lot of revenue by axing the beavers and the 400k "tickets" every year. it just wont happen. and in the long run you eliminate a large area of operating costs by taking 70 baseball home games and 15-20 USL home games every year out of PGE and replacing it with just 20 MLS games.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

If the city is in the black on the baseball events and generating revenue for their spectator fund, then the operating costs are worth it.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

do you know if the city is in the black though? and why the hell would you not want to eliminate those operating costs altogether while bringing in the same if not MORE money? it would be idiotic to not do so, you would be putting yourself further into the black, now who would want to do a thing like that especially in this economy in oregon.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

Put this stuff into two different boxes. In one box, you have the MLS games and all the revenue they generate for the city's specator fund. In another box, you have the Beavers 70 games and all the revenue they generate for the spectator fund. The boxes don't overlap. You are focusing on "eliminating the operating costs" while ignoring that the Beavers box nets money for the specator fund.

The sharing advocates are basically saying that they can have everything MLS brings, plus the revenue from the Beavers games. To them, there is no either/or. They don't want to throw the Beavers box in the trash.

This is similar to how pretty much every MLS venue holds other events in order to bring in additional revenue. The only difference with the Portland situation is that the baseball configuration isn't ideal for soccer. From the perspective of a soccer fan, there is certainly an either/or when it comes to sharing with baseball. Heck, most soccer fans don't want to share with football either because of the lines. So it's an aesthetic versus financial dilemma.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

basically, being a soccer fan and a baseball (dont want to say hater, but the game is just boring to me, dont care for it), i would get rid of the beavers in a heart beat if it meant getting an MLS team. i hate the idea of sharing PGE park, its costly, it means sacrificing certain aesthetic and functional remodeling of the stadium. if i had to absolutely deal with it though, i want PGE park to be a soccer stadium that can be converted to a baseball arrangement. right now its a baseball stadium that can accommodate soccer. the stadium should be designed and allow for easiest access to its primary source of revenue generation, which would be MLS.

what it may come down to is this: portland can get a MLS team if they have a dedicated stadium that wont be shared with the beavers. portland can pick between: having the portland beavers revenue and USL timbers or having the MLS revenue by itself. i would have to imagine that both options will generate probably about the same revenue for the spectator fund. BUT, an MLS team will bring more money to the city by way of tourism dollars, something the beavers and current timbers cant generate much of. i would hope that portland politicians would see this argument and go with having a MLS team.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

An actual soccer stadium will get you international matches and USNT games, where a soccer/baseball stadium won't. RFK got hardly anything when the Nats played here, and suddenly Nat games have come back (US, El Salvador, Bolivia) now that they're gone.

And it's not just aesthetics--a sodded-over infield and pitchers mound will certainly affect the play in often embarrassing ways as well. The RFK experience also attests to that.

Even if MLS agreed to share (and the league is right not to, they have enough scheduling headaches without scheduling around 70 home games in the same season), it would suck in many ways.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

You throw quotes around that phrase like it was insignificant or unreal, but the Beavers are likely having a good night when they generate anything significant beyond those operating costs.

But it's based on a fallacy that the 400k the Beavers bring in is anything like the 400k that MLS would, and it isn't, because the vast majority of the former is just paying off expenses. (Plus, MLS will charge more for tickets.)

That is not the only difference. The MLS venue expects to bring in serious money with its outside events. . . and a relative handful of them at that. MLS's goal, and they don't always achieve it but enough that this is the business model, is that they bring in one outside event that takes in an order of magnitude more money than a Beavers game could.

They're not going to host anything that takes significant conversion and only brings in 4,000 fans, because that makes no economic sense. The additive principle doesn't work here because the minor league baseball team scrapes by so much on each game that it never adds up to real money.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

not to mention the added money that would be generated if Portland State football can utilize the "new" stadium to get bigger as a program. get more fans, play bigger games, etc.

portland residents will laugh at that, but stranger things have happened in D-1 fb and basketball

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

I was quoting UPinSLC, thus the "quotes".

I agree that AAA baseball in the stadium makes it harder for things like Manchester United coming to town for a friendly or a USMNT qualifier, athough there are ways to make that work such as trucking in a temporary grass field. I was merely pointing out that UPinSLC was focusing on eliminating the operating costs while ignoring that the Beavers net revenue for the specator fund. That helps people understand where the sharing advocates are coming from. I don't agree with them.

Also, I think we should be clear about a couple things. The Paulsons are the operators of PGE Park. The city bears no operating costs. As far as I know, the Paulsons actually profit from the Beavers, which makes sense since MILB payrolls are insignificant. I could be wrong. The city gets it revenues from ticket and concessions taxes. So 400,000 attendees is nothing to sneeze at when talking about tax revenue.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

Yes and no. They're pretty small for the MILB owners because lots of the players are on contracts paid by the parent MLB club

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

Hey, Stan. I just noticed this part of your post and didn't respond to it before. I don't think there is a fallacy involved here. Am I missing something? Whatever amount of revenue the Beavers generate for the specator fund, it exists and can be garnered in parallel and in addition to whatever MLS generates. I sympathize with the people who are focused on maximizing the revenue for the city, but I obviously don't agree that sharing with baseball is in MLS's best interests.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

This is one argument that many people use when they are against the idea of putting the beavers in their own 7,000 seat stadium.
The thing is, chances are very good that if that was the choice made by the powers that be, Portland would most likely be left with the Beavers only.

If there isn't "MLS Timbers", then USL Timbers would most likely be folded or moved. Once Vancouver moves up to MLS the Timbers would be the only team in the western half of the US. Their closest road matches would be in Austin TX and Minnesota. Merrit has stated that staying in the league would not be feasible if every single road match involves a trip of 1,000 miles or more "one way".

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

yes, i had forgotten about that point. there is no real viable way to keep the timbers in USL, travel expenses would be enormous. i would have to think that merritt would much rather fold the beavers and have a MLS squad than fold the USL squad and keep the beavers. it does not make financial sense for him keep the beavers around alone.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

What did he pay for the Beavers though? And doesn't he have a long term lease for PGE Park for the Beavers?

Is it realistic for him to just fold the baseball team?

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

I think "sell" the baseball team is much more realistic. Perhaps Tuscon wants a team back. Or perhaps Vancouver, B.C., or something.

The only question is whether the members of the City Council will stand for it or not. Do they really care more about MLS soccer than AAA baseball? How will they react when AAA baseball fans come out of the woodwork and start bitching? We may find out soon.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

Move Portland to Richmond.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

http://portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=124568898279255000

This is good news for the mayor and should take the wind out of the sails of the recall campaign. It should also allow him to stand stronger on the stadium deals. He was too easy to bully during the Memorial Coliseum stand-off as he didn't want to create more political opponents.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

Regardless of the result of the AG's investigation into Adams, he's still sunk politically. Once you get the funk on you, it doesn't wash off very easily.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

And they certainly could sell the Beavers and move them somewhere else. It would likely be somewhere west of Des Moines, though, you'd imagine. Don't know if anyone would be interested in a return to Tucson or not. But there are probably some AAA-type markets out there. Or maybe a California League market that wanted to step up or something.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

Well, it's pretty obvious that Adams doesn't care about the Beavers.

Sorry, long day, couldn't resist.

 

Re: Lawmakers Give Initial Approval To Soccer Stadium Financing In Portland

That's why he's here!