The Great Debate |
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Could Salt Lake support a MLB team? |
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 Spencer Sandstrom / The Daily Utah Chronicle |
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Salt Lake market is unfit to host MLB |
Large fan base would embrace big league |
 Spring Mobile Ballpark was packed to capacity last Saturday as the Seattle Mariners and Colorado Rockies faced off in an exhibition game. It was the first time in 43 years that a Major League Baseball game had taken place in Salt Lake City. By all accounts, the day was a success from a fan’s perspective and sparked the question of whether Salt Lake City is capable of supporting a Major League team. Sure, it’s true I’m not the biggest fan of baseball, so perhaps my reasoning is biased, but this market isn’t capable of it. It all comes down to a numbers game. On Saturday, Salt Lake Tribune columnist Kurt Kragthorpe tweeted that about 54,000 people combined had attended the baseball game at Spring Mobile, the Real Salt Lake game at Rio Tinto Stadium and the Utah Jazz game at EnergySolutions Arena. Also, about 8,000 people attended a BYU spring football scrimmage that day at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo. Sixty-two thousand people is a lot of folks, and I struggle to think there’s much more of a market than that in the Salt Lake area. This is a problem when you consider that Spring Mobile ballpark only holds 15,411 people. The average Major League park holds more than 40,000 fans. That’s an increase of about 25,000 more fans who would need to attend games for the park to sell out. That would bring the total number of fans needed to fill all of these venues to 87,000. I don’t see that happening. Sure, not every team in town will always or even often play on the same day, but there’s still a numbers problem. With the way the economy is these days, I would venture to guess that most people can only afford to go to one of these games every once in a while. Essentially, you need roughly 87,000 people to fill all these venues. The scenario I envision is that people would have to choose between the Jazz, RSL and the baseball team. With both the Jazz and RSL having pretty strong fan bases already, I see the baseball team having a difficult time stealing a lot of those fans, but that’s the only way it would work. A second numbers issue has to do with building a stadium. As previously mentioned, Spring Mobile Ballpark is not fit to house a big-league crowd. It worked for one exhibition, but that’s a far cry from 81 games per season. It was hard enough to secure funds to build Rio Tinto Stadium for Real Salt Lake. Taxpayers might be more eager to help fund a ballpark than they were a soccer stadium, but it would be a battle nonetheless. There’s no question that there is a sizeable contingent of baseball fans in the Salt Lake area, but the market isn’t big enough to support another major league team. |
 For years, I’ve heard residents of Salt Lake City and the surrounding areas yearn for another professional sports team. During the NBA offseason, avid Jazz fans find themselves with no professional rooting interests unless they adopt those of Denver, Colo. While many people would love a football team to move to Salt Lake City, a Major League Baseball team would be the answer. And it could happen. Yes, Salt Lake City is already one of the smallest media markets in the United States, and no, it doesn’t have the favorable year-round weather or tourist destinations that other small markets like New Orleans have. But here in Utah, we love big-time sports. It has been well-documented that EnergySolutions Arena can be one of the toughest places to play in the NBA, and much of that is because of the fervent support of the fans. Those who can’t make it to the games flock to sports bars in their Jazz gear or get together at a friend’s house to enjoy the action together. The result of the game fuels water-cooler talk for days, and everybody has an opinion on the team. But it’s not just the Jazz that have a strong following in the Salt Lake area, as fan support has never been an issue for any high-profile sporting event in the city. When the NCAA holds a round of the men’s basketball tournament in our great city, spectators make their way to ESA in hordes. Even the preseason baseball game last weekend at Spring Mobile Ballpark sold out and boasted a crowd of 15,411, almost 3,000 more than at any other preseason game for the Mariners or Rockies. That was for an insignificant game, which featured two teams that aren’t from around here. Aside from the Jazz, there is one other major sporting attraction in town, and that is Pac-12 football at the U. If we look at the 2012 season, we see that attendance was not an issue, even when the Utes started the season 2-5. That included a four-game losing skid on the road, and only one of those losses was by a single-digit margin. Yet when Utah returned home to play Cal, Rice-Eccles Stadium was filled to its listed capacity of 45,017 — and that was the smallest home crowd of the year. Salt Lake City might be a relatively small media market, but that doesn’t mean it can’t support a Major League Baseball team. Salt Lake City is bigger than two current MLB markets that have seen recent success — Milwaukee and Cincinnati — and it isn’t far behind Kansas City. So, if any MLB teams don’t want to share the spotlight with three or four other professional franchises, they know where to come. If they want a beautiful location with the unwavering adoration of hundreds of thousands of fans, there’s no place like Salt Lake City. |
The Great Debate: Could Salt Lake support a MLB team?
April 4, 2013