Can the city support an NBA or NHL team?
July 24, 2008
After today’s announcement that Baltimore officials want a downtown arena big enough accommodate a professional franchise, the next obvious question is: Who could fill that order, and can Baltimore really support an NBA or NHL team?
It’s been 35 years since the Bullets headed down I-95 to play in the Washington area (where they became the Wizards in 1997) and Baltimore hasn’t even had a whiff of getting a pro basketball team since. Sure, the Seattle Sonics were available earlier this year, but Baltimore was never a legitimate contender to get them. (The Sonics’ new home, Oklahoma City, was announced this month).
And the idea of Baltimore supporting a professional hockey team, especially when the area’s handful of hockey fans can go to D.C. or Philadelphia to watch a game, seems even more unrealistic (see comments here).
Even the city’s professional baseball team has been struggling to draw crowds for the past few years as excitement over the new ballpark has faded and the reality of a mediocre ball club has set in. The Orioles are a perfect case in point: when teams do well, more people come to their games. A few weeks before the All-Star break, the team was playing above-.500 ball and Camden Yards was attracting more people than it had in recent years.
Today the team is 10.5 games out of first place in the American League East, sits three games below .500 and is 7-11 in the month of July. In the last four weeks, attendance at Oriole Park has dropped by an average of 2,000 per night.
So while a new franchise might draw sellout crowds the first few years, after the excitement wears off where will Baltimore stand? If the team isn’t any good, evidence so far points to all but the hardcore fans in this city being pretty indifferent about watching a lousy team in person. (The Ravens, of course, are the grand exception to that — despite a 5-11 season last year M&T Bank Stadium was packed for every game.)
And while it should be noted that an 18,500-seat arena might be easier to fill up than a ballpark that seats more than 48,000, do you think Baltimore could really support a professional hockey or basketball team?
LIZ FARMER, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentComments
4 Responses to “Can the city support an NBA or NHL team?”
Got something to say?
-
Business
Eye on Annapolis
Business posts- Development news round-up
- Big eminent domain case in New York has Baltimore connection
- Help wanted at the PSC
- One email marketer catches on
- The Red Line–two opposing views
- Goodies galore at this Friday’s Orioles game
- Green Drinks event invades Little Havana
- Annapolis parking fee increase delayed - not scrapped
- My date with the spacemen
- Power in numbers
Law
Law posts- Bon Jovi headlines rockin’ court opinion
- Law school encourages new admittees to ‘think hard’
- Lend a Hand (or the Schooner Tuna solution)
- A Baltimore lawyer talks about Michael
- 4th Circuit goes 0 for 5 this term
- New lawyers’ pay still polarized
- This week in Maryland Lawyer
- Law blog round-up
- The King of Pop as peacemaker
- Venable cuts salaries across the board
Recent Posts
- How do you promote these schizophrenic Orioles?
- Development news round-up
- Bon Jovi headlines rockin’ court opinion
- Law school encourages new admittees to ‘think hard’
- Big eminent domain case in New York has Baltimore connection
Recent Comments
- val: i also live in Maryland and have found out that Ann Arundel Community College has a court reporting curiculum. I...
- Jackie Sauter, Web Editor: Update: Pottery Barn also offers a myriad of options between “unsubscribe” and...
- Erica: Good decision, now maybe I can help my son. I have been fighting with BCPSS for years over this issue. They...
- gary: When lightning strikes a vehicle or plane, the charge travels along the exterior. It is important that there...
- chasneka: There are so many good things going on in the greater Belvedere Square corridor. The Senator has been the...
On Commenting
We ask that our readers follow a few guidelines, noted below.Please do not post any personal attacks, profanity, spam or other advertisements — they will be removed. Also, please post using only one name or pseudonym, as this consistency helps establish a sense of community. We will delete posts if they are signed with different names but originate from the same IP or email address. And if you’re going to comment using a proper name, please make it your own. Deliberate misrepresentations will be removed.
No.
Of course it can’t. NBA ticket prices are outrageous, and the NHL isn’t any better. (Plus, it isn’t terribly popular.) The Blast put an entertaining, winning product on the floor and drew about 7,000 per game.
Let’s build a 14,000-seat arena near the stadiums, encourage more development along that corridor, and turn the West Side land over for redevelopment as an office/retail project.
nevermind if we would support a team or not–no team owner would analyze the marketplace and decide to make a substantial investment here with teams only an hour away in dc and 2 hours away in phillie. and we don’t have a sufficient number of large businesses here to buy the suites and season tickets. the orioles are renting their suites on a partial season basis– because they can’t sell for the full season. It does not take a genius for a prospective team owner to figure this out. This reminds me of building an Olympic Village without ever putting in an Olympic bid! Maybe they will come….someday. And the arena will be outdated by the time they do.
I say, “of course we CAN.” Basketball is quite popular in Baltimore. And while NBA prices are expensive, they aren’t any cheaper in Cleveland, Portland, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Memphis–all NBA cities. I don’t see any good reason why residents of those cities can afford NBA tickets but we can’t here in Baltimore. And let’s not forget that New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Charlotte, all lacked pro teams when they built new arenas, and they were able to lure NBA teams.
Hockey is another matter. I am a HUGE Washington Capitals fan. I love the sport. I think Baltimore could eventually grow to love hockey. Baltimore is no less a hockey town than some of the NHL’s struggling (business-wise) cities like Nashville, Miami (Florida Panthers), and Phoenix, and Baltimore likely has more youth hockey programs (read: built-in interest) than those cities did when they got NHL franchises. Still, given the struggles we’ve seen in those locations, I doubt the NHL would be in a hurry to try a new experiment. But Baltimore could adequately support minor league hockey in a nice arena.
I see no reason why Baltimore can’t have an NBA franchise and a minor league hockey team, just like Cleveland. Is Cleveland really a richer, more attractive city? I think not.
As for the arena’s location, there are many good options. But the current location has much to recommend it. People love to tout Canton’s proximity to I-95, but these people forget how far much of the Baltimore area’s population lives from I-95. Towson, Hunt Valley, Cockeysville, Owings Mills, Reisterstown, and other fairly affluent communities (read: those with money to spend on season tickets) live closer to the I-83 corridor than I-95. And while Ed Hale complains of what traffic is like around the current arena at rush hour, has he ever tried to drive to Canton from downtown proper during rush hour? It can take a good 25 minutes.
The current location is central, accessible via public transportation, and has a lot of potential. I think that area is a fairly easy fix. It isn’t hard to imagine it seeing a revival similar to that seen in the Chinatown area of D.C. thanks to the Verizon Center.
Spending public money on stadia makes me nervous, but arenas are a better investment than baseball or football parks. Arena events are generally brief by comparison–hockey and basketball games generally last two and a half hours at most. People frequent neighborhood establishments before and after the games, whereas people usually head straight home after baseball games. And a well-run arena can be busy over 200 nights a year, compared with a baseball stadium that is rarely used outside of actual ballgames. If we build a full-size arena and fail to get a pro team, the arena could still book plenty of events that will bring people into the city. The arena itself might lose money until a team can be found, but the surrounding area might blossom. And it is in need of it.
Does Ed Hale really think what is best for the Baltimore Blast, a team whose league has gone out of business (AGAIN!), is best for Baltimore? Please. And let’s not point to the Blast’s low attendance figures as an example of Baltimore’s unwillingness to support sports teams outside of the Big Two. The 7,000 fans or so that the Blast drew was about 3,000 more than most teams in that league drew. In other words, Baltimore was more supportive of this rinky-dink league than most cities.
Put another big league team in this city, and it will be supported.
(Sorry for the lengthy diatribe!)
Zeb in Towson