The Diamondbacks have been engaged in an ongoing stadium kerfuffle for a considerable chunk of this decade, as the club looks to pull the shutters on the 21-year-old auspices of Chase Field and develop a new stadium project–in Arizona, or, possibly, elsewhere.
Last month, word spread that the club had been in discussions with the city of Henderson, NV as recently as this past February about the possibility of constructing a publicly owned, property tax-exempt ballpark with approximately 32,000 seats in the Las Vegas-adjacent city. Those talks were believed to have “stalled”, but Thursday brought word–although inconclusive word–of Arizona’s apparent discussions with at least one other municipal body.
According to a report from the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Shea Johnson, the Diamondbacks and the city of Las Vegas proper signed a nondisclosure agreement on Aug. 14, 2018. Johnson relays that the nondisclosure agreement indicated both parties were evaluating or pursuing “certain mutually beneficial opportunities”.
To be clear: this is no sure sign that the Diamondbacks are planning a Las Vegas move. In fact, a team spokesperson told the Review-Journal that no stadium agreement is imminent: “We’re focused on Arizona and a local solution and have not made any determination on the future stadium site for the Diamondbacks,” the team spokesperson said.
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman was also not inclined to give life to speculation, telling Johnson that she believes that the Diamondbacks prefer to stay in Arizona. “Conversations are great, but I am a bottom-line person,” Mayor Goodman said. “Everybody can hype it, ‘This may happen,’ but I don’t talk ‘may.’”
In a recap of previously reported developments, the stadium lease the Diamondbacks agreed to with Maricopa County in Arizona in May 2018 will allow the club to leave its current home – Chase Field – as early as 2022. If the Diamondbacks were to exit Arizona of their own accord at that point, they’d have to pay the state between $5MM and $25MM in fees. However, they could depart without penalty if Major League Baseball were to mandate a move.
The Dbacks put a new meaning in snake.
Why cuz they want attendance over 25,000?
They could try being a competitive team.
They are a competitive team. In fact they have over achieved this season
Exactly. They over achieved. They would not have been competitive if they had not overperformed against reasonable expectations. If they make the playoffs, they don’t have much of a chance to win the world series. Compared to where Phoenix ranks in terms of largest metros, the Diamondbacks consistently and significantly underspend. So gmenfan is closer to the truth than you are. No one wants to drive into downtown Phoenix through rush hour traffic, pay $20-30 for parking to be anywhere near the stadium, and potentially miss the first 1-3 innings of the game for the pleasure of seeing a mediocre team.
Beis, $20-30 to park. Don’t complain, northeast parking is way more than that and I’m sure rush hour is nowhere near what we experience. Support your team or it will leave
No one should be paying to park at stadiums. These teams make more than enough revenue without gouging the fans.
Really, there’s no traffic going INTO downtown in rush hour traffic, it’s all going out. And 20-30 dollars to park? No. It’s easy to find free parking, or there are plenty of spots for 5-10 dollars. If you think getting to Chase field is bad, try going to a game at Wrigley and seeing how much they charge for parking there, as well as the traffic situation
Being from Pittsburgh, I’d take the support the owner gives the Diamondbacks absolutely.
Their attendance is 17th of 30. They will draw 2.1 million this year. So attendance is not a particular problem.
Kerfuffle? What the hell does that mean?
You named yourself after Ty Cobb, and you have no idea what a kerfuffle is? You really are a nincompoop!
A kerfuffle is a commotion or fuss
was waiting when the kerfuffle comments would come
Dylan likes to get
creative…..
Ever hear of a search engine?
Millennials.
Because it is easier to sign on, type out a question, and then wait for an answer, compared to the immense difficulty of highlighting the word an rightclicking ‘search google for…’
just rotate each club between each city at this rate jeez
Fine let them move , then let the Rays move to Phoenix , I’m sure they would appreciate that nice stadium , maybe even the A’s, , then expansion to Montreal and Portland
Stop w the Montreal nonsense.
It’s only the people with the rose colored glasses for the Expos. No one remembers that the Expos were basically the Marlins of the 90s. Every great player they got was traded or walked as a FA. They couldn’t draw fans. They were nearly contracted as a franchise. The only thing that stopped it was the Twins fans fighting because MLB wanted to contract them too. They couldn’t even draw enough fans to play their final season in Montreal. The Expos have to be among the biggest failures as a franchise in not just baseball history, but in the entire history of sports.
French Canadians don’t like baseball
No they had a large fan base. The 1994 strike killed baseball in Montreal. They sold off players like it was cool. They were the team to beat in the 1994 season.
Part of the reason the Expos may have seemed like the Marlins is that Jeffrey Loria owned each at one time or another.
Isn’t it possible that a new Montréal team run by either Billy Beane or Chaim Bloom and their respective ownership teams could be more like the A”s or Rays than the Loris-run Expos and Marlins?
What generalization(s) would you be comfortable with people making about you and your kin, joedirte4life?
lowtalker – Montreal never had a large fanbase IN Montreal, the Expos really weren’t drawing well prior to 1994 and we will never know what would have happened in the 1994 postseason. They could have won it all or lost in round 1. Or lost to Atlanta in the NLCS.
Nevertheless, please stop re-writing history; Montreal stopped caring about baseball sometime in the 80’s and they’d screw up another chance if given the opportunity.
Forcing the team into the 80,000 Olympic Stadium didn’t help either. Awful, awful place for BB.
Or Portland. They couldn’t support a AAA team, and then ejected a single A short season team so they could convert the ballpark to a soccer field. Portland doesn’t deserve pro ball. And I live in Oregon.
Portland is a dump and not a major league city.
The Portland metro area is larger than Pittsburgh, Cincinnatti, Kansas City, Cleveland, and Milwaukee, That’s 5 major league cities.
Baseball would be a huge bust in Portland. Portland is soccer crazy more than any sport, and that includes the NBA.
But Pittsburgh isn’t a place for baseball at this current stage like Portland isn’t a place for baseball. Montreal is just as bad too. Las Vegas should be considered a expansion team and I’d be interested to see if a Mexican team could survive in the league. It would be hard with Houston and Arlington cities taking most of the “fan base”. Since we have one Canadian team, it would be interesting to see a Mexican team.
But possibility of a Mexican team is slim to none. So I think Oklahoma City should be considered for a expansion team. Baseball and football is engraved in Oklahomians and I think they would support a team real well there. But if you want to explore a larger market team, Winnipeg, Canada or even New Orleans/Batton Rouge, LA could be interesting area. Either way, I think Portland is probably the worst place to put a baseball team. Las Vegas has my choice for a team being held there. Las Vegas is growing and definitely capable of holding a baseball club. Winnipeg and N.O/BL could carry a team fairy well as well.
Pittsburgh would be a baseball town if owners actually spent money on their team and kept their Star players from leaving.
No more expansion please. That will just kill the pitching again. Relocate I’m fine with.
The last thing baseball needs is to water down the talent pool even more by adding more teams. Especially to cities that didn’t support the team they used to have.
I certainly hope if the Diamondback management needs any advice on how to chisel money out of municipalities, they know they can go to the master shyster, uncle Jerry Reinsdorf.
Lol
If the stadium is publicly financed to any extent,there should be a balloon payment required from the team owner if they leave within thirty years.
But why balloons? I think the city would prefer being paid with money.
Ziiiiiing!
On Reflect,I think that the owners should pay their fair share up front.Many cities have not made that happen evidently,at the taxpayers expense.
My point was that there should be some sort of compensation if a team moves within a certain time period if it is publicly financed in any percentage.
They had a 30-year lease, which is fine. The Dbacks sued Maricopa County over stadium maintenance issues. The settlement was that the Dbacks could start looking for a suitable replacement for the stadium. At the end of the day, they will still be in the stadium 25 years, and the county presumably pays less in maintenance.
Basically, this is all covered by contract. They had a reasonable contract. And the county is letting them off 5 years early. If the county had a legitimate defense, they could’ve gone to court to defend themselves. Like most lawsuits, it is he said/she said. But it is entirely possible that the county felt like they were better off saving the maintenance money and blowing up the joint 5 years early.
They signed an NDA because the owners of the Diamondbacks are brainless and they don’t want that to get out to the public.
The funny part being that the bulk of the info got out anyways, and now they look doubly shady for trying to hide it. Snakes indeed.
Due Diligence 101: NDAs are often only negotiable to the duration of about one year.
This is only coming out because the NDA is up and there are many more journalists and fans interested in this than the usual M&A transaction.
On and off story for a while now. Clearly the Diamondbacks are using the Nevada sites as a bargaining tool with the state of Arizona and the municipalities in and around Phoenix. I have to believe that MLB will want a team in both the Phoenix and Las Vegas metropolitan areas. One city will get an established team (Diamondbacks, Rays, A’s) while the other will land an expansion franchise once the Oakland and Tampa stadium situations are resolved (or not).
I really don’t see a solution for TB aside from relocation. Has there been any forward momentum towards a stadium there? At least Oakland has some positives in their stadium situation.
The basic issue: Florida shouldn’t have two major league teams.
The Rays should pack it in and shut down. The baseball lovers of south Florida would gladly root for one legit team rather than two poop teams.
Vegas doesn’t need a pro baseball team either.
Orlando is where a team is needed.
Las Vegas already has a pro baseball team (AAA). They led the nation in minor league attendance this season.
I agree with your premise. I also see a little smoke that could mean fire in the Oakland A’s recent AAA affiliation-change to Las Vegas just in time for the opening of a new, easily scalable baseball-only stadium in Las Vegas and the Oakland Raiders already in their way to Sin City.
The Warriors moved to San Fran. The Raiders are moving to Vegas. If the As threaten to move too, the city will have to bend over backwards to keep at least one of those job machines in town. Because sports teams equal jobs.
They aren’t going anywhere. No other city is allowing this information out other than those in Nevada. Why? They want to show MLB there is interest and they are capable of being a multiple professional sports market. The D-Backs received permission to send/receive proposals. NDAs like this are signed all the time. If they do love, it will be away from Downtown Phoenix and not out of state. Everyone needs to calm down. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams: don’t panic!
I think there’s a more than decent chance that the D-Backs and/or the Rays move in the next several years. MLB has been making inquiries into Nashville for a couple of years now due to the immense fan support for the Titans and especially the Predators. There are several other cities as well.
An article about Chase Field by Dylan Chase… coincidence?
Everyone is an expert on discussions between MLB team owners, stadium contracts and city obligation here on the MLBTR comment section! I am not but it all sounds interesting. Hopefully one of these decisions leads to better attendance for MLB teams.
If the Dbacks want to go to Vegas I think they should and as 1738hotlinebling said let the Rays move to Arizona. Or somewhere not Tampa bay
New team name: the “Not Tampa Bay Not-Devil Rays.”
Love going to Chase Field. I guess if you get there by the 3rd inning is because you left too late. Parking is super easy and right at the stadium. I lived in KC for years and it is easier getting in and out of Kaufman. Both are great places. The county needs to step up and fulfill their obligation to t he team but I am not in favor of spending one dime more of tax payer $$ to build a new stadium.
Vegas. We would take the Ray’s or Dbacks and rebrand them under a new name.
Baseball was made to be played outdoors, not in the desert where it is s regularly 110 degrees in the summer.
Tell that to Bryce Harper and Kris Bryant who both grew up playing ball in the desert in Las Vegas.
i could really dig getting behind the Arizona Athletics. Agree with no new taxes for a stadium. Chase is good enough. The stadium, not the writer.
Man growing up I never expected Vegas to become an actual athletic team hot bed. But you see with the sudden of the Vegas Nights, NBA Summer League, and the Raiders moving that there is a large aptitude for sports. I do wonder if they’ll have a support problem if a franchise isn’t any good but intriguing times
The hockey team has shown there’s promise.
I didn’t expect hockey to work here, but hockey has been embraced. The Knights are extremely popular.
The fact that they have a non disclosure agreement with city of Las Vegas proves at least one thing for sure.
What happens in Vegas, really does stay there.
touche
Would the Arizona franchise than be known as the Nevada Club-Heart-Spade-Diamond Backs?
What some of you don’t realize is that the D”Backs and the Indian tribal community are real tight. They could get a deal to build a new stadium in AZ without the taxpayer paying a dime, All they have to do is cut the Indian community into the deal. But if the D”Back ownership is looking for a more profitable stadium scenario ala Petco Park where they want the land around the new ball park to build their hotels and entertainent enterprises they will have a hard time selling that to the public with the taxpayer dollars they will request to acquire and build it, Then an area like Vegas could be seen as a viable deal,
Do the Indians have a casino there? I’d think hooking up a casino & stadium would create a nice synergy.
Downtown Phoenix is boring. That’s the long and the short of it. They need a stadium in a place where people actually like to go.
Fine…Leave but the Brand name “Diamondbacks” stays in Arizona
I find it hilarious that my post about other cities with potential for an MLB team keep getting deleted. Seems awfully small and immature.
This is a crock of BS. That domed stadium was a big deal 20 years ago. How can it be obsolete so quick? What’s wrong with it? Not making enough money?
Really sick & tired of teams getting new stadium and then leaving after 20 years. Rangers, D-Backs… what gives?