Marlins Park: A tough one for marlins fans, and the city of Miami

Today's TakeDown will feature a grand investment in the Miami-Dade county area, and an example of a tough sports investment gone wrong.

Improving or building a new stadium for any professional franchise can have its benefits as well as its drawbacks. It is a bit of a gamble because of the uncertainty of how fans will adapt to the new facility, or if it will make a difference in the team’s Win-Loss column. When looking at the Miami Marlin’s new facility that is Marlin’s park, we see a perfect example of how building a new stadium for an MLB team can turn a hopeful investment for the fans into a disaster that sets back the whole city. The new stadiums present failures can be summed up by bad decision making on the owner’s part and a lack of support due to the stadium’s financing.

            In the past, Marlin’s owner Jeffery Loria would depend on having his team benefit from squaring off with richer MLB franchises (Marlins defeating the New York Yankees is 2003 World Series) and rallying support with an extremely low budget strategy, gaining a grand total of $153 million operating income in the 5 year span leading up to the 2011 season (netting $33.3 million ’08 and ’09 seasons combined). It was not much later that this simple, efficient strategy would change at the idea of switching to a $639 million, publically-financed ballpark and parking complex that would throw off the organizations profitability and popularity completely.  It is common for a new sports venue to boost ticket sales, increase attendance at games because of luxury seating and new features of the facility, but this has not been the case thus far for the Marlins, as owner Jeffrey Loria has even slashed the team’s payroll by approximately $50 million due to low attendance at the new ballpark.

This ballpark is an example of a disaster primarily because of it being publically-funded by Miami-Dade county taxpayers. According to forbes.com, when everything is said and done, the marlins will be responsible for a close to $3 billion debt in interest expenses on the construction that will be put on the shoulders of city and county taxpayers. Furthermore, there is not even an incentive for Loria to even try to assemble a good team because the city and county must pay back the bond holders regardless of how the team plays! It is just an overall terrible situation for not only Marlin’s fans, but also to non-baseball fanatics living in the Miami-Dade area. Ozanian of forbes.com further notes that because of the bond financing, a $91 million dollar loan has turned into a $1.2 billion liability for taxpayers, and possibly “the worst shellacking taxpayers have ever gotten from a baseball stadium.”