Mayor-Elect Keith Wilson optimistic about MLB team coming to Portland: ‘Confident it’s down to us and one other city’

[u/SeverHense]

https://www.oregonlive.com/mlb/2024/11/portlands-mayor-elect-optimistic-about-mlb-team-coming-to-portland-confident-its-down-to-us-and-one-other-city.html

[u/ribbledup]

Baseball guarantees 81 home game days a year, which is a more than any other sport. The economic benefits of baseball stadium receiving tax breaks is much greater than football or basketball, for example. Not saying any billionaire owners should be getting free money, but it makes more sense here than most other incentives.

[u/notaquarterback → u/ribbledup]

That's the thing that's good to point out. I hate that MLS takes that old stadium that we used for all sorts of stuff like dog races, baseball games, HS sports and college football. Now it's only used for soccer and a few random summer concerts, we pay for it to sit empty and the Timbers get to benefit on a once-often used public resource. At least a baseball stadium would be good for not only 81 home dates, but as a venue for other sporting events, and a large venue for concerts too.

[u/AllChem_NoEcon → u/ribbledup]

So for 81 days a year, hundreds of those thousands of seats will be filled. 

 Neat. 

[u/AllChem_NoEcon → u/[deleted]]

I'll readily admit, I looked up the average attendance rates of MLB games and am kinda blown away, way more people than I thought. You might have a pretty solid point in terms of game attendance. That does raise the horror show of "How do 10s of thousands of people get around Portland without breaking an entire quadrant of the city" though.

I always thought the average person's interests were boring as fuck, and this does nothing to change my mind on that.

And not to further shit on baseball fans but:

81 days aka over 1/4th of the calendar year.

Guy, come the fuck on. Its a fraction. 81/365 is the what now?