Reinsdorf considering selling the White Sox

[Vegan Knight]

The difference between the Cubs and Giants if left alone is three-fold.

#1 - The first being the limited size of the Wrigley footprint really curtails a lot of revenue-generation. The Cubs did a masterful job with the renovation project to get more revenue out of the old building, but there's only so much you can do compared to a brand new park like the Giants built 25 years ago.

#2 - It's the sheer population difference of the territory. What makes the Red Sox a powerhouse is they have all of New England paying for NESN. The Chicagoland area is where like 80% of the state lives. You leave the Chicago suburbs and it's 3 hours of nothing until Bloomington or Peoria. You go three hours from the Bay Area, and you have a slew of 50-150 markets: Sacramento, San Jose, Fresno, Stockton, Napa, Santa Cruz, Monterrey. Reno... up to Oregon.

We consider San Jose and Sacramento "Bay Area" because TV and fan wise and transportation wise, they are... but Milwaukee is 88 miles from Chicago, so that "mega region" really has THREE teams, not two.


Grand scheme of things, I don't think it's wise for Chicago to go to one team; but I said what I said because it's far better for Chicago to have one team than for the Bay Area to have one team.

Chicago metro is almost ten million by itself, while northern California, defined as pretty much everything above LA area is about twelve million. And the Cubs do have a base in that surrounding Midwest beyond Chicago.

But a lot of the twelve million are Dodgers fans. Many might now even consider themselves Northern Californian in any real way. The Giants wouldn't be able to be any bigger a juggernaut with them as the only team than the Cubs would be without the White Sox.

But I don't think MLB cares. If you have eight to ten juggernaut teams it helps bring in many casual fans and with revenue sharing some more money gets spread around if the pie gets bigger.

 

[Voight]

I'm really not sure it does. Nothing against Nashville at all, I just think that an NFL, NHL and MLB team is A LOT of money needed to support those teams.

Cincinnati is not a robust market financially in the NFL or MLB, and they have more people and no NHL team to support.




It's not like there's any kind of special demarcation for 100 years vs 50 or 75 or any other number.

St. Louis Browns (51)
Philadelphia Athletics (53)
Oakland Athletics (56)
Washington Senators (59 and kinda also 71)
Brooklyn Dodgers (68)
New York Giants (74)
Boston Braves (76)

They'll pretend to care about that stuff while counting money.

Nashville has it. It's one of the fastest growing cities in the US.

Most of those relocations happened before Nixon was even president. Obviously at the end of the day cash is king, but I dont think they're willing to just up and leave Chicago. Time will tell tho.