Marion Barry: D.C. Baseball's Hidden Costs
- Originally published in The Washington Post on December 14, 2004
Copyright 2004 The Washington Post
By: Marion Barry
The relocation of a Major League Baseball franchise to the District of
Columbia is cause for both elation and pride for Washington area
residents. Baseball is, after all, one of America's greatest pastimes.
Games are not just games, they are great social events that bring
families and friends together on a Saturday afternoon.
But the relocation of a major league team to the Washington area also
raises fundamental questions about responsibility -- particularly about
whether the multimillionaire team owners can hold communities hostage
to their terms, which require taxpayers to shoulder the burden while
owners skim the cream. I want baseball to come to Washington, but I
don't want to see the District pillaged in the process. Rather, the
District should stand up for itself, use its considerable leverage and
ask for the burden to be shared by the owners -- who can more than
afford it -- so that the city's essential human and educational service
budgets aren't neglected for a Saturday afternoon thrill.
MLB's proposal -- swallowed with little question by a mayor sworn to
represent the interests of D.C. residents -- is unfair and
exploitative. As cities such as Seattle and San Francisco have shown,
arrangements can be made so that the team owner -- in the spirit of
shared responsibilities and benefits -- picks up part of the tab.
What should particularly bother D.C. residents are the secret parts of
this deal, whereby MLB plans to stick the people of our city with
hidden taxes -- most notably in the form of increases in cable and
satellite rates -- by heisting TV broadcast rights from the owners of
the new Washington Nationals and thus from the city at large.
In most instances, owners of sports franchises get the financial crown
jewels -- the television broadcast rights -- which help make them a
success and defray costs of such things as, say, stadium construction.
In New York, the Yankees were able to convert their broadcast rights
into a $1.2 billion new television network.
But here in Washington, the MLB owners seem to be patronizing us and
apparently want to withhold these rights and instead transfer the
lion's share of them to our new team's rival: Baltimore Orioles owner
Peter Angelos. Not surprisingly, Angelos intends to follow in the Bronx
Bombers' path, leveraging these rights to force the creation of a new,
superfluous, sports network that will -- if experience is any guide --
hike monthly satellite and cable prices for D.C. residents by $2 to $3,
notwithstanding the mayor's promise to protect taxpayers.
This kind of Robin Hood-in-reverse practice is nothing new to District
residents, who are used to non-taxpayers making full use of the rich
resources of the city. But for baseball owners to start the practice is
something new. And D.C. television viewers will not be the only ones
footing the bill. The uncompensated transfer of the broadcast rights to
a rival is the equivalent of MLB dictating to the Nationals that they
must trade, at the very least, one Alex Rodriguez to the Baltimore
Orioles for nothing.
The new owner of
the Nationals, whoever it is, will be under unprecedented pressure to
make a new team solvent -- and thus vindicate the public's huge
investment in the new stadium. With the usurpation of the TV rights,
the new owner would be greatly handicapped in satisfying the thirst of
Angelos, who, with his saber-rattling, threatened to veto the
relocation unless he was compensated.
The
team doesn't need Angelos as its partner (through a forced marriage) in
creating a new sports TV network. When a second local sports network is
created -- as happened in New York -- cable and satellite customers'
bills for local sports TV double. But when the teams in a local market
agree to create a single network -- as happened in Chicago -- there is
plenty of revenue to go around, and cable and satellite customers get a
better deal.
As much as we all want
baseball games to take our kids to -- and I do -- we should not allow
our enthusiasm to sanction mendacity, and, in particular, to give the
green light to powerful new corporate interests to treat the District
and its people like second-class supplicants and pawns. Baseball is
more than possible in the District: It's within our grasp. But if I'm
going to sign my name to a deal that commits taxpayers, then the deal
better be fair. And right now, it's all give and no get for the
taxpayers I represent.
The writer is the former mayor of the District of Columbia and D.C. Council member-elect from Ward 8.