Posted by John Vrooman on Wednesday, July 18, 2018 in Major League Baseball.

Interview with Nashville Biz Journal.

• What makes Nashville a compelling city for a potential MLB team? Why would Manfred include it on his list – however speculative it is?

There are 3 basic layers of MLB market potential. The top “automatic” home markets have a market size greater than 2 million TV households (e.g. Atlanta). Second tier markets are those between 1.5 million (e.g. Denver) and 2 million and third tier markets have a minimum size of about 1 million TVHHs. MLB has 30 clubs total and there are about ten markets in each of the tiers. Nashville is currently hanging on the threshold of the 3^rd tier with about 1 million TV HHs, similar to San Diego and several other “edge” or marginal big league markets.

As a monopoly cartel MLB prefers to remain an exclusive membership club with fewer clubs than could support MLB attendance and TV viewership. This allows MLB to play one market against another to maximize expansion fees, relocation fees and public concessions on venue construction. MLB strategically uses the pyramid of Minor League Baseball to occupy potential viable markets for a potential rival league (like the original American League).

• What’s the case against? What would Nashville have to prove in order to land a team, and/or how would the city have to change in order to support one?

Nashville has distinguished itself from the applicant pool of other identical edge markets because of its rapid growth, increasingly younger age demographic and a sports subsidy friendly local government.

• How realistic does MLB’s vision for potential expansion seem, and why does it (or does it not) make sense for the league to pursue it now? How do Nashville’s chances of ultimately landing an MLB team look different in an expansion scenario, vs. an existing team relocating?

Given the secular decline in baseball attendance due largely to its aging fan demographic MLB is not likely to expand in the near future, but is necessary to occasionally feed the expansion frenzy for hopeful markets.

Fan-Age PDF

It is also unlikely that MLB duplicate any existing market because two monopolies are always more valuable to the league than one duopoly. (Existing 2-team markets are the result of rival league mergers in the past). So MLB would probably prefer the relocation of a dual market club to expansion.

All of the positives of Nashville’s growth, demographics and aggressive sports government pragmatically outweigh the corresponding negatives of their MLB affiliate in the Oakland A’s, who are stadium starved, trapped in an ongoing monopoly market incursion battle with the SF Giants.

Bottom line: The most likely positive-sum economic outcome is probably for MLB to simply swap the location of the MLB Oakland A’s with their current (since 2015) minor league AAA affiliate Nashville Sounds.

---