What we can learn from another franchise slipping away from Portland
Watching the lacrosse LumberJax run off to another city shows just how difficult it is in this town to run a professional sports team.
The lesson learned from the Jax applies just the same to about all the other franchises that have fled this city. Luring fans into the Rose Garden for indoor lacrosse was difficult, but the fan base was growing. Attendance was really not the problem for this franchise. Sponsorships and big-ticket sales were the real culprit.
Fact: There’s not enough corporate support in Portland for another major-league team. There is barely enough for the Trail Blazers and the assorted minor sports we support. I’ve always been the biggest advocate for bringing Major League Baseball to Portland — but right now, I’d say it can’t work. That’s not because of the potential fan base, either. Such a team would draw extremely well from all over the Pacific Northwest. It wouldn’t be a problem to find people to buy tickets.
The real problem is that the unfriendly attitude in this state toward big corporations has driven most of them out of here. Oh, yeah, that’s also why we have such a high unemployement rate, but that’s another topic for another blog.
When it comes to supporting a professional sport, the fan base is necessary, but it’s imperative you also have businesses willing to sponsor games on television and radio, to buy suites and high-end season tickets, to buy signage in the arena and once in a while, to even buy into the team itself. We just don’t have enough of that in Portland right now.
Of course, one thing I’ve learned over the years in Portland is that we never learn much here about the value of sports to a community. No matter how much the Trail Blazers teach us we so seriously undervalue what pro sports can do for a community’s attitude and its quality of life.
Our political and social leaders just don’t get it. When they see Portland all geeked up over the Trail Blazers, when they see the community rising and falling over the fate of its team, when they see the joy that franchise can give to our community and how it brings us all together — they never nod their head and say, “THAT’S what it’s all about. THAT’S the value of professional sports to a community. THAT’S why chasing a pro football or Major League Baseball team is a worthwhile endeavor.”
And to me, that’s why throwing a few million bucks into a stadium once every century or so is nothing to be ashamed of for a community. Here we are in Portland, agonizing over $50 or $60 million in a city where billions have been thrown at streetcars, trams, transit malls, convention centers, condos and bike paths.
Yes, I’m afraid that aside from the Blazers, Triple-A baseball and Major League Soccer are about all the business climate in Portland can support at this time. What’s wrong with doing it in a first-class manner? The last time a NEW ballpark was built in Portland was when Vaughn Street Park was constructed in 1901. And, of course, it was privately funded.
One of these days, somebody is going to realize that venues for sports are a legitimate investment in our community’s quality of life. Just about every other city in the world recognized that decades ago, but small-town Portland keeps sputtering along waiting for someone else to do it, recoiling in horror at the thought of actually putting public money into such a thing.
Can you imagine that this city has NEVER funded the construction of a new stadium? It has renovated Multnomah Stadium/Civic Stadium/PGE Park (originally built by the Multnomah Athletic Club) two or three times — which was, as Bill Cutler so appropriately put it in about 1971, “like putting silk stockings on a hog.”
I’m tired of it. It’s time sports fans finally get their share of the pie.
