If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Pat Williams still wants to see a Major League Baseball team in Orlando, Florida. He still has a dream and his team’s name reflects his desire to be part of a central Florida Major League Baseball team. The Orlando Dreamers. Williams knows he needs a stadium and wants about $975 million from taxpayers to fund a $1.7 billion stadium. Williams said, “we’re ready to be a major league baseball city. And a city isn’t considered major league unless it has baseball and the arts”. Williams about three decades ago planned to bring Major League Baseball to Orlando and sang the praises of the Orlando market and had pictures of an Orlando baseball stadium but the notion went nowhere. Major League Baseball would eventually take the Miami and Denver markets in the 1991 expansion process and those two areas would see Major League Baseball starting in 1993.
In 2019, Williams’s desire to bring Major League Baseball to Orlando was not taken very seriously. There was no well-heeled owner named who could afford the price tag of owning a Major League Baseball expansion or relocation franchise. The next expansion team price will be in the billions of dollars range unlike the 1991 price tag for an expansion team which was about $100 million without start-up costs. Williams needs three basics to be successful. Government support to build a venue, a well-funded cable TV or streaming partner and corporate support. In 2019, Williams thought Orlando would get three million people a year to attend games and pointed to the 80 million or so visitors to the area as a source for his claims. The tourists will go to baseball games. The TV market is not large and would the amusement park owners in the area Disney and Comcast support the team? It is a dream.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
