When you think of Orlando, Florida, your mind immediately goes to theme parks.
That’s fair enough; they’re what helped make Orlando one of the most-visited cities in the world, drawing tens of millions of tourists every year.
And that’s just one of the reasons the Orlando Dreamers think the Central Florida city is the perfect place for a Major League Baseball team.
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While cities like Nashville and Charlotte are often at the top of people’s lists when they talk about MLB expansion, Dreamers co-founder and COO Jim Schnorf believes there’s a multitude of reasons why Orlando will land a team.
“We have no Major League Baseball here. We don’t have minor league, and we don’t have spring training,” Schnorf said. “Every other competing city except one has Triple-A, and the one that doesn’t have Triple-A has Double-A. So there’s an anomalous absence of professional baseball from the Orlando market.”
Orlando also happens to be the biggest media market in the country without an MLB presence.
And then, of course, there’s the tourism.
“We’re the most visited destination in the Western Hemisphere, with over 80 million tourists this year,” Schnorf said. “Tourism matters a lot. Anyone who doesn’t believe that merely needs to look at the Las Vegas model.”
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Schnorf — who got the Dreamers ball rolling with the late Pat Williams, the long-time NBA executive who helped bring the Orlando Magic to town — was referring to how Las Vegas went from no teams in the Big 4 professional leagues to being on the cusp of having all of them within about a decade.
Schnorf pointed to the success of the Vegas Golden Knights and the relocation of the Las Vegas Raiders as examples of how a city with tourism as its biggest industry could support big league teams.
“So tourism matters immensely when it comes to the success of sports,” he said.
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It can also help pay for it.
The organization recently put out new renderings of a state-of-the-art stadium that would be built on land near SeaWorld just off of I-4, the main thoroughfare through the Orlando area.
The Dreamers hope to use some of the tourism resort tax money that Orange County, Florida generates to fund it.
“Orlando generates the most tourism resort tax of any metro area in the country, which can be used for tourism, sports facilities, convention centers, and so forth,” Schnorf said.
However, while a task force was put together to review proposals for projects like the stadium, they did not recommend moving forward with it.
Schnorf said that this was not a surprise as it came in the middle of an election cycle, among other reasons, plus the Dreamers’ pitch had to be distilled into just fifteen minutes.
“We requested $975 million,” he said. “To put that in perspective, we got only 15 minutes to present that package. Normally, you would spend a minimum of a day, following months and months of work and research on our financial model and metrics.”
He did note, however, that the Dreamers already have a hefty amount of funding committed to the team.
“We’ve got well in excess of $2 billion towards stadium financing and team acquisition in place under letters of intent,” he said.
Of course, even with a stadium in place, the MLB has to want to come to Orlando. Considering there are already two franchises — the Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins — and neither one is known for packing stadiums, that seems like a tough sell.
However, Schnorf pointed to a moment in baseball history that suggests it can work.
“People ask about the other two teams in the state, ‘How can Florida possibly support a third team here?’ Well, in 1969, California had five teams with a significantly lower population than the state of Florida has today,” Schnorf said. “Orlando is the fastest-growing metro area in the fastest-growing state in the country.
“We can definitely support Major League Baseball here.”
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