The Bears are opening a new stadium. Again. It is a dream they live vicariously all around the country, not including Chicago.
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They will open the Baltimore Ravens’ new stadium at Camden Yards Saturday night. On Sept. 20, they will open the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ new stadium.
They opened Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami for the Dolphins in 1987.
Virginia McCaskey remembers her team opening Billy Sullivan’s new stadium with the New England Patriots in Foxboro, Mass. She also recalled her dad, Papa Bear George Halas, urging the citizens of Green Bay to build Lambeau Field. This was after Halas provided financial assistance when the Packers were going broke.
When the Ravens’ David Modell, an assistant to president and father Art Modell, called Mike McCaskey to offer Saturday’s exhibition date, McCaskey replied: “We love to open new stadiums.”
McCaskey is hoping all those blimp shots of Baltimore’s renovated Inner Harbor and all the raves about the Ravens’ classy new brick building a parking lot away from popular Camden Yards somehow will ring a bell in Chicago.
The Ravens are in Baltimore, of course, because they are no longer the Cleveland Browns. That’s another city building a new stadium, thanks to Art Modell, according to David. Art enjoys a better reputation within his family than he does in Ohio.
“On the heels of that (leaving Cleveland), the Tampa situation was rectified,” David Modell said.
The domino effect has yet to dent Chicago’s consciousness.
“Building sports stadiums with public money is not the most popular thing in the world,” David Modell told a group of taxi drivers, waiters and others in the hospitality industry on a tour Thursday. “Having an NFL team has great tangible and intangible benefits.”
Art Modell is effusive about the $220 million playground the Maryland state lottery built for him. The Modells contributed $30 million on cost overruns and claim the sale of 53,000 “permanent seat licenses” for $250 to $3,000 do not become profit for the Ravens.
“Rather,” they said, “that revenue is paid to the NFL to cover the costs of moving to Baltimore, which totaled more than $125 million. The revenue from the PSL will cover only about half of those costs.”
The purchase of a PSL allows the fan the right to buy a ticket, a concept that has doubled the pleasure of several NFL owners since the Carolina Panthers introduced it. They stole the idea from college booster clubs.
The Ravens have sold about 53,000 of the 59,000 PSLs available, but the only ones left are in the $500 to $750 range. David Modell compared selling the last ones to “hand-to-hand combat,” but said Thursday that sales are “tracking exactly where anticipated.”
Game ticket prices run from $20 to $297.50. One fan, Larry Weir, told The Baltimore Sun: “It’s far more money than I anticipated. My cost for four seats for the season is $9,400 (in addition to the PSL). I was led to believe tickets would cost from $60 to $100 a game. Now it’s $237.”
There are 100 luxury boxes selling from $55,000 to $200,000 a year, 94 of which are sold, pretty good for a team that is 10-21-1 in its first two seasons.
“These stadiums with their new revenues separate the men from the boys in this sport,” David Modell said. “Every time I read about Chicago and the gnashing of teeth there, it almost makes me sick to my stomach that the marketplace can’t find a solution. Not to demean my city at all, but Chicago is by far the best sports marketplace in the country.
“Can you imagine the Chicago Bears leaving that city? Can you imagine the turmoil of the soul if George Halas’ grandson thought of moving that team out of Chicago? It’s inconceivable, just as it was for Art Modell.”
With TV revenue at $73 million a year per team, the Modells and other owners understand the need for public stadiums is more misunderstood than ever.
“We’re not making $70 million,” David Modell said. “We’re receiving $70 million and promptly handing over 64 percent to players. You have a business to run.”
Whether the Modells can thrive in their new environment depends on whether they prove better businessmen than they were in Cleveland. For now, Art Modell is basking in the NFL’s latest monument to the insatiability of American sports fans.
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“There isn’t anything like it in the country,” he said. “It’s beyond everything we expected. We picked up all the good things from the stadiums around the country and rejected all the bad things. The message board is staggering.”
The McCaskeys hope the message hits home.