Odds Are Growing This Plan Would Receive Approval
No more overpriced ballpark food! Why pay $6 for a hot dog and soft drink when you can pay $5.99 for a lavish lunch buffet at the casino down the road?
Discerning consumers among Dodger fans may hail this bargain, but major league baseball may not. Commissioner Bud Selig said his office would have to approve any agreement to move the Dodgers’ spring home to a site near a casino on Arizona’s Fort McDowell Indian reservation.
“I would reserve the right to look into it, and I would,” Selig said.
The proposed Dodger training complex would cost $50 million and would be financed largely by revenues from the Fort McDowell casino.
“Given the fact ballparks are built with lottery proceeds, I don’t think that’s an issue,” Selig said. “[Baltimore’s] Camden Yards was built with lottery proceeds.”
There is no casino, however, at Camden Yards. The proposed stadium would seat 12,500, with parking limited to 1,500 spaces. Yavapai tribal officials plan to direct additional cars in the casino parking lot and shuttle fans to the stadium.
“There’s nothing that says you have to walk through the casino to get to the stadium,” said Fred Coons, the Dodgers’ director of business development.
Selig said he was unaware of any plan involving fans parking in the casino lot.
As gambling spreads from Las Vegas and Atlantic City to state lotteries, tribal and riverboat casinos and even desktop computers, major league baseball no longer enforces restrictions against associations with casinos.
When retired Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle accepted public relations jobs with Atlantic City casinos, they were barred by former commissioner Bowie Kuhn. Peter Ueberroth, who succeeded Kuhn, lifted the ban in 1985, getting gambling industry promises not to use baseball players in casino advertisements.
Yet casino ads appear in ballparks today, another money source for revenue-hungry teams. The Marlins accepted ads from a Florida casino last year, for instance, and the Angels’ spring training stadium in Tempe, Ariz., has an outfield fence ad for the nearby Gila River casino.
The Fort McDowell casino, which distributes Cactus League tickets to patrons, advertises atop virtually every taxi leaving Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. In full-color brochures distributed at local hotels, the casino trumpets free transportation upon request, a turf club with 18 large screens to monitor bets on horse and dog racing and the chance to win $50,000 a day at bingo.
The Dodgers have discussed the Fort McDowell proposal with lawyers for major league baseball, Coons said, and have satisfied the primary concerns of whether the stadium would be located adjacent to the casino and whether the casino would allow betting on baseball.
Although the tribe considered putting the stadium next to the casino, plans now call for the stadium to be located nearly two miles farther along the state highway that leads into the reservation. The casino does not include a sports book.
“We’re not going to put slots in the stadium,” tribal attorney Edward Roybal said. “We’ll work within the confines of major league baseball. If it were a major problem, I don’t think we’d be at this stage.”
