Gimenez on Marlins, MLS Stadium Issues: 'Not Surprising'
There appears to be some major issues and obstacles with a potential new MLS stadium next to Marlins Park, highlighted in part by the bullets below, via Miami Today.
-- "One restriction is that soccer can't sell stadium naming rights until baseball sells its own. But the baseball stadium is in its fourth season and the team still can't sell those rights because the stadium giveaway deal became a toxic issue.
-- "... if the Marlins someday sell stadium naming rights, soccer can't sell rights that conflict with the Marlins' stadium sponsor."
-- "No soccer exterior ads may conflict with a major Marlins sponsor. But if soccer sells an exterior ad that doesn't conflict, the Marlins can then sign a conflicting sponsor and the soccer sponsor can't renew."
Essentially the Marlins would have major control, giving David Beckham's MLS franchise an uphill climb after previous uphill battles, something Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez says "is not surprising."
"Hey Joe, welcome to the Marlins deal," Gimenez said on the Joe Rose Show. "I've been saying this is a dumb deal from what, seven years ago? So okay. Remember the last time I told you the Marlins control a lot of what happens there? The Marlins control the parking. I was actually unaware all these other details -- naming rights, etc -- but what's interesting is a soccer stadium was always contemplated there by the city and so the fact that I guess that the Marlins would put all these protections so that they would always be the preeminent tenant is not surprising to me when the deal was struck.
"My fight was with the administration, it was never with the attorneys. My fight with the administration was this was a bad deal. I kept telling my colleagues at the time, who was a commissioner, it was a bad deal on a whole bunch of different fronts, most of them financial. These other details, that was probably buried on page 487, okay? For me the whole thing was a financially bad deal. They controlled everything. We got no revenue and we ended up basically giving away over $200 million -- well, at the end our final debt payment and principal payment it's gonna be well over $2 billion -- on that stadium. So yeah, it's just a bad deal all the way around but I'm not gonna blame the attorneys for that because it was the administration that set the terms. It was the administration that was dealing directly with the Marlins group..."
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