Sports Center Northwest

Is Seattle finally back in the game?

For a while, it appeared as
though Seattle was not only uncompetitive in the sports business game, but also
barely aware there even was a game.

That perception wasn’t just the
result of the litany of woeful on-field performances by Seattle sports teams,
although those certainly didn’t help. Among recent lowlights: the 100-plus loss
season for the Mariners and the 0-12 record for the University of Washington
football team, the prime economic driver for the school’s athletics department.

But of greater concern were the
long-term trends off the field and away from the playing court: the lack of
big-time, high-profile national sporting events that used to fill the local
sports calendar; the regional paralysis on facilities projects like Husky
Stadium’s renovation or remodeling or replacing KeyArena; and most stinging of
all, the move of the Seattle SuperSonics, a 41-year franchise with one of the city’s two modern-era major-sports championships, to Oklahoma City. (The other was the WNBA Storm’s 2004 Championship victory over the Connecticut Sun).

Hanging over all of it was the
pall of the economic recession and the loss of corporate headquarters; pinching
budgets for advertising, sponsorships, ticket and suite sales; and event
attendance.

Seattle, a major-league city?
Not figuratively, not with a record that poor.

But now there are a few signs
that the cycle is turning, that the long winter of Seattle sports is
tentatively giving way to spring. It’s an optimism powered by more than just
improved on-field performances in the most recent season for the Mariners and
Huskies, important though those are.

Sounders FC, the city’s first-year entry in Major League
Soccer, is proving to be a resounding success on and off the Qwest Field pitch,
setting attendance records and establishing fan-favorite “traditions” including
the lime-green scarves and the March to the Match.

The Sonics’ departure
notwithstanding, the region is turning into something of a hoops hotbed, with
the collegiate-level success of the men’s basketball programs at UW, Washington
State and Gonzaga (the latter two making occasional visits to Seattle).
Meanwhile, in what may be a case of Gonzaga envy, Seattle University is making
the move up to Division I basketball, a level at which it once competed years
ago. And while the Sonics blew town, the WNBA Seattle Storm’s status seems much
more secure with a local ownership group that bought the
team in early 2008, and who hired Karen Bryant as CEO shortly afterward.

The Storm, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year,
has emerged as one of the league’s elite teams. “Seattle is a great sports town
and a great city for the WNBA,” says Bryant. “I am consistently impressed by the loyal fan base and broad
community support the Storm enjoys.”

The Boeing Classic completed
its fifth year as a stop on professional golf’s Champions Tour (formerly the
senior tour). In 2010, the U.S. Senior Open comes to Sahalee, and in 2015, one
of the majors of men’s golf-the U.S. Open-arrives at Chambers Bay near Tacoma.

Perhaps most important,
regional leaders are at least talking about recognizing the shortcomings of the
city’s sports scene and working to correct them.

Whether this situation is of
any concern to anyone beyond sports fans is a debate capable of generating more
heat and volume than annual Apple Cup-fueled Husky-Cougar shouting matches,
especially when it comes to the issue of spending public dollars on sports
facilities.

Does a vibrant local sports
scene generate tangible or intangible economic benefits, and if so, can Seattle
create one?

Ralph Morton, for one, believes
the answer to both questions is yes. As executive director of the Seattle
Sports Commission (SCC), an affiliate of the Seattle Convention and Visitors
Bureau, Morton’s task is to place Seattle back on the national stage for sports
events.

“Do we want to be considered in the same breath as New York,
Chicago, some of these other cities?” Morton asks. Seattle may be
geographically isolated, he says, but it also has “something to sell here. By
putting ourselves on center stage, that [approach] will pay dividends, whether
direct or indirect, for decades to come. … A lot of these things aren’t easy to
do, but the return on investment can be enormous because it puts you out there
as a premier city where the entire world is looking at who you are. What value
do we place on marketing ourselves? That’s part of why you go out and host a
major event. You build that enthusiasm.”

This message is spelled out in
a mission statement posted on the sports commission’s website: “The importance
of a destination’s sports and recreation offerings extends beyond visitors
watching a game at a local stadium. Convention delegates and business and
leisure travelers want to know what they can do once their meetings are over or
their cruise is finished.”

Seattle Mariners President Chuck Armstrong says a 2008
marketing study the team commissioned showed that about 60 percent of the
team’s fans came from outside King County and took more than two hours to get
to the ballpark-indicating the serious money sports can draw into a community.

Beyond the dollars is the
intangible economic benefit of image-building. Armstrong recalls the heady days
when Fortune magazine featured on its cover Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Boeing’s
Frank Shrontz, and Nintendo of America’s Minoru Arakawa along with Mayor Norm
Rice, and proclaimed Seattle the top American city for business; it had the
obvious allure that drew Jeff Bezos to choose Seattle as the place to launch
online retailer Amazon.com.

“Seattle was kind of a cult city in the finest sense of the
term. Businesses were thriving here,” Armstrong says.

Sports had a role in that, adds
Mike Gastineau, afternoon host on sports-talk radio station KJR-AM and
co-author of The Great Book of Seattle Sports Lists.

“Seattle had this reputation in the ’80s of being such a
great sports event town,” he recalls. “Seattle is where the NCAA Final Four
went from being a nice little event to this ginormous event that you held in
stadiums and you built all this stuff around it. The Goodwill Games were here.
There were all these positives in terms of events.”

Gastineau compares Seattle’s
current sports scene to that of Phoenix, a similarly sized market in the West.
“They’ve got Indy car races, two NASCAR races, a PGA tour event, an LPGA tour
event, a Seniors Tour event; they’ve got tennis. Every couple of weeks, there’s
some big sports event going on in that community. As a guy who makes his living
talking about sports, I find myself kind of jealous, wishing that we’d get
those events here.

“That’s a big hole in our game.
Maybe it’s because we feel we don’t need it from a tourism standpoint or there
aren’t the facilities to do it.”

So what happened?

It’s not that Seattle lost
interest in sports, or was never a good sports town to begin with. “Sports are
really a part of our culture in so many ways, not just spectator sports,”
Morton says. “People like to go watch the Mariners play, then they like to go
out and play golf or ski. … This isn’t a city that likes to sit in its living
room and doesn’t like to go anywhere. They like to be a part of it. They like
to be part of the experiences.”

The Mariners, Armstrong notes,
led the majors in attendance from 2000 to 2003. They also had the best won-lost
record in baseball, he adds. More recently, “I was astonished with the outpouring
of affection and excitement when we brought Ken Griffey Jr. back this year. A
lot of it was that he chose Seattle over Atlanta,” which helped soothe some of
the civic pride wounded by the Sonics’ departure.

“The Sounders story really
reiterates what a spectacular spectator sports town this can be,” Gastineau
says. “Look at the Mariners, who really haven’t been competitive for the better
part of a decade. There’re still 25,000 people a night and 2 million plus per
year, and massive TV ratings.”

“We compete with kayaks and
skiing and barbecue pits,” says Tod Leiweke, who holds multiple positions
representing Paul Allen’s investments in sports: chief executive officer of the
Seahawks, president of First and Goal Inc. (which manages Qwest Field and Event
Center), and chief executive of Vulcan Sports and Entertainment, which also
oversees Allen’s ownership of the Portland Trail Blazers and minority interest
in the Sounders.

“There’re lots of things people
can do with their time. In this town, they choose to support the teams.” The
Seahawks, Leiweke notes, have had 60 consecutive sellouts and the Sounders were
the most successful launch of a soccer franchise in the United States. “I think
this is a really vibrant sports market,” he says. “We think we have the loudest
stadium in the NFL. The intensity is epic. And the intensity for the Sounders
is now legendary. Fans are willing to buy into teams and take an emotional
stake in the franchise. There are excellent, excellent vital signs for the
professional sports teams in this town.”

The Sonics’ departure doesn’t mean that Seattle is a bad
sports market, he adds. “That was as much a facility issue and a tightening of
state and city budgets and bad timing as anything else.”

The issue of facilities is both a cause and emblematic of the
up-and-down cycles of the Seattle sports scene. The loss of the Kingdome took
Seattle out of the running for NCAA Final Four games. On the other hand, the
addition of Safeco and Qwest fields secured the future of the Mariners and Seahawks,
and Leiweke says the new football stadium has been a big factor in the success
of the Sounders.

“Right now, there seems to be a
reprioritization of needs here,” Armstrong explains. With the focus on issues
like a replacement for the viaduct and expanding light rail, not to mention the
giant holes in government budgets in the midst of the recession, “There are
other needs that have come more to the forefront in people’s minds, and they’re
not thinking about, ‘okay, we need these sports things right now.’ If we were
hosting the Olympics, there’d be a lot of correct angst of how are we going to
pay for this.”

Armstrong also notes that
Seattle had a remarkable run of investment in sports, arts and cultural
facilities, including not just Qwest and Safeco fields but Benaroya Hall,
Marion McCaw Hall, the new Seattle Art Museum and the downtown library. “I
think we’ve done a tremendous amount locally,” he says. “Maybe we’re just
catching our breath a bit.”

Adds Leiweke, “We do have an
arena issue that’s got to be fixed” not only for the potential return of the
NBA but also for the NHL, NCAA basketball games and concerts.

Next on the culprit list-the
economy. There isn’t as much money available now for ticket purchases, suite
sales, advertising, promotions and sponsorships.

“We did notice beginning with
the decline in the economy, about the middle of last year, a shift in the types
of tickets people were purchasing,” Armstrong says. Those buying tickets on
game day who once had asked for the best seat available would instead request
the cheapest seat open in a good location. “Price became important.”

The recession’s impact will be
felt long after the economy recovers. Companies will have second thoughts about
both the effectiveness and the appearance, to shareholders, customers and
employees, of buying a luxury suite. “Teams are going to have to get more
creative at how they sell them,” Gastineau says.

But the Sounders proved the
recession need not be fatal to the sports business. “If you were to pick a time
to launch a new professional team in a sport where there were a lot of cynics
saying this won’t work, that might have been the exact worst six months [the
second half of 2008] to do it in modern history,” Leiweke says. “And yet, the
fans spoke. It is a discretionary investment, so it is subject to the economy.
But I think sports do provide an escape in a down time. If there was a downturn
we saw, we saw it more from corporations and less from the average guy in the
seat. What we’ve seen is sports fight their way through this economy. This is a
really excellent sports town.”

The impact of some companies
leaving Seattle, others being bought and some disappearing entirely concerns
Armstrong. “We have lost so many headquarters,” he says. “We clearly do not
have the same relationship with the Boeing Co. as we did when the Boeing Co.
was headquartered here. We clearly do not have the same relationship with
Weyerhaeuser as we did when Weyerhaeuser was a fully integrated forest products
company. … Washington Mutual was a great partner. The loss of good headquarters
companies has been really damaging, and when you get to the big events, it’s
going to be harder to get companies to step up and help sponsor those.”

Then there’s the matter of
Seattle’s political process, climate and structure, as well as its attitude
toward sports.

“This community does not
galvanize itself into action until it’s in extremis,” Armstrong explains, and
by then it might be too late.

“It would be nice if one of our leaders would champion the
idea of being progressive about sports,” Gastineau notes. During the Sonics
imbroglio, he says, there was no political leader to take the lead in keeping
the team in town. “Maybe it’s because everybody’s so afraid you get linked to
the idea of tax money for arenas and suddenly, you’re a bad person.”

As much as the region needs
active, community-minded team owners or event promoters-someone like Bob
Walsh-on the private-sector side, “You need someone equal to that on the
political side,” he adds. “I would really love to see the new mayor … say
‘We’re going to re-emphasize what sports events can do in this community,'” a
political leader willing to “make sports a higher priority in the city of
Seattle in terms of getting events that both give our residents a fun thing to
do and a reason to feel proud and to give tourists an extra reason to come
here.”

While changing the political
mindset is a huge challenge, and the economy is beyond anyone individual’s
control, there are other factors helping to drive change. One is stable, local
ownership, which the Mariners have had with Nintendo, the Seahawks have had in
the form of Paul Allen and the Sounders now have with a consortium of notables
including Allen and local businessman and general manager Adrian Hanauer, plus movie
executive Joe Roth and comedian Drew Carey.

There’s also the recognition
that Seattle isn’t going to be a sports-event destination without some work on
its own part.

“We have a vision for
Seattle to be recognized as a featured sports destination and a
premier host for national sporting events,” says the sports commission’s
mission statement. “We encourage event owners and national governing bodies to
consider Seattle for their events and conferences. As the SSC continues
to bring more events to the region, we will establish Seattle’s reputation
as a world class city providing high quality venues, well produced events, a
supportive government and a strong sports community.

“Seattle has hosted All-Star
games, NCAA Final Fours and the Goodwill Games, but what has it done lately?
Mega-events such as the World Cup, Olympics, Super Bowl, NASCAR, college bowl
games and others would offer major economic benefits for the community and
county, but a can-do attitude is needed to stay in the running. Seattle needs to
see itself as the host of such events. To reach its potential, Seattle needs to
think big and take bigger actions.”

Seattle will also be watching
how Vancouver, B.C., fares with the 2010 Winter Olympics. If the games are
successful and not a financial debacle, that outcome might convince the region
that, as Morton puts it, “It’s time for Seattle to step out again and try to
host some of the world’s premier events and make us the center of the universe
even if just for a day.”

Gastineau has ideas for good places
to start. “I don’t understand why the city of Seattle is not in the rotation
for first-round NCAA basketball tournaments,” he says. “They have them in
Boise. They have them in Spokane. They have them in Portland.”

With the success of the Boeing
Classic and the region’s enthusiasm for golf, “I’ve got to think the PGA is
looking at this region and saying ‘We’ve got to have an event up here.’ It’s
crazy a market of this size does not have the best golfers in the world coming
through once a year. There are the golf courses for it; there’s the community
for it. We just need to find the sponsorship.”

Morton says the commission is
looking at everything from air races to a stop on the beach volleyball tour to
major college football games to annual events that the region would own and
operate.

“The time is right for the next
big thing.”

A recent timeline of Seattle
sports

1990: Goodwill Games
1994-’95: Sonics play at Tacoma
Dome while KeyArena is renovated
April 1995: Third of three NCAA
Final Fours (Seattle also hosted in 1984 and 1989)
October 1995: Edgar Martinez’s
“Hit That Saved Baseball in Seattle”
February 1996: Seahawks owner
Ken Behring announces plan to move the team to Southern California
June 1996: Emerald Downs opens
near Auburn
June 1997: Voters approve
funding plan for Seahawks Stadium; Paul Allen buys team
August 1998: Sahalee hosts PGA
Championship
December 1998: Seattle City
Council votes not to support bid for Olympics
July 1999: First Mariners game
in Safeco Field
September 1999: Last playing of
the 18-year Safeco Classic LPGA golf event
March 2000: Kingdome imploded
July 2001: Major League
Baseball All Star Game at Safeco Field
August 2002: First Seahawks
game at Qwest Field (preseason)
December 2002: Second of two
Seattle Bowls (college football)
August 2005: First Boeing Classic golf
tournament
July 2006: Howard Schultz sells
Sonics to Oklahoma City group
July 2008: Sonics ownership,
city of Seattle settle suits, clearing move to OKC
July 2009: Sounders friendly
with Chelsea FC draws 65,289 to Qwest Field
November 2009: MLS Cup at Qwest
Field

This story has been corrected to reflect Karen Bryant’s actual position with the Seattle Storm, and to add the Storm’s 2004 victory in the WNBA 2004 Championship.