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I am a CPA by day (very long days) and a Cat's baseball fan by night (well actually 24/7). I always believed I was fairly knowledgeable about financial matters. Apparently, I am not. I don't understand how Carl Bell can be considered greedy. How could anyone think he is making so much money? First, consider the cost of servicing $16,000,000 of debt. Let's assume he was able to secure 100% of outside financing for the construction and related costs of building LaGrave Field. Let's further assume he could, by some additional miracle, obtain a 30 year mortgage at a 6.4% nominal interest rate. The annual payments would be $1,200,000.00 (read $100,000 per month if all of the zeros are confusing). Now tact on to that approximately $200,000 of property taxes per year. He has $1,400,000 of fixed costs per year!

Now let me mention a few other costs. Game day wages (seasonal staff) and payroll taxes, stadium utilities (a lot of electricity and water), stadium cleaning, stadium repairs and maintenance, employee uniforms, press catering, team and manager/coaches salary and payroll taxes, bats, baseballs, uniforms, uniform repair, equipment, team transportation, hotels, meal money for players and coaches, clubhouse supplies, player/coach travel at start and end of season, athletic trainer related expenses, manager and coaches housing/auto, printing costs for sales brochures, pocket schedules, tickets, advertising (newspaper, radio, television, direct mail), scoreboard/fence signs, cost of promotions, community relation costs, league dues (you want to guess how much this is!!!), telephone, office supplies, insurance (liability, workers compensation, health), and probably about another couple of dozen additional expense line items. Oh, by the way, now you have the payroll and related costs for your year-round full time staff. Salaries and benefits for approximately 10 -12 for a large independent minor league franchise add up quickly. Add all of these costs add up quickly and before you know it you are pushing $2,000,000 per year.

So we have the fixed costs of about $1,400,000 per above plus the above variable costs (actually a lot of these are fixed as well) that combined is well in excess of $3,000,000. So now start doing the math on the revenue side. You have to sell a lot of tickets!!! The goal of every minor league team is to generate 1/3 of their gross income from ticket sales, 1/3 from game day sales and 1/3 from advertising and promotion. I think very few, if any, indy teams achieve this. Ticket sales are probably still well over 33% of total revenues. Additionally, remember these ticket sales include sales tax (at least in Texas). There is also cost of sales (cost and delivery, etc. of concessions, you also need storage and equipment for such) in the game day sales. I won't continue the math here, but I think you see my point. These gross sales are significantly reduced by cost of sales.

Finally, I think everyone on this board knows that announced attendence is not actual rear ends in the seats nor is it tickets sold. Also, a lot of the tickets sold are not at full price due to various promotions (e.g. Senior citizen discounts, nonprofit discounts, two for one weekday sales, etc.) Finally, more tickets sold also increase variable costs...it is a never ending cycle.

My conclusion, John Dittrich was right on when he mentioned that even St. Paul at 5,500 per game could not easily make this work. I consider myself a big Cats baseball fan. I realize that as I am typing this post I must not be. Because if I were, I would walk up to Carl Bell every night and thank him for underwriting LaGrave Field and the Cats baseball team for my enjoyment!!!

Would he like to make some money, you bet he would. Is he greedy? The math says NO!!!

For full disclosure, I am a friend of John Dittrich and I have had business dealings with Carl Bell. However, none of the information I provided above is confidential or actual information. It is all easily recalculated in drawing up any minor league baseball team business plan. Understanding the financial side of minor league baseball is relatively simple compared to most business. Making money with an independent minor league baseball team is a whole different story...