Erie weights in...

from GoErie.com today written by John Dudley:

"Don't believe for a second there is no money to be made in a bad economy.


Had you bought an Eastern League baseball franchise five or six years ago for the then going rate of about $8.5 million you might find yourself in position to turn a tidy profit today.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 million to $7 million, by most estimates.

That is, of course, if you could find a qualified buyer.

And that, apparently, is easier said than done.

It's for that reason that Erie's own SeaWolves once again popped up in news reports last week out of the Richmond, Va., area, where folks are trying to replace their longtime Triple-A affiliate, which bolted last season for the upscale, densely populated Atlanta suburbs.

Everyone's first choice seems to be the EL's Connecticut Defenders, a forgotten franchise that has failed to draw and failed just as miserably to make money in the crowded metropolitan New York corridor.

A deal appeared to be struck in which a Richmond ownership group would pony up $15.4 million to buy the Defenders and move them into an existing ballpark until financing for a new facility could be found.

Now that group appears to be short on money, and that's where the SeaWolves come in.

In an article last week, the Richmond Times-Dispatch cited unnamed sources who suggested the SeaWolves could be part of a backup plan to move an EL franchise to Virginia.

The Times-Dispatch offers no rationale for such a move, beyond reporting that EL officials have assured Richmond that the league will field a team there by next season.

A quick scan of the league attendance report shows the SeaWolves rank ahead of only Connecticut, drawing 2,280 fans per game entering their weekend series against Akron.

But attendance tells only part of the story when it comes to measuring a minor-league baseball team's financial success.

And while no one outright denies that Mandalay Baseball Properties, the SeaWolves' parent company, has flirted with other markets in the past, the SeaWolves also don't appear to be strong candidates for a move right now.

General manager John Frey has mostly distanced himself from the Richmond reports beyond saying that he is aware of no ongoing negotiations to move the team. Corporate Mandalay remains consistently mum on the subject.

At this point, all indications are that the EL will do whatever it can to help those prospective buyers in Richmond raise the cash to complete the Connecticut purchase, if for no other reason than because dangling a franchise publicly to another market -- as the EL has with the Defenders -- can make it awfully tough to sell tickets and sponsorships after the deal falls through.

This isn't to say that the SeaWolves are in Erie for the long haul.

Mandalay has shown it's not shy about making deals, and clearly the company hasn't exactly been raking in truckloads of cash at Jerry Uht Park.

For all anyone knows, the SeaWolves could be on the market as we speak, available to the right buyer with the right backing for a sum somewhere in the vicinity of $15 million, or about $6.5 million more than Mandalay paid for the team back in 2003.

And in this economy, that's not a bad return at all."

JOHN DUDLEY can be reached at 870-1677 or by e-mail at john.dudley@timesnews.com.