Most Utahns want a major league baseball team.
A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll from 2023 found that 81% of Utah residents were in favor of bringing an MLB franchise to the Beehive State. Thirty-one percent said they strongly supported the idea.
And it isn’t a secret that Big League Utah, a coalition of prominent Utahns led by the Larry H. Miller Company, is pursuing an MLB franchise.
Utah tried to get in on the Oakland Athletics sweepstakes, though that effort ultimately came up short. Now, the possibility of Utah potentially nabbing another team is being raised — this time, it’s Arizona.
The Arizona Diamondbacks play at Chase Field, a Maricopa County Stadium District-owned ballpark that almost all agree is in need of some serious renovation. Construction started on Chase Field in 1996 and finished in 1998, and recent estimates by the Diamondbacks suggest the need for $400-$500 million in renovations. Plumbing and air conditioning are the areas most in need of repair, per KJZZ.org in Phoenix.
Efforts have been made to secure renovation funding, including the passage of a tax bill in the Arizona House of Representatives and the state Senate Finance Committee that would “reinvest sales taxes collected at Chase Field back into the ballpark,” per ArizonaSports.com.
That legislation has received serious pushback, however, from both the mayor of Phoenix and Maricopa County. Both parties say it would put too large of a burden on their citizens.
The Diamondbacks’ current lease of Chase Field expires in 2027, putting a timeline on the ongoing financial negotiations between the team, the state, the county and the city.
That’s where Utah comes in.
On Tuesday, Arizona Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Danny Seiden went on “The Mike Broomhead Show” on KTAR to talk about the progress of the renovation deal.
He said that, though things are moving in the right direction for the D-backs to stay in Arizona, Utah and Oregon loom as real threats if all parties in Arizona aren’t able to come to an understanding sooner rather than later.
“Utah is being very aggressive. Oregon is being very aggressive,” Seiden said. “They are passing legislation, $800 million, $600 million to pay for a new baseball stadium. That is not anything that the Diamondbacks are looking for. They are looking for some recapture of income generated that they can bond off of. The team will put way more (money) in, hundreds of millions more than any public dollars will go into to keep that asset (the D-backs) here.”
Seiden went on to invoke the memory of the Arizona Coyotes’ recent move to Utah, where the franchise is now known as the Utah Mammoth.
“If we are not careful, we are going to see the Arizona Diamondbacks become the Utah Pika or whatever awful animal they will change it to. They took our Coyotes and turned it into the Mastodon, Elephant or something. It is something terrible, I don’t even want to say it. It hurts my heart. Some Utah nonsense. I am very pro-Arizona here. So we can’t allow that to happen to the D-backs.”
If the Diamondbacks remain in Arizona long term, the most obvious avenue for a major league baseball team to come to Utah is through league expansion.
Last February, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said that he hopes to have a plan in place for the league to add two expansion teams before he retires in 2029, per ESPN.