Salt Lake City’s baseball hole: Bees have departed; will MLB arrive?

Now that the Salt Lake Bees have played their last game at Smith’s Ballpark, Salt Lake City is without professional baseball for the first time in decades. But that void could be filled if Utah gets a major league team.
Big League Utah, a coalition of prominent Utahns led by the Larry H. Miller Company, continues to pursue an MLB franchise, though the league has put expansion on the back burner. The Miller Company also owns the Bees.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said at his annual summer meeting with The Associated Press Sports Editors group that he anticipates having a two-team expansion process in place by January 2029, when his term as commissioner ends. A new team wouldn’t begin play until 2031. Manfred declined to talk about the viability of any city, but said baseball would need a team in the East and one in the West to make the format work.
Steve Starks, Miller Company CEO, told the Deseret News in an interview last week that Salt Lake City continues to be “really well positioned.”
“I think expansion is taking a bit of a backseat to other priorities that Major League Baseball is dealing with. They know where we are and we have a dialogue with them. But we also respect that there will be a process and that that process hasn’t begun yet. The worst thing we can do is try to force ourselves into a conversation when that conversation is not ready right now,” he said.
“We have done everything we can to this point to be the most prepared market for potential expansion and we’ll continue to do that.”
Other possible expansion cities include Nashville — widely seen as the frontrunner — Portland, Montreal and Charlotte. Earlier this year ESPN baseball analyst Buster Olney and Cy Young award winner David Cone both independently called Salt Lake City the mostly likely expansion site after Nashville. But the competition has increased since then. Just last week, a group called the Austin Baseball Commission, cofounded by tech sales executive Derrik Fox and Austin native and corporate communications professional Matt Mackowiak, launched an effort to bring a third big league team to Texas, according to the Austin-American Statesman.
The Bees’ relocation next season to a new, privately funded stadium the Miller Company is building in South Jordan, about 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, clears the market for a future major league team in the state’s capital. The Miller Company intends to construct an MLB stadium to anchor its planned $3.5 billion mixed-use development on Salt Lake City’s west side if it secures a team. The Utah Legislature passed a bill earlier this year that would divert $900 million from a rental car tax increase to help fund a ballpark in the city’s Power District. Construction on other aspects of the project are expected to start early next year.
“There’s a lot of good things that the community will start to see over the next 12 to 18 months, and anticipation, hopefully, of a major league stadium being there,” Starks said.
If the big leagues were to come to Salt Lake City, Starks said the Bees would continue to play in South Jordan. He said there would be enough distance between the major and minor league teams for both to thrive. A half dozen major league clubs have their top minor league teams in the same metropolitan area.
Expansion, though, isn’t the only possible way the Beehive State could find its way into the major leagues. Sports Illustrated reported last week that negotiation between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors over the lease of Chase Field isn’t going well, which could lead to a relocation of the team when the agreement expires in 2027. The team has played in the stadium since it joined the league in 1998, the last time baseball expanded.
Jack Sommers reported in the story that Diamondbacks officials have “made veiled threats about the possibility of relocating outside the state,” referencing a quote that team CEO Derrick Hall gave to Sports Business Journal about how Utah lawmakers have earmarked almost a billion dollars for an MLB team.
“It woke a lot of people up and showed just how easily a team can be lured away,” Hall said. “I can never see us leaving the area, but if there is a market out there that is very aggressive, you never know what extent they’ll go to acquire a team.”
Sommers listed Utah first among potential destinations.
“Salt Lake City is certainly a possibility. Big League Utah is just such an aggressive entity that Hall alluded to. They are willing to either take on a team that is looking to relocate, or bring in an expansion franchise,” he wrote.
In April, another Arizona professional sports franchise having arena troubles relocated to Salt Lake City. Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith bought the struggling Arizona Coyotes hockey team and rebranded it as the Utah Hockey Club for the upcoming NHL season.
Earlier this year, the Miller Company pitched the Oakland A’s on making the Bees’ new ballpark a temporary home while the team awaits construction of a stadium in its new home in Las Vegas. The A’s ultimately decided play in Sacramento next year. The $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat domed stadium on the Las Vegas Strip is anticipated to open in 2028.