And one more

Sorry about the subscriber wall, but BA.com has put some good stuff behind there. They probably won't mind if there are two things that happen: 1.) I don't excerpt the whole article & 2.) You just think about subscribing.

They'll know that second one. Trust me. Why do you think Tracy Ringolsby wears that cowboy hat all the time?

Anyway, this story covers the trend of corporations buying and running many minor league teams.

Major Groups Grab More Minor League Teams

Ownership groups like Mandalay Baseball Properties, Ripken Baseball and Ryan-Sanders Baseball also continue to add teams to their portfolio--in both affiliated and independent minor league baseball.

According to Minor League Baseball, 19 ownership groups currently own multiple franchises. Between them, the groups own 54 of the 150 available minor league franchises, and they own many of the flagship franchises around the minors, from Round Rock and Corpus Christi (Ryan-Sanders) to Frisco and Dayton (Mandalay).

Skipping down to the section on Mandalay and the Dayton Dragons:

Greater resources and financial backing allow ownership groups to turn profits by presenting the ideals that have made minor league baseball a hit over the years--cozy ballparks and creative promotions--but on a much grander scale.

The Dayton Dragons, Mandalay's flagship franchise in the Midwest League and one of the most successful teams in the minors, have an 18-person game day staff. At its annual mascot training sessions--how many minor league franchises have ever had anything like that?--Mandalay brings in the iconic Phillie Phanatic to teach employees the joys of entertaining spectators. Instead of lining the outfield walls of their ballparks in Dayton and Frisco with traditional billboards, Mandalay displays advertisements on massive LED screens.

"Our whole approach is that the entertainment has to be fresh and we have to reinvest in the franchises to keep the people coming back," said Mandalay Baseball Properties president Howard Nuchow, who served as an executive with the NBA's New Jersey Nets for seven years before leaving to join the company created by former Sony executives Peter Guber and Paul Schaeffer, along with businessmen Hank and Ken Stickney. "It's all about entertaining fans."

Mandalay has turned entertaining into an art form. The group purchased the Rockford Reds in 1999 and moved the team to Dayton the following season after identifying the city as a promising market without professional baseball. Their forecasts proved accurate: Dayton has sold out every game for seven straight seasons and has a 5,000-person waiting list for tickets. Frisco, a Texas League franchise that moved from Shreveport in 2003, drew 580,480 fans in 2006--ninth-best among domestic minor league teams.