Braves owner Liberty Media
What: The Englewood, Colo.-based company, though publicly traded, operates much like an investment partnership, buying and selling stakes in entertainment and media firms.
Owners: Investment firms, pension funds and other partners, such as Berkshire Hathaway, BlackRock and Fidelity, own much of Liberty. But billionaire John Malone, chairman of Liberty, owns voting control.
Holdings: In addition to owning the Braves, has controlling or major stakes in satellite radio operator Sirius XM, book seller Barnes & Noble, cable operator Charter Communications, ticket and concert marketer Live Nation Entertainment, and TV producer McNeil/Lehrer Productions.
Employees: 2,100
Financial stats: Liberty reported $2 billion in revenue in 2012, $3 billion for the first nine months of this year, and expects $4 billion next year.
Braves connection: Liberty bought the Braves and other assets from Time Warner in a complicated, $1.4 billion transaction in 2007 that valued the team at about $450 million.
John Malone: The 72-year-old deal-maker surpassed Ted Turner as the nation's largest private land owner in 2011.
The Braves’ plan to move north to Cobb County had many economic development leaders and tourism officials trying Monday to figure out who wins and who loses.
The answer: it depends.
Downtown still has the critical mass of attractions and hotels to drive visitors to the city’s heart, said William Pate, president of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. But there’s little doubt that Cobb County will pinch off some of the visitors who would normally fill the thousands of hotel rooms and restaurants when the stadium opens there.
“We will have to see what they numbers are,” he said.
A new stadium would be a boon to a labor market that has still not completely recovered from layoffs caused by the bursting of the housing bubble, said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University.
The Braves and Cobb officials estimated that construction of the new stadium would add 5,227 jobs with a payroll of $235 million.
“That is not unreasonable,” said Dhawan. “This would certainly be good news for commercial construction contractors.”
Hospitality is one of the biggest employers in downtown Atlanta and the state, especially as high paying white-collar jobs have been struggling to regain their footing in the sluggish economic recovery.
Cities and counties also use attractions as carrots to lure corporate relocations, home buyers and business development.
A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, a group working to support downtown, said if the Braves cross the city line into Cobb, the departure would hurt for reasons both psychological and financial.
Much of the Braves income flows to far-off corporate coffers or to executives and players who live outside the city, but the team does pay millions in taxes in Atlanta, he said.
“Economic impact studies show that there is a huge impact,” he said. “And the team is part of the fabric of the city.”
On the other hand, Turner Field has always been something of an island on the edge of downtown. While baseball stadiums in other cities such as Washington, D.C., San Diego and Denver have spawned nearby restaurants, shopping and businesses, the Atlanta neighborhood of Summerhill has been largely untouched by such development.
Despite numerous tax incentive schemes to attract development, the area remains dominated by the stadium and a sea of asphalt.
Barbara Faga, a planning consultant and co-editor of the forthcoming “Planning Atlanta,” has hopes for the area.
“I am sure there’ll be other big developers,” she said. “Land is valuable here. You could redo the area and fix the stadium.”
Brooks Mathis, vice president of the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce, said the stadium will help strengthen the county as a destination, adding sports to a menu of arts and outdoor activities. The Cobb Energy Center, for instance, is home to the Atlanta Ballet and the Atlanta Opera.
Cobb also has one of the metro area’s most extensive park areas, the Silver Comet Trail and Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield.
“This will also help us with our plans to expand business here, but also retain those we already have,” he said.
But Scott Higley, a spokesman for the Georgia Aquarium, said the Braves were part of a synergy in downtown Atlanta that was growing stronger every day. Combined with the aquarium, the World of Coca-Cola, CNN Center, the Georgia Dome and the soon-to-open National Center for Civil and Human Rights, downtown Atlanta has been on a roll.
But he doesn’t think it will be a loss for the city. Because the Braves are just moving up the road, he thinks most people will just think of the region more broadly.
“We are such a strong companion attraction to each other that there will be a halo effect,” he said. “I think most people will still venture downtown.”
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