GEM COLLECTOR

Fresno is more than 2,000 miles from Nashville, but the California community is a country music hotbed. As much as that may be true, Fresno doesn’t always manage to convince Nashville of its bonafides.
For years, the Fresno Grizzlies have tried to bring top country acts to Chukchansi Park. For years, they have struck out. Whatever the reason, the Grizzlies couldn’t convince the best of the genre to perform at their stadium.
Now, the Grizzlies have friends in high places.
Last November, the Grizzlies were sold to Diamond Baseball Holdings, becoming the 26th minor league team acquired by the company. Once that happened, Fresno’s trouble landing top country acts disappeared. This October, Thomas Rhett, a singer with 20 No. 1 songs on the Billboard Country Airplay charts, will play Chukchansi Park as part of DBH’s Music on the Diamond series.
Welcome to Fresno, DBH.
“People in Fresno ask: ‘Where’s the country music?’ Now we have a show on the calendar,” Grizzlies general manager Derek Franks said. “We would have no chance to book Thomas Rhett if we tried to do that on our own.
“That answered something right off the bat. Our market was clamoring for it. The connections are a world of difference. Having a cold call from a random venue is a little different than getting a call from DBH, who already has connections with these folks.”
In less than three years, Diamond Baseball Holdings has gone from an idea to the most powerful ownership group in the history of Minor League Baseball. DBH already has 33 teams either in its portfolio or going through the sales approval process. It has said it remains in acquisition mode. The group added 16 of those teams in 2023 and has already added four more in 2024.
Before MLB took over the operation of the minor leagues in 2020, no group was allowed to own more than one team in any league. That limited the scope of other multi-team owners like Mandalay Baseball Properties. Mandalay was considered a major force in Minor League Baseball because it owned seven teams at once. The new rules imposed by MLB are much less
restrictive. DBH can own as many as 14 teams at any level of the minor leagues. That puts their upper limit at 56 teams—14 each at Triple-A, Double-A, High-A and Low-A—out of a possible 120 full-season minor league teams.
So what is Diamond Baseball Holdings? It’s a company that is part of the Silver Lake private equity group portfolio. Silver Lake itself is so large that it’s hard to list everything. In the sports space, Silver Lake counts among its portfolio Fanatics, Madison Square Garden Sports and Learfield, the company that handles marketing, sales and media rights for a large number of college athletics programs.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1398697516/1716204865/articles/_hVjkXXmQ1716980363975/6717144644.jpg]
It also has Endeavor, which owns multiple sports leagues, including Ultimate Fighting Championship and Professional Bull Riding.
But because Endeavor also owns a sports agency, Diamond Baseball Holdings became a direct part of the Silver Lake portfolio.
The rapid growth of DBH led to many questions and some fears around the minor leagues about what the company led by Pat Battle and Peter Freund had in mind as it snapped up many of the flagship minor league franchises around the country.
Would they slash and burn front office staffs? Would minor league teams across the country lose their local flavor? Would DBH become too powerful, especially as it also has a contract with Major League Baseball to sell national MiLB advertising?
So far, many of those concerns have not materialized.
The general managers under DBH control were the same people running the clubs before DBH arrived. A fan who checks out 10 games a year might not even realize the team has been sold.
“Our conversations put me in a position to be able to tell all of our business partners and season-ticket holders: ‘We’re going to sell the team, but I’m not going anywhere.’ ” said Iowa Cubs president and general manager Sam Bernabe, who is in his 41st year working for the I-Cubs.
“The DBH philosophy is they want me to run the club the way I am running the club.”
Tyson Jeffers can attest. He previously ran the DBH-owned Hudson Valley Renegades. Now, he is getting ready to open a new park in Spartanburg, S.C., where the Down East franchise will relocate in 2025.
“They have been hyper-focused on ensuring the local staffs are staying in place,” Jeffers said.
DBH has been willing to move teams. The Mississippi Braves will move to Columbus, Ga., to a heavily-renovated stadium. Down East will head to Spartanburg. Those will entail leaving existing markets for ballparks that will meet MLB’s toughened facility requirements.
For the teams staying put, there have also been plenty of stadium changes. There have been new video boards, fresh coats of paint and various fan improvements. There have also been a lot of behind-the-scenes tweaks such as ticketing systems, financial system integrations, better financial reporting and improved fan surveys.
“I’m not saying DBH is just throwing money around, but if there are things the Iowa Cubs think they can generate more revenue, it’s a lot easier to talk about the possibility of getting those things done,” Bernabe said.
[https://...