As NHL All-Star Game exits Toronto, Blue Jays pursue MLB Midsummer Classic

TORONTO — Coming into work the past week and seeing the NHL All-Star Game’s footprint around downtown Toronto, Marnie Starkman kept envisioning how Major League Baseball’s Midsummer Classic might come together in the city.

“Yeah, absolutely,” said the Blue Jays’ executive vice-president of business operations, who attended the NHL All-Star Skills event in person and watched the game from home. “Any live-event sport you go to when you work in the industry, you look at things from a different lens. You try and put on your fan hat, but you're still looking at it from the standpoint of, OK, what would we do if we were in this situation or how could we do this?

“We had some of our marketing team go over and look at the Fan Fair and Drew House stuff they did, just to get some ideas,” she continued. “Different sports, different situations, really different in the winter versus the summer. But everything from Winter Classics to playoff games to all-star games, we're always looking at what could we take for inspiration and what would we do differently.”

With the Blue Jays vying to host an all-star game — they’ve submitted an intent to bid info to Major League Baseball in recent years and are awaiting a nod to take the next steps — such thought exercises currently carry a little more relevance.

Baseball is set for the next three summers — Texas has it this year, Atlanta next with Philadelphia set for 2026. But the process of awarding the game in 2027, 50 years after the Blue Jays joined the American League, may ratchet up in the months ahead, as hosts ideally get 2½-3 years of runway.

That hasn’t necessarily been the case lately, as the cancellation of the 2020 all-star game due to the pandemic, and the move of the 2021 contest from Atlanta to Colorado after Georgia made changes to its voting laws, has thrown the scheduling process into flux.

As a result, when exactly commissioner Rob Manfred plans to award the next game isn’t clear, although the Blue Jays, who are completing the second phase of a major makeover to Rogers Centre, the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox are thought to be leading candidates for the 2027-29 contests.

Toronto hosted its only all-star game in 1991, while the Cubs last had it in 1990 and the Red Sox in 1999. The benefits of hosting one are immense for both the city — Destination Toronto modelling projected an economic impact of $50-$60 million from the NHL festivities — as well as the clubs, who typically enjoy boosts in ticket sales, sponsorship and prestige.

“The process we've gone through has been both formal, where we've submitted and answered their questionnaire and said here are some ideas in Toronto showing our written commitment, and then there's been ongoing dialogue with us and the league with Mark (Shapiro, Blue Jays president and CEO), stating our interest,” said Starkman. “They're well aware that we’re interested.”

The NHL experience in the city offered MLB a glimpse at what could be one July down the road.

Fans from across North America buzzing around the convention centre for fan fest, just as their jersey-clad hockey counterparts did in recent days. Outdoor activities lining the sports corridor on Bremner Boulevard, perhaps, capitalizing on July’s weather in a way the NHL couldn’t in January’s grey gloom. An infusion of the city — and the entire country — into the proceedings, culminating with the Home Run Derby and all-star game showcasing the redesigned dome.

There are similarities to each MLB all-star game, but they all have a local flavour.

“It's a big part of what we try to do at all of our events,” said Jeremiah Yolkut, MLB’s vice-president of global events. “We don't want the Seattle all-star game to be what we present in Arlington for this year's Rangers all-star game. And so we're really intentional about how we stand up our different events and make them very local. ... I have no doubt that one day when the commissioner decides that we're going to Toronto, you very much would be able to kind of touch and feel the culture of the Blue Jays in Canada and in Toronto.”

For the NHL and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, owner of the host Maple Leafs, leaning into the local ties was easy.

As Commissioner Gary Bettman said, “The NHL could probably never give back to Toronto all that the city has given to our league throughout the last 107 years.”

For that reason, there are some limits to the degree of parallels that can be drawn.

Still, baseball’s history in Toronto is richer than the wider industry tends to recognize, even if it’s not embedded quite as deeply as hockey is. There’d be an opportunity to dig into that, as part of a broader production, since at base scale the baseball all-star game is a much larger operation, even in a league in which the Blue Jays are the lone Canadian outpost.

One important commonality is that both the NHL and MLB use BaAM, a Canadian event production company that helped the Blue Jays prepare Buffalo’s Sahlen Field for the pandemic season in 2020. The company’s work on hockey’s showcase over the past week could very well help inform a baseball equivalent down the road.

“We definitely look at other sports properties and certainly other all-star games and we do, at times, send people to other sports properties for large-scale events,” said Yolkut. “We will certainly, to the degree that (BaAM is) comfortable sharing and the NHL allows them to share best practices coming out of that all-star game, and all-star week, hear from them. But we rely on the host club to do a lot of that reconnaissance. We'll certainly work with Mark and Marnie and the Blue Jays and have them provide us with any key learnings … as we start to think about what all-star could look like in that market when the time comes.”

To that end, much of the vision and planning is done by the team — in conjunction with the city and other stakeholders — with MLB eventually leading in the execution.

Once the Blue Jays get a green light, they’ll need to form an organizing committee that will go about not just planning an all-star week’s look and feel, but securing something in the range of the 3,500 hotel rooms MLB is likely to require, plus venues for its fan fest, player draft, parties and concerts, which depending on the year might be staged at a smaller-scale auditorium or a full-sized arena.

Since the event is also getting bigger all the time, baseball officials also aim for rights of first refusal on spaces in case other elements are added in the future. Hence, the longer the runway, the easier it is to line up prime spots.

“Essentially what happens is host clubs will fill out an intent to bid, which outlines the tertiary areas of the venues we need, the hotels, etc.,” explained Yolkut. “If they pass that first round of intent to bid and the commissioner says, let's proceed with looking at it as a candidate city for hosting all-star, they would then get a specification document which goes much deeper on do you have enough parking lots in your host city, do you have enough larger venues to host?

“Once the specification process is done, the commissioner and leadership review the entirety of a bid and awards an all-star game. After that, they would get an actual all-star manual … over 20ish chapters of area-to-area, what you're going to be required to do to actually make that happen now that you're committed.”

Right now, the Blue Jays’ business-side resources are focused on completing the renovation in time for the April 8 home opener versus the Seattle Mariners, while MLB’s events group is locked in on March’s season-opening Seoul Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres.

Soon though, the Blue Jays will be ready to take off if MLB says go, having already put some preliminary groundwork in place. It’s been a long time coming, just as it was for the Maple Leafs, who last hosted the NHL all-star game in 2000.

Mitch Marner, the Maple Leafs’ hometown star, called hosting Saturday’s contest “pretty remarkable.” Teammate Auston Matthews, named the game’s MVP, quipped that playing in Toronto made the weekend experience “definitely a lot busier,” but “all in all, it's a great experience.”

“The whole weekend was special for all of us, especially the host city and hometown guys,” Matthews said after his team beat Connor McDavid’s team 7-4 in the final. “It's just special to have an all-star game in Toronto, to share the experience with some close teammates, friends and obviously the fans here. Nice to cap it off with a win and everybody goes home happy.”

Even without a W that would have been the case, just like when the Raptors hosted the NBA’s all-star game in 2016, and in 2008, when the MLS all-star game against West Ham took place at BMO Field.

The Blue Jays were last in such a spotlight three decades ago, when Cal Ripken Jr., won both the derby and MVP honours after a 4-2 American League victory. Ripken is now part of the investment group that last week reached an agreement to buy the Baltimore Orioles, underlining just how much a return to the dome is due.