Good news for Rochester Rattlers fans; the team is in their second MLL championship.
Even better news? The team isn’t going to move afterwards.
Commissioner David Gross said on Wednesday afternoon that the Rattlers are not going anywhere. “We have every intention that the team is going to be in the Rochester area for the long term,” Gross said. “We’re still a young league. If I were to sit here and say to you that no team is moving anywhere for the next ten years, unfortunately the history we’ve got on our side doesn’t show that to be the case. For any team to be healthy and successful, we’ve got to get people to come to the games.”
There were rumors after last season that the Rattlers might be on the move to Atlanta, the site of this year’s MLL championship game. Rumors of expansion or relocation to both Atlanta and Philadelphia have been mentioned throughout the past two years and with three neutral site games last year, Rochester was the obvious candidate.
Jim Davis, a co founder of the league, now owns the team and MLL no longer operates the club. In fact, the league no longer owns any of the member teams. The concern for the Rattlers remains their second lowest attendance in the league (relocated team in Florida is last) and as Gross said, they do need to get fans to come to the games.
“The crowds after the games are larger and the fans are sticking around longer to see everybody,” team captain Kevin Leveille said to the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester. “That’s something we notice as players versus prior years when it just seemed like they didn’t have too much interest in us.”
