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About two decades ago the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim changed their name to include LA and the team defended itself in a lawsuit against its hometown after city officials alleged the move violated the spirit of the lease.
Yet the name Anaheim rarely – if ever – appears on television broadcasts, with the ballclub instead being referred to as the LA Angels or the Angels.
In stark contrast, the Ducks put Anaheim before the team name after the current owners – Henry and Susan Samueli – bought the team from Disney nearly 20 years ago.
And the Ducks’ recent rebranding embraced Anaheim and Orange County when they adopted the team’s original logo and changed the team colors to orange and black earlier this summer.
A July rebranding video said the change up shows “the color of the place we call home – orange, a bold shade we wear with pride … crafted with inspiration from Orange County’s citrus center.”
What’s in a Name?
Former Mayor Tom Tait, who led staunch community opposition to a proposed $1 a year lease with the Angels over a decade ago, highlighted the stark differences between the two teams when it comes to branding.
He said the Ducks “are proud of their host city and that wasn’t the case with the Angels. The benefit of hosting a professional sports team is the name and the community pride that brings.”
“It sends a negative message about your sitting community that the team doesn’t want to name itself after where it plays.”
A couple years after Arte Moreno bought the Angels from Disney in 2003, he changed the name from Anaheim Angels to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim– a change that team officials said they weren’t going to budge on.
Moreno’s representatives told city officials the team name issue was a no go during the 2019 stadium negotiations.
[Read: ‘Anaheim” Won’t be in Angels Name as Lease Negotiations Start Soon]
The land sale eventually collapsed after an FBI probe surfaced in 2022, alleging former Mayor Harry Sidhu gave Angels negotiators confidential information in an effort to ram through the land sale for $1 million in campaign support – something he pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about.
But those aren’t the only differences between Anaheim’s two professional sports teams that play in separate city-owned arenas on opposite sides of the 57 freeway.
Some former elected officials in OC’s largest city say there are two very different dynamics between Angel Baseball executives and city officials compared to the Ducks executives and the city.
And they’re calling out those differences as state auditors gear up to take a deep dive into the Angel Stadium lease agreement in the wake of a corruption scandal that continues to rattle city hall.
Last month, former City Councilman James Vanderbilt said the two pro sports teams have a completely different relationship with city hall.
“You’ve got a city relationship with the Samuelis and the Anaheim Ducks and the benchmark that they have made is to acquire properties at fair market value,” he said of their current expansion efforts, dubbed OC Vibe.
“They have stuck with the Anaheim brand,” he added. “And they now are pushing a marketing program that is central to Orange County.”
Vanderbilt said the relationship the Ducks have with Anaheim is an example of how such partnerships should work.
Yet, he said, the Angels – who play within walking distance of the Ducks – have a completely different approach.
“On the Angels side, you got a team that shows more unwillingness to work on those things, threatens to leave the city and that kind of thing so it’s difficult,” he said, adding he wished the Angels would have a similar relationship with Anaheim to the Ducks.
Marie Garvey, a spokeswoman for the Angels, refused to comment on the criticism of the Angels’ relationship with the city or the differences between the ballclub and the Ducks.
Steve Brown, a spokesman for the Ducks, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Vanderbilt’s comments come after state legislators announced that California auditors will investigate if the Angels have lived up to their revenue sharing and maintenance obligations in their stadium lease agreement.
[Read: How Trashed is Angel Stadium?]
State auditors are also expected to probe Anaheim’s canned Angel Stadium land sale.
Who Treats the Community Better?
In a phone interview last week, former City Councilwoman Denise Barnes said one of the main differences between the two teams is how well the Ducks take care of the Honda Center and how poorly the Angels maintain the city-owned stadium.
“They are very aggressive in how they maintain the grounds, and they’re constantly updating and renewing the look,” Barnes said about the Ducks.
Tait said the two teams take different approaches to negotiating deals with the city – adding that the Ducks took over maintenance of the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center as part of their lease agreement, something that was costing the city roughly $2.5 million annually.
“The Ducks – from my perspective – were putting forth much more reasonable deals that were much more beneficial to the City of Anaheim and the taxpayers,” he said in a phone interview last week.
Mayor Ashleigh Aitken and the rest of the city council did not respond to requests for comment last week.
“We have good working relationships with both teams and are proud to have both baseball and hockey in our city with benefits for our community and economy,” said City Spokesman Mike Lyster in a Wednesday email.
Barnes also said the Ducks are better to the city than the Angels.
“They’re very friendly, very communicative with the community and nonprofits in any way that they can. They’re one of the best partners I’ve seen for our city, being so big and being ambitious to see us blossom and grow,” she said.
“The Angels not so much.”
At the height of the pandemic, the Honda Center hosted numerous food drives for residents – with cars often stretching out onto the street.
Yet Angel Stadium sat mostly dark when COVID-19 infections were tearing through Anaheim – one of the hardest hit cities in Orange County.
Instead, the parking lot was used to host rental cars since the local tourism economy was on hold.
Jose Moreno, a former city councilman that called for a property assessment of Angel Stadium before he termed out, said the city’s relationship with the Angels and the Ducks is like night and day.
He said one of the biggest differences is how involved the Angels would get in funding campaigns and participating in political strategies around electoral politics – pointing to the Angels opting out of the stadium lease ahead of the 2018 election.
“Most observers agree that the decision to opt out of the lease by Artie Moreno (no relation) on the eve of an election was a decision to sway the election for Harry Sidhu who presumably was promising to give him whatever he wanted,” Moreno said.
Shortly after getting in office, Sidhu reinstated the lease – a move he called a temporary lease extension at the time.
[Read: Anaheim Mayor and City Staff Offer Contradicting Angels Stadium Statements]
After reinstating the lease, Angels executives helped Sidhu pay down campaign debt.
During the stadium sale efforts, the ball club also closely allied with the Chamber of Commerce – an organization that independent investigators and FBI agents alleged to have outsized influence on city hall.
[Read: FBI Reveals What Many Anaheim Residents Felt For Years, City Hall is Run By The Chamber of Commerce]
Moreno said while the Ducks also contribute to campaigns, they give money to each candidate – some of whom are running against each other.
“That’s their level of participation that I’ve seen over the years. The rest is meeting with every council member and Mayor updating them on projects, willingness to sit in public meetings to answer any questions, and a much more kind of mutual benefit approach to negotiations,” he said.
The Angels, Moreno said, take a very different approach and meet with city leaders in private.
“It’s very transactional and very much within the culture of what we saw and the greed of the corruption and the influence of big money politics in Anaheim,” he said.
Marisol Ramirez, interim co-executive director of the nonprofit Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development who served as Moreno’s senior policy aide in the past, said the Ducks considered local residents when negotiating with the city and wanted to make investments that benefit them.
“The Ducks historically have tried to do their due diligence in benefiting the community and trying to make modifications to really work with the community as far as their inclusion,” she said in an interview last week.
OC Vibe vs Angel Stadium Sale
The same year officials voted to cancel the stadium land sale, city council members voted unanimously to approve the Samuelis’ $4 billion OC Vibe proposal, a 95-acre project around the Honda Center that is expected to bring in new homes, jobs, parks and open space, restaurants, hotels and parking structures.
The project is being supported with $400 million in city-issued bonds to build nearby parking lots, which are being paid by team owners from money generated from the Honda Center.
[Read: New OC Vibe Development Coming to Anaheim, Helped by $400 Million Bonds]
Ramirez said the design of OC Vibe proposal took into account residents because it carved out green space that is free and accessible to the public.
“The Angels deal – I think they could have definitely benefited from listening to the community,” she said. “They didn’t really do that.”
Moreno said compared to the Angel’s land sale, OC Vibe will create a lot of land for public use – including trails and a small amphitheater, as well as creating affordable homes without asking for direct city subsidies.
He said the stadium deal in contrast had very little public benefit and the Angels wanted discounts.
Tait agreed.
“The Ducks proposal is a good, fair deal for the City of Anaheim and the Angels’ proposal was not,” Tait said.
Before revelations of the FBI corruption probe, Anaheim officials were on track to sell the stadium and the roughly 150 acres it sits on for $150 million cash – knocking roughly $170 million off the sales price for “community benefits credits,” which included 466 affordable housing units and a seven-acre park.
After the revelation of the FBI probe, Arte Moreno pushed for the land sale to still go through and under SRB management, the Angel’s negotiating team, went on to demand $5 million from the city for canceling the deal.
In July, city leaders agreed to pay the Angels $2.75 million for the collapse of the stadium deal.
Editor’s note: Ashleigh Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs Voice of OC’s board of directors.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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