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Steamboat Springs — Despite courting from several communities looking to snatch Triple Crown Sports from Steamboat Springs, President Dave King said Thursday that he hopes his company's youth baseball and softball tournaments stay put.

"We have other communities in the pipeline," King said. "But the goal obviously was, and still is, that the solution be with Steamboat Springs."

Triple Crown has a contract with Steamboat for two more summers of tournaments, most notably its World Series event held during a three-week period. Games also are played in other Routt County towns and Craig.

King hopes to sign a 10-year contract that would take effect in 2011. Preparing for the possibility that an agreement can't be reached with Steamboat - where a debate constantly rages between the tourism dollars the tournaments bring to the city and concerns such as traffic, noise and other issues - the company put out a request for proposals last year for cities that would like to host all or part of its World Series event.

King said he has received seven or eight proposals, including one from Longmont. According to the Longmont Times-Call, the city would pay Triple Crown $200 for every local team and $400 for every out-of-state team it brings to the community.

"It's one of those events you really like to get," Gary Wheat, executive director of the Longmont Area Visitors Association, told the Times-Call.

The other communities have not publicized their proposals, King said. In the proposals, King stated he is looking for "a mountain or destination championship experience in the West," but probably not one that would replace Steamboat entirely. King aspires to grow his World Series event to about twice its current size of nearly 400 teams, which officials in Steamboat say would overwhelm the community's lodging and field capacities.

"One of the things we basically told them was that if they wanted to grow to 800 teams, they needed to split it," City Council President Loui Antonucci said. "There is no way we can handle that many teams."

Under a scenario outlined at a Steamboat Springs City Council meeting last year, Steamboat would continue to see about 375 to 400 teams visit while the event grows in the second city. Then, beginning in 2011, the number of teams visiting Steamboat would drop to 250 and build slowly from there.

"Obviously, we've got people that would like the whole thing," King said. "But we probably fit more of a split scenario. That's more of what we're looking at."

Sandy Evans Hall, executive vice president of the Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association, said Steamboat needs to establish what its capacity level is and begin discussions on a long-term contract with Triple Crown. She said she is not surprised that other communities are expressing an interest in the company.

"I think we expected that," she said. "We're still hoping we can do a long-term contract that works for both us and them."

Antonucci said he is not nervous about losing Triple Crown because King has made clear his desire to stay in Steamboat.

"We're going to be really thankful we have them this summer," Antonucci said. "Sometimes, we think we're such a desirable place that it would be easy to replace them. I have never thought that."