CHICAGO -- On a recent night at Wrigley Field, the view from beyond left field was almost perfect. There were the iconic bleachers ... the ivy on the outfield walls ... the field bathed in light. Pete Crow-Armstrong was batting, and the near sellout crowd was chanting: "M-V-P!"
But Aidan Dunican, standing on the rooftop of his four-story apartment building across the street, was pointing out what he couldn't see -- mainly pieces of the infield because of a gauzy, translucent screen affixed to the left-field grandstand that obscured his view, and that of the 50 or so patrons who had paid to watch the game from his rooftop.
The Chicago Cubs installed the screens two seasons ago, along with large letters that advertised a 50-50 raffle that further blocked portions of the field from Dunican. This was no accident: the Cubs sued Dunican and his rooftop business in 2024, arguing he was illegally profiting off their property.
"I was worried it would affect ticket sales," Dunican said in his Irish brogue, while he pointed at the screen. He later added: "People are still coming."
But Dunican now has more pressing concerns than the screens.
On Sept. 30, the same day the Cubs' season ended, a federal judge ruled in favor of the team, ordering Dunican to stop selling tickets to his rooftop -- a victory for the Cubs who have called his operation "parasitic." Dunican told ESPN he is weighing his options for an appeal and intends to continue to fight to keep his 30-year-old business going next season --in what could be considered a quixotic fight against the inevitable or a principled stand for the little guy.
"There's bullying tactics," Dunican said. "And you see how billionaires are pushing around everyone else today. And I live here. So I'm not going to do anything else."
Wrigley, tucked among apartment buildings and residential streets, is a jewel-box park famously part of the neighborhood that bears its name. And part of that charm is the rooftop seating on the apartment buildings just beyond the outfield, which has been a popular destination for fans since the 1990s and the heyday of Sammy Sosa.
The Ricketts family, which owns the Cubs, are like most owners these days, turning their investments into a collection of assets beyond the team itself. The family owns Wrigley Field itself, co-owns the TV network that broadcasts Cubs games and, increasingly, owns the buildings that house the rooftops around Wrigley Field. Ricketts' businesses have bought and acquired 11 buildings and their rooftop businesses surrounding the park. They've reached revenue-sharing deals with others.
Dunican, 64, was the last holdout. He bought his property in the 1990s, knocked down what was there and built a four-story building with two decks of inclined seating on the roof. He lives in the third-floor apartment.
"It's a classic David versus Goliath story and David is being totally squished," said Tom Moore, an attorney who represented a group of rooftop owners more than a decade ago in negotiations with the Cubs and the city. Most of his clients ended up selling to the Ricketts.
Of Dunican, Moore said: "I wish him well. Usually Goliath beats up David."
Somewhere between $100 and $300 got you a seat at Dunican's Wrigley View Rooftop, along with an open bar until the seventh inning and all the Chicago-style hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches you could eat. The rooftop holds around 200 people, and if Dunican didn't sell 50 tickets for a game, he usually wouldn't open.
Dunican said the business usually generates around $1 million annually before accounting for expenses. Until 2024, he was paying the Cubs around 17% royalties due to a 2004 agreement signed by all the rooftops in business at the time.
When that deal expired after the 2023 season, Dunican hoped to extend it. The Cubs said no, Dunican said. He offered 20% of his gross revenue, but the Cubs wanted 30% for regular-season games and 40% for postseason games, he said. "It would have put me out of business," he said.
The Cubs argued Dunican needed an agreement with the team to profit off the games. They paid nearly a billion dollars to refurbish the stadium plus hundreds of millions more annually on running the team and Wrigley upkeep every year. Any money spent with Dunican might be spent on tickets and concessions inside the park, they argued. (The Cubs also argued Dunican was misusing their logo on marketing materials, which Dunican acknowledged.)
Dunican countered that if the Cubs are so offended by his business they should block his view more completely. Further, he said, the city gave him a license to operate his rooftop specifically during Cubs games.
The court was unmoved by those arguments, emphatically siding with the Cubs. "Unfairly capitalizing on another's labor and expenses offends principles of justice, equity, and good conscience," federal judge Sharon Johnson Coleman wrote in her Sept. 30 ruling.
"The decision protects our intellectual property rights and affirms our longstanding position that businesses cannot commercially profit from Cubs games or use Cubs intellectual property without authorization," the Cubs wrote in a statement after the decision. (The team declined to comment further on the case.)
Dunican, standing on his rooftop before the judge's decision, posed another question, less legal and more philosophical: How much of Wrigleyville do the Cubs have a right to control?
He pointed out where a carwash had been that was now a glitzy Cubs office building, and a McDonald's is now a Ricketts-owned boutique hotel. Yum Yum Donuts had given way to Gallagher Way, an entertainment plaza that requires a ticket on Cubs game days. The Cubs' revenue-sharing proposal to him also included a right of first refusal on a sale of both his rooftop building and any other property Dunican owned within a mile of Wrigley. (He owned one other building, which he has since sold.)
It's a question that gets to the heart of a growing trend in sports: franchises as real estate empires. In 2017, the Atlanta Braves opened The Battery Atlanta around their stadium -- a "ballpark village" complete with restaurants, shops and apartments. The St. Louis Cardinals partnered with a development company to build a group of bars and restaurants next to their stadium. When Stan Kroenke reached a deal to acquire the Los Angeles Angels last month, there was widespread belief that the team fetched $4 billion dollars because of the value of the land around the ballpark.
After the Ricketts family bought the Cubs, businesses they owned started scooping up the rooftop buildings and launched their own rooftop business. The buildings usually went for a few million dollars. (Dunican said no one connected to the Cubs made him a formal offer to buy his building.)
Moore, the attorney who used to represent many of the rooftop businesses, said those sales often happened after the Cubs threatened to block the views. But the Cubs were both aided by multiple court rulings, and the city approved the construction. Plus, the team believed it was its intellectual property to monetize.
They've also expanded in Wrigleyville. The team recently opened a new merchandise store in a former CVS across the street from the stadium and next to another merchandise store that has been in business for decades. If you buy a Cubs hat, the Cubs also would like your $30.
"If you're a team, it's your asset," said Tim Katt, who leads the sports practice at commercial real estate company Transwestern. "You're the one driving the traffic so you should be capturing the dollars from the consumers. You want them buying an $8 beer in your stadium versus the bar next door."
When Wrigley was under construction, Dunican recalled that Crane Kenney, Cubs president of business operations, used to walk by Dunican's building and heckle him as he passed.
"It was never a 'Good morning,' Dunican said. "It was, 'We're going to block you' and 'You're going to lose your property, anyway.'" (A Cubs spokesperson denied Kenney said this.)
"Aidan is thankful for what the Cubs have built," said Sean Duffy, another friend of Dunican's. "But at the same time, the Cubs are benefiting from the neighborhood."
On a recent night, as the Cubs and the Braves battled in a September pennant race, Dunican flitted around his building, doing all sorts of jobs. A bar back called out sick so he went to buy beer. He checked guests in at the front door and mixed a few drinks behind the bar. Aside from a few part-time employees, he runs the business mostly himself.
Dunican grew up in the Irish countryside near Tullamore, where his father was a cattle farmer. He moved to Chicago after a year of college where several family members already lived, and has been here since 1981. Dunican worked construction and did well enough to buy a few properties, fix them up and rent them out. On a construction job in the late '90s, he noticed a property on Waveland Avenue next to Wrigley for sale.
He paid $400,000 for the building, planning to turn it into high-end condos, but during construction he noticed the views and the nascent rooftop businesses. Today, he lives on the third floor, rents another apartment on Airbnb and the top three floors host rooftop guests. (Each summer, he hosts a group of young Irish kids on work visas for several weeks.)
"I don't know how to describe him," his friend, Carl Madonia, said. "He's an Irish guy. He's a regular guy."
"He really doesn't talk much," said Marilyn Knaus, a lifelong Wrigleyville resident who has been working for Dunican for several years as a bartender.
But Knaus recognized something in Dunican that she also feels: a love of the neighborhood. Her husband worked at the fire station next door and firefighters, working their shifts, come over to visit once in a while.
"It's hard to leave the neighborhood," Knaus said. "It's hard to leave the people. No one's ever in a bad mood when they come here."
Still, Dunican must now confront the possibility that a new Cubs season will come next spring without his rooftop business. Maybe he can pivot the business into a restaurant and bar (though his business license right now limits any days he can be open beyond Cubs games). Maybe he could sell to a wealthy person who wants to live next to Wrigley. Or a developer who wants to put up condos.
Asked if he would sell to the Ricketts family, Dunican said: "I'd have to consider if it was a fair offer."
He declined to say what a fair offer would be, but noted he put more than $2 million into the building in 2010 in further renovations.
On the rooftop that September night, Dunican said he remembered sitting at the bar when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. He didn't grow up watching baseball, but he was a big Cubs fan now, and not just because of the business. He still goes to an occasional game. Crow-Armstrong is his favorite player.
As he considered how he'd spend this offseason, he noted that last year he traveled back to Ireland to visit family and the farm where he grew up.
"It's changed there," he said. "Nothing stays the same there, either."