Roundup time!
- Lots more reaction to the Oakland A’s move threat, including skepticism that they’ll really abandon a big market for a smaller one and a San Jose Mercury news editorial suggesting that “the City Council and the public first deserve a thorough independent financial evaluation of the A’s offer, alternative uses of the land and the effect on port operations,” which, yup.
- Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano writes that the A’s move threat is “a shot across the bow” to St. Petersburg that the Rays could do the same — and more than just threatening to summer in Montreal, which Rays owner Stu Sternberg apparently thinks is an offer Tampa Bay should welcome — though he also notes that if the A’s do move, that would take a potential relocation target off the table.
- The reveal of the A’s threat also makes it interesting that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred chose last week to announce that MLB would consider Forbes’ estimate of a $2.2 billion average baseball team value as the price for an expansion team, if MLB were handing out expansion teams, which it’s not. Clever move to stir up baseball interest in all those cities A’s owner John Fisher will need as leverage, or just random fumbling in response to a reporter’s question? You never can tell with Manfred!
- Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins, noting that less than 2% of Japan’s population is vaccinated and that on top of its billions of dollars in Olympic facility costs Tokyo will have to divert about 10,000 medical workers to service the Summer Games, says Japan should cancel the Olympics now and cut its losses. She likely has a fan in this guy.
- If you’ve been wondering whether New York Knicks and Rangers owner James Dolan is any closer to seeking a new arena now that Madison Square Garden has only two years to run on its operating permit, the answer appears to be nope. At least that’s according to the New York Post, which writes that even if the permit is allowed to expire, Dolan “doesn’t mean he has to physically leave MSG, which he owns”; that’s not necessarily true, though I guess if New York City can’t even bring itself to stop extending MSG’s permit, it’s not likely to send the Department of Buildings Padlock Unit to put chains across the front door.
- The president of the Henderson, Nevada chamber of commerce says that the city’s new taxpayer-funded arena for the Silver Knights “was the lead domino to increase activity down here on Water Street.” His evidence? The owner of a barbecue restaurant called Biscuits and Bourbon says business has gone up since the arena opened in November. That’s surely worth $60 million.
- Finally, I guested on an episode of the Take A 20 sports podcast last week and it went live yesterday — the name is a reference to looking back to events 20 years ago, so you’ll need to take more like 60 to listen to it. I no longer remember all the things we discussed, but I do remember a fun and wide-ranging conversation, so check it out on Spotify or Apple (no subscriptions required).
You failed to mention that the mayor of Vegas put out a tweet that she has been in contact since 2019 with the Athletics. I don’t like and it won’t be an improvement of their current situation but if the Athletics don’t get what they want relocation will be announced by the end of the year
Putting out a tweet is one thing, coming up with a second huge stadium subsidy is another. Let’s see if the mayor can put her taxpayers money where her tweet is.
If they have been talking for 2 years any negotiations they have had are much more advanced than what they are putting out in the press. Until 2 days ago I thought the vegas effort was some boutique group headed by Steve Stone. There is alot going on here than we know
I’d put any amount of money on there being no actual substance (i.e. real finding or stadium planning) behind the Vegas “discussions”.
If you really think the A’s will announce a move to Vegas “by the end of the year,” there are Vegas bookmakers who will happily take your money.
If there is no vote this summer I will be happy to take theirs. Although as a baseball fan any shot at a St Louis cardinals 2.0 is likely to be in Portland if it were to exist
I really don’t.think you understand how relocation works. Even if Oakland doesn’t vote on the issue this summer, there is still no deal in place in Vegas or Portland, and there won’t be anytime soon. You don’t announce relocation to a place where you have nothing in place.
Instead of spending time on the A’s moving, let’s waste our time on where the Rangers and Knicks should move. Quebec Knicks and Quebec Rangers. Now those would be some fun Vegas odds.
“there is no Oakland option that works”
~ Lou Wolff, (2006, if I remember correctly).
I wouldn’t hold my breath on a relocation announcement.
But if there is one, I am hoping that MLB announces that as a result of the utter intransigence of both Oakland and Tampa Bay area politicians, the Rays will be moving to Oakland and the A’s will be moving to Tampa.
Sometimes you just have to show people tough love.
In fairness Wolf was not in any advanced discussion with a market outside of the bay at the time as we know of. Keep in mind the tweet is a surprise because of how many times the organization said in how committed they were to the market. As far as having a facility to play, a new facility in Vegas would take 3 years. I think they could play at the Coliseum for a few years while its being built. I hate this but that is where we are. Get ready for a another 30 fun years with Tampa bay Rays 2.0 in the desert
Matthew, do you have any information that there are serious discussions in Vegas beyond the mayor’s tweet? You wrote above that “There is a lot [more] going on here than we know,” but I couldn’t tell if that was conjecture, or because you’re saying you know something more than we know.
No I am just a guy who is interested in the subject matter as reads article. I don’t for sure if the boyfriend or girlfriend is cheating but I just saw a pair of underwear while doing the laundry that I never saw before.
“The mayor of Vegas did a tweet” is several steps removed from credible evidence. Everybody remember those guys in Hartford who swore they were going to bring the Expos to Connecticut by building a replica of Ebbets Field?
Wolff was in more advanced discussions with San Jose in the latter part of the first decade of this century than Fisher is in with anyone else now. By 2012 he had also been through his dalliance with Fremont (meaning that possibility had been opened, considered, and closed by then). Now all we have is Manfred suggesting “they may have to explore relocation”. Much like the Yankees said that they might have to consider leaving NY if they didn’t get taxpayer funding for their new stadium.
Selig appointed a “blue ribbon panel” in March 2009 to study the A’s proposed move to San Jose. The panel had a blue ribbon, but never did get around to producing a meaningful conclusion (beyond San Jose is still considered Giants territory). Selig’s last comment on the issue, as I recall, is that “it’s still on the front burner”. Presumably, a decade later it still is.
MLB’s conclusion – to the extent there was one – at the time was that Wolff and Fisher own the Oakland A’s and that the franchise is not portable (in no small part because there isn’t a better destination for it to go to).
Could that change? Sure. But we are a long way from getting there. Manfred is lobbing vague threats around, but that’s what commissioners are for.
After 15 years of sabre rattling about the possibility of Oakland losing “their” team (which neither the city nor the fans actually own), I do not believe that MLB is suddenly in a hurry to resolve the A’s situation. Even if there is some external pressure forcing the issue, we should not forget that Fisher has a clear and simple option… build a new stadium in the parking lot at the coliseum (which, somehow, he already owns 50% of).
Wolfe’s involvement if Fremont and San Jose was well chronicled by the press. This hasn’t been in this instance, it hasn’t if we are to believe they have been talking. The 2 year time frame imply debt to the conversation.
Mr Bladen, if Frida’s 1982 hit “I know their something going on” isn’t on your spotfiy playlist. Time to add it
You are just repeating conjecture. You are claiming, again without evidence beyond a tweet and some poorly written articles based on said tweet, that discussions with Vegas *must* be in advanced stages for *waves hands around vaguely* reasons.
Who needs a playlist when you have Frida on 8-track (somewhere….)?
But thanks for the musical tip all the same, Matthew!
Neil, I need to understand what the Mayor of Vegas stands to gain by letting the cat out of the bag about her discussion with the A’s and indicates the time frame one their discussion before I can agree with you the tweet is a “tempest in a teapot” She used words like “excited”. If anything she’s getting the pols on record where they stand which may help or hurt their changes of staying in Oakland.
Oh….. One last thing. John Loar of the Nashville effort all but conceded the A’s to the west coast if they decide to move. Frida sounds good today.
I never said the words “tempest in a teapot.”
Goodman gets attention for Vegas as a potential “big-league city,” and makes herself look like a political player. Those things may not help her get the A’s, but that’s not generally mayors’ only, or even main, concern.
Right now I here crickets coming from Nashville, Portland, Charlotte and Montreal mayors and pol. Having hard evidence would require me to be either an employee of Las Vegas or Mr. Kaval and breaking confidentiality agreement but I you ask me the chain of events leads me to believe the only reason the Mayor of Vegas came forward with this is that the path toward getting a team there had its potholes filled and brush cleared before it could get people excited. If the decision is made we are talking months not years.
If I tweet that the A’s are moving to my living room, can I get you to predict a relocation there within months, too?
I can predict that you would have a ace, king or queen in your negotiating hand. But I can’t predict if you have a winning hand
“Having hard evidence would require me to be either an employee of Las Vegas or Mr. Kaval”
It’s called “3rd party independently verifiable evidence.” It’s what we government corporation auditors and accountants want to see.
Anything else is self-serving statements or merely conjecture.
Its good PR for the Mayor to say “look at me trying to bring MLB to this city”. One thing I found funny about the article poo-pooing Vegas’s odds is that it says 18K is a sell out in hockey but a disaster for baseball, is Oakland literally had a season recently where they had attendance in the 18K range. I also find analysis which says “this market has X number of people while we have Y” that’s great but we have seen that argument fail in that higher population doesn’t always translate to higher willingness to spend on sports (or a particular sport) that’s why the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Winnipeg and why there are no hockey teams in Mexico City.
Vegas is a terrible market for baseball period. It has residence that work nights and have incomes on the low end for the west coast. The TV market is poor as well. When the tone goes from absolute devotion to Oakland “Rooted in Oakland” to this at breakneck speed, not lookin good
It also doesn’t help they just spent $150 million in nearby Summerlin to build a ballpark for the Las Vegas Aviators that would be rendered obsolete should the A’s move to Vegas.
Not to mention the pie-in-the-sky plans to build a $2 billion facility that includes an NBA-caliber arena.
I’m happy Vegas finally has pro teams, but I feel like the market is on par with an Indianapolis or a Cincinnati (besides the TV); two teams is perfectly fine, but three or even four will be oversaturation. The area is growing, yes, but the demographics don’t favor attendance for MLB attendance as far as income and availability goes.
Also summers in Vegas are notorious brutal.
The A’s have averaged below 18,000 just twice in this century (2009 & 2010), not including the Covid season (ok the first Covid season).
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/OAK/
Their long range average runs from 1.6m to 2m fans, with lows in the 1.4 and highs in the 2.2 range. I haven’t averaged all their attendance since 2000 (the numbers are in the B-R database if you would like to), but it looks like an annual avg in the 1.7m range, or just slightly under 21,000 per game over the long term. It’s not as bad as the A’s front office would have us think.
And in terms of pure numbers (not adjusted for overall population increases), they are drawing nearly double what they did during the dynasty years in the early 70s.
Ok, because numbers do matter… I actually did calculate per game attendance averages for the A’s. Based on the B-R numbers:
From 1981-2000 they averaged 21,932.
From 2001-2019 they averaged 22,229.
When the team has been very competitive, they tend to avg around 30,000 – which isn’t bad in a stadium where less than 35,000 seats are on sale for most games (the rest tarped off).
So, unlike Rays fans, the team telling Oakland fans how horrible the stadium is for 3 or 4 decades doesn’t seem to keep the paying fans away.
John: Thank you for just facts.
Still recovering from PTSD after 4 years of spin. Never thought it would turn up on FoS these last 3 days.
Well, back to my National Enquirer article. Story about a woman abducted by space aliens for a whole year (imagine that, would ya). She was just returned and is now pregnant with a space aliens baby. Must be true. It’s in print. What other ulterior motives would the National Enquirer have for printing this.
Next, put on a LP on my turntable and listen to Marvin Gaye, “I heard it through the grapevine.”
Attendance doesn’t matter that much in the calculation. I mean it’s nice and all, but it’s all about corporate suite revenue, seat license fees, etc which is way more lucrative and what’s really driving the push for a new stadium (preferable paid by someone else)
When I first ran for office, the average attention span of an American was 12 seconds. It’s now down to 6 (thank you “breaking news” and social media).
Then attention span of a goldfish is 7 seconds.
Well, he did suggest he was going to make America number one. I think we were all hoping for something better than #1 in short attention spans and coronavirus deaths, but… #1 is #1 I guess.
In truth this is a global problem. I have relatives in the EU and UK and they see the same lack of interest in actual data and facts there that we see in North America.
Is it just more comforting to disregard facts if it means you can not make any meaningful changes? I don’t know. But it’s odd behaviour. I keep thinking about the general incompetence, corruption and stupidity that were such career skills for eminent Romans in the dying days of the empire.
Which brings us back to stadium welfare for multi billionaires…