Rob Manfred may be the most tone deaf of sports commissioners, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what his job is. It’s to help the 30 team owners who employ him make money, and sometimes that means speaking up to support their demands for stadium cash, and speaking up usually means in words, and even sentences. So with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher coming down to the wire with next week’s Oakland city council meeting to discuss his $855 million stadium subsidy demand, and with the nation’s media assembled for last night’s All-Star Game, Manfred opened his mouth and these words poured out:
“The Oakland process is at the end. … There are real crucial votes taking place over the next couple of months, and that’s going to determine the fate of baseball in Oakland.
“We’re going to know one way or another what’s going to happen in Oakland in the next couple of months. If you can’t get a ballpark, the relocation process, whether it’s Las Vegas or a broader array of cities … will take on more pace.
“Las Vegas is a viable alternative for a major-league club, and there are other viable alternatives that I haven’t turned the A’s loose to even explore at this point. Thinking about this as a bluff is a mistake. This is the decision point for Oakland as to whether they want to have Major League Baseball going forward.”
That is so close to “Send money or we’ll kill this dog,” and yet also so very far. “If you can’t get a ballpark, the relocation process will take on more pace” is precisely what you would think an alien robot wearing a human flesh suit would say to support an owner’s extortion plan, yet Manfred was born in Rome, New York, according to his Wikipedia page, and not a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.
If the only goal is to get people talking about how THE A’S MIGHT MOVE OMG OMG, it probably doesn’t matter much how Manfred delivers the message — look, here’s an article headlined “MLB Names Potential Destination For Oakland Athletics – If They Move,” even though Manfred actually just said there are lots of cities the A’s could move to, he just hasn’t “turned them loose” to explore them yet. It’s still not really clear why Fisher and A’s president Dave Kaval have been focused solely on Las Vegas as a move threat target — or Manfred has only allowed them to focus on Vegas, or Fisher has only asked Manfred to allow him to focus on Vegas, does it really matter when they’re all co-conspirators?
Either way, clearly Kaval and Manfred are both trying to turn up the heat in advance of next week’s Oakland city council meeting. It should be an interesting one, to say the least, and — ooh, it’s going to be on Zoom? Should I livetweet it? I should probably livetweet it, shouldn’t I? I’ll give it a shot, anyway: Watch this space, and that one too.
A Tribune article on the ongoing Soldier Field fiasco.
Will reporting like this survive now that Alden Capital is hollowing out the paper?
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/editorials/ct-editorial-arlington-heights-chicago-bears-bid-20210713-plh3o6f35zgwtbdfjo2exgknxy-story.html
It’s not Las Vegas they are courting. It’s Henderson. The City of Las Vegas has no money. Henderson shelled out over $100 million to the Raiders for their practice facility and a minor league hockey arena (note: 2 previous minor league hockey teams failed here).
The A’s are asking for over a billion dollars in public subsidies for a dying sport. They don’t want to pay a single thing. The Raiders didn’t even get that and at least paid something (albeit the bulk of their payment was made via PSL sales).
Then again, politicians in Clark County and the cities inside of it are the dumbest government officials there is. They get google-eyes for anyone of celebrity. That’s how Buffett was able to fleece the state and its residents. So the A’s may just get their bounty.
“The A’s are asking for over a billion dollars in public subsidies for a dying sport.”
I don’t agree baseball is ready to fall off the earth but its ability to command a billion dollar stadium is dead.
They’re not asking for a billion dollar subsidy either. Nor is it for the stadium. It’s mainly for infrastructure and toxic waste remediation on the heavily polluted site.
Might not be a billion dollars, but $855 million is pretty damn close! And whether it’s actual stadium construction or infrastructure/toxic waste remediation, it’s still tax dollars being spent to assist a billionaires endeavor.
It certainly is, Antonio. I guess the only caveat I might place against it being a gift is whether some portion of that $855M might be spent on the area anyway (for remediation and otherwise preparing the land for future development).
Even if we calculate that generously, I suspect it’s going to come in way under $250m, let alone more than three times that amount.
Remediating land to a standard suitable for commercial development is much less costly than doing so to a ‘residential’ standard.
I am sure there are many reasons why Kaval and Fisher have focused on Vegas. The most obvious one is “hey, Oakland, those dastardly Las Vegans just stole “your” Raiders… now you wanna let em steal ‘your’ A’s too???”
They also have a mayor (Goodman) who will say literally anything they want (though she did trip over her own feet when she admitted she wasn’t planning to meet with them on their visit. And when she said ‘maybe we could give them free land or something’).
LV is just the new LA. If San Juan (P.R.) was closer and had any money, they would use that instead. I know, Vegas doesn’t have any money either. It doesn’t have to be rational, it just has appear possible to the people voting on the subsidy demand.
They picked Vegas because if there is any market willing to pick up the tab its them. As a market, Vegas is a bit of a step down for the A’s but not a drastic step down. (tiny slice of a big market) But I do agree there is a creditability issue in that usually you have to have the financing and location ready to go. I don’t think this is a “nothingburger” like the White Sox and Giants flirting with Tampa Bay. Its more like the Twins flirting with the Triad region in NC. There was interest but they couldn’t do a deal. I do think Pohland thought the Twin Cities and state would eventually come around. Oakland isn’t coming around. Which makes me think this is a bit sloppy execution on the A’s part
The A’s have definitely been hamfisted at this. That said, that often doesn’t seem to matter. When Darryl Katz and his band of merry carpetbaggers announced they were jetting (privately, natch) to Seattle to meet with “people”, the city of Edmonton fell over backwards to shower them with public money (for a truly pathetic team, no less) – even more than they had originally asked for!
They did this despite the fact that absolutely everyone knew that Seattle was being “held” as an expansion location by the NHL, and that Katz would lose money by moving his team there.
As I said, it doesn’t have to be rational or workable. It just has to provide cover for the dimwit politicians… “We had to do it, no matter how ridiculous it was, because Vegas was about to steal ‘our’ team”.
I am generally interested to see what decision the council makes next week (assuming they make any decision at all, of course).
The best move right now for the Oakland City Council is to give the A’s 6-8 to negotiate a deal with Vegas. There is a high chance its not a slam dunk. Then that is where “meeting in the middle might come into play” They might give Portland, Sacramento and Vancouver a “flirty” stare but if they can’t pull off something in Vegas they are even going to have a harder time in those 3 markets
Vegas is, in fact, a massive downgrade in media market terms for the A’s.
If stadium deals are so good, why do the Oakland A’s not pay for all of the costs or the City of Oakland just say, we will pay for the whole thing. It is not like billionaires or even millionaires like to share in the riches of anything they are involved with.
I mean the A’s are picking up most of the $12 billion dollar price tag.
No they’re not! Fisher/The A’s don’t even have $12 billion! That figure is what other investors, developers COULD potentially invest in a full build out of the A’s HT fantasy..I MEAN!..proposal.
You people think I’m not serious? Huh?
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes again
Can you picture what will be?
So limitless and free
Desperately in need
Of some stranger’s hand
In a desperate land
Whaddyou think your dealin’ with a bunch of kids here?
Is it me, or does the Oakland July 20 vote on the term sheet have the feel of waiting for the results of Arizona’s “MAGA” 2020 election fraudit? Even if the council votes “yes” in favor (which I expect), it won’t mean squat in the grand scheme of things, but will definitely be a boost to the hardcore A’s HT contingent. Manfred said the A’s fate in Oakland will be determined within the next couple of months… not on July 20th.
The revised term sheet or the one the A’s submitted in April? My thoughts are they are going to see what is involved with getting the team to Vegas
The council isn’t going to approve even a non-binding term sheet where the A’s demand the 2nd IFD or continue.to make the ludicrous and immoral demand that they be totally exempt from affordable housing requirements.
Fraudit has been added to my list of favourite terms, Thanks Antonio.
It slots in right after fraudcasting.
Interesting article on John Fisher in today’s SFGate. Biggest surprise for me was the it has been Fisher the entire time he and his prior partner Lew Wolff owned the team who kept the team from building at the Coliseum site. Wolff actually proposed it at least once if not more than once and Fisher has consistently shot it down.
https://www.sfgate.com/athletics/article/Who-is-John-Fisher-Inside-the-world-and-16315323.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-CP-Spotlight
Also interesting that the only time in the A’s history they didn’t have a cheapskate ownership group under the Haas family, they lost more than $15 million a year on the team. Begs the question for me if the A’s can ever really be profitable, and successful in the Bay Area. It seems that historically it’s one one or the other.
If they can’t be profitable in the Bay Area, they can’t be profitable in any other market.
Plenty of teams were “losing” money on operations during the time the Haas family owned the A’s. Part of that is down to the financial voodoo that sports owners are allowed to use to effectively deduct their payroll twice (which can take a healthy annual profit in reality and make it look like a non-sustainable loss on paper). So the Haas family’s reported $15m loss on a payroll of, say, $21m (in 1990) is likely just a paper loss.
The other portion of it is that the economics of baseball were so different then. No streaming, no MLBAM, very little in the way of RSN rights fees (superstations paid handsomely for rights, but only a handful of cities had them), and tickets were still affordable for the average fan.
The A’s payroll in the mid 1980s hovered around $10m. By 1990 it was up over $20m and the following year it nearly hit $40m (per baseball almanac), so the Haas family were not only not being cheapskates, they were outspending the Yankees, Red Sox and Angels at the time.