We already know that Oakland A’s president Dave Kaval can’t stop talking to the media about his bosses’ campaign to get a subsidized stadium in Oakland and/or move the team to Las Vegas and/or threaten to move the team to Las Vegas in order to get a subsidized stadium in Oakland, which should come as no surprise since 1) this is what he was hired to do and 2) in an age of increasing stenography journalism because no one has time or incentive to do much else, it’s a successful strategy for getting your message into the public eye. The San Francisco Chronicle sent one of its reporters to lap up the words that fell from Kaval’s mouth this week — let’s see what we can make of them!
The A’s main focus has been on judging whether the area would support an MLB team economically. Kaval said the A’s have spent “a great deal of time trying to understand the local business climate, obviously the interest in tickets, sponsorships, local media, all these aspects.”
Kaval said the process is ongoing, but the A’s have “seen a lot of qualitative data that’s good” through talks with area teams, political and business leaders, advisers and others. The A’s are awaiting a study from consultant firm Legends to quantify how locals and tourists would comprise demand.
So, A’s execs are trying to understand if enough people in small-market Las Vegas would buy tickets to make a move there viable, and they’ve collected “qualitative data,” which is another way of saying “anecdotes” and is really only meaningful as a way of understanding hard “quantitative” numbers, of which they don’t have any yet. There’s a consulting report on the way, though, by Legends, the company owned by the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees that also owns the worst market consultants of all time, so that should be fun.
Kaval said the A’s have talked with executives from those teams to get a sense of local interest, as well as officials, including Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, the mayors of Las Vegas and Henderson, and Clark County commissioners, to gather feedback on how an MLB team would be received. Sisolak told the Las Vegas Review-Journal his talks with the A’s have been exploratory.
“It’s been incredibly positive,” Kaval said. “I think they’ve seen so much success with the other pro sports teams and events — that’s actually been in every conversation we’ve had, that’s come to the forefront.”
Nevada politicians like having sports teams! And they mention this every time they meet with the representative of another sports team! Quelle surprise!
Kaval said the list of possible stadium locations, which has grown since A’s officials started visiting the area, is “a pretty fair mix” of sites near the resort corridor and in nearby areas such as Henderson and Summerlin, where the Triple-A Aviators’ ballpark is located.
The A’s are working with Kimley-Horn, a traffic and parking consultant, to assess transportation aspects of the sites, Kaval said. They have toured sites with an architect, Brad Schrock, who Kaval said is already on staff and “can do the layouts and understand siting and how things can fit together.”
A’s execs don’t know where they would want to build a stadium, but they have an architect who can draw one if needed!
There’s lots more — 23 of the 33 paragraphs in the Chronicle article contain at least one quote from Kaval, which is impressive even for this type of puff piece — but those are the key points, such as they are. If you’ll notice, there’s one key element missing, which just happens to be the only thing Kaval can talk about in his Oakland stadium pontification, which is who would pay for a new stadium. Las Vegas, apparently, is to be evaluated solely on the basis of whether it has enough baseball fans, while Oakland is to be evaluated solely on the basis of whether it can come up with $855 million. This surely is not a sign that the Vegas move talk is a bluff, though; after all, Rob Manfred said it’s not, and journalists wrote it down at the time, so it must be true!
Unless you have a Mayor Williams or Jack Evans in Vegas, Kaval will bleed any leverage he hope to obtain in this situation.
Logorrhea: A condition marked by excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness.
Believe Kaval’s “job” has gotten the better of him. Strongly advise a long respite at the California Department of State Hospitals in Napa, as opposed to junkets flying off to Las Vegas. Although his employers frugality and medical insurance plan do not cover the cost of coverage at Napa, believe it is in Dave’s best interests and imperative he seeks immediate medical attention there.
Just an item for discussion… what do you see as Oakland’s next move here?
At present they have “kind of” offered a significant sum of money to the A’s for HT. But they have also predicated that on something that was clearly unlikely to happen (the county agreeing to foot the majority of the bill).
The A’s haven’t answered and likely aren’t going to (the goal is, as with used car dealers, to get you bidding against yourself) based on the present offer.
Should the city finalize a firmer offer – one they can afford with just their own funds?
Or do they issue the A’s some sort of deadline about the present offer? (In any other type of deal/purchase, you always include an expiry date).
What about opening up the HT lands the team seems to want for other proposals?
Would any of these move the process along (and clearly, that could mean the A’s getting all snotty and issuing fiery press releases about their ‘betrayal’ by the city and how they now ‘have’ to relocate etc)?
If they are waiting for Fisher and Kaval to answer, I think they are wasting their time.
“See if state or federal infrastructure money will bail us out” seems like Schaaf’s likely move here, especially since she’s already hinted at it. While simultaneously asking Kaval if there are any other sofa cushions he can suggest she look under.
For me the bigger question is what kind of deadline pressure anyone is under. Kaval has said he wants this resolved in the next few weeks, but if it isn’t, what’s he planning to do, hold his breath until he turns purple? Change his voter registration to Nevada?
Well we all know there’s not going to be any resolution in the next few weeks, and very likely not in the next few months either. Alameda County just declined to schedule a board vote on supporting the HT project financially, so that element has no definite date for resolution. And in any case, all indications so far are the AlCo doesn’t want to be involved in any deal.
I think it’s pretty clear that there is no deadline at all, and that if one is imposed it will be by the team (“You have 30 days to give us the amount of money we’re thinking of right now – or more – or we will announce that you are terrible people and not serious and won’t work with us at all and that we have to leave because MLB won’t let us be treated like this, even though they have no idea how we’re being treated and you just see if we don’t!) and will be completely arbitrary.
It’s the same old game… “you just start piling money on this table and when we raise our hands that means it’s enough. No, we haven’t raised our hands yet. Well, we did, but that was just to cover our mouths while we laughed… keep going, we’ll let you know when the money pile is ‘enough\'”.
This is one of the reasons I wonder if Oakland may consider heading them off at the pass on that one and issuing some sort of formal offer/termination date themselves. Much harder to do now that there are in an enforced partnership with the team at the coliseum.
Of course, there’s absolutely no reason that the A’s couldn’t just ignore a formal offer or negotiating deadline from the city as well…
The a’s dont know what they want
I know what the A’s want! What they’ve always wanted actually; a remain-in-The Bay Area option that wouldn’t require a mountain of public subsidy and would take full advantage of the regions corporate wealth. But it would require sanity, common sense and better minds at MLB to rise to the surface. Not holding my breath, but anything’s possible..
I have sympathy for those reporters. They do the interview hoping the guy says something useful. If he doesn’t, they’ve wasted all that time getting the interview so they might as well write it up.
The key is to be clear that you’re just reporting what they said. Not necessarily that it’s true.
And if there’s some obviously critical question like “Who will pay for it?” You have to get the answer in there, even if it is “we don’t know.”
Were the interview with the A’s official the only source of information the reporter could possibly get I would agree. But reporting is about more than just being a stenographer for your subject.
There are many avenues this (or any) reporter could have taken to try to obtain additional information, including something Neil routinely does – talk to independent experts about what the team is asking for, what additional revenue a new stadium might drive, what the cost to the public coffers would be, what options exist (if any) etc. They could even branch out and fill some column inches with a second interview with a sports economist about how realistic yet another professional sports franchise in a desert city of just over 2m would be.
This reporter appears to have done none of those things, preferring instead to act as press secretary to the Oakland A’s stadium booster in chief.
It may be that their employer allotted only enough resources and time for the reporter to listen to Kaval ramble on and jot down a sound bite or two. But if they were any kind of reporter at all, they would have kept digging (including on their own time if they had to… that didn’t used to be a foreign concept to newshounds).
I’m not sure when reporting moved from “getting a scoop” to stenography, but in most areas it certainly has.
Sure, it’s better to talk to 30 people and do a full investigation. That takes five months.
It sucks to just be rewriting press releases, but news rooms are so short staffed and under pressure to crank out as much stuff as possible to get clicks. It’s dispiriting.
But it’s still useful information to just report “this is what the A’s are *claiming* this week.” It’s part of the ongoing story.
Over the years, they’ll probably talk to lots of people about it.
Or so I assume. I don’t subscribe to the SF Chronicle.
If they *never* talk to anyone but A’s management about it, that would be dumb.
And “news hounds” should not be expected to work for free.
Meanwhile, fans keep showing up for games as the team continues to play well and push for a play off spot which is all just really funny.
They and a few players on the team like Matt Chapman have complained about the low attendance this season and over the past few years. But with all of this relocation talk–and with how much Fisher and Kaval have sabotaged their own credibility in this year alone, they should be grateful to still have anyone show up at their games, and I say this as a long-time fan. I have gone to 3 games this season, but I just didn’t get as much enjoyment out of it as I usually do–even from the 2 that the A’s won.
In that respect, Jamaal, A’s ownership is a lot like Sternberg (and some others in the past). They keep telling their own fans how terrible the experience is and then complaining that “no-one” shows up. In fact lots do show up, but not as many as they would like.
If Ford kept it’s advertising limited to all the deficiencies and potential expensive repairs down the line on any of their new vehicles, how many people would buy them?
Or if Jack-in-the-Box felt obligated to lead each of it’s tv ads with a brief recap of the 1993 E.Coli outbreak deaths…
Although, maybe if they thought they could get taxpayer funded new restaurants they would do just that…
Dickey Dunn says they’re gonna move, so it’s must be true!