First things first: If you’re one of FoS’s new Patreon subscribers and missed yesterday’s post about whether the Oakland A’s owners are seriously considering moving to Las Vegas because it didn’t show up in your email, go click there (or here) now to catch up on it. (The automatic email system skipping the day’s early post and only sending out the later one is a bug that I think I’ve developed a workaround for, but we’ll have to wait for the next two-post day to tell for sure.)
And now, on to more news items from this week that you need to catch up on, because I haven’t reported them yet:
- The Oakland Design Review Committee, which is part of the Oakland Planning Commission, which advises the Oakland city council on development issues, has raised concerns about the A’s proposed Howard Terminal stadium complex because it would include a 600-foot residential tower that would be the tallest building in the city, it would require fans to cross active train tracks to get to games, and it could interfere with the Port of Oakland’s future ability to expand its port operations to enable bigger cargo ships to dock. “I just don’t want anything bad to happen,” committee chair Clark Manus told KTVU regarding the train tracks, which is a reasonable worry, but isn’t this part of what the $855 million in public spending is supposed to go to fix? Did A’s owner John Fisher really request nearly a billion dollars in new roads and other infrastructure and neglect to guarantee that it would eliminate all grade crossings? The team’s proposed term sheet mentions “at-grade and grade-separated rail safety improvements,” but I guess that’s not super-specific, so yeah, let’s make sure if you spend a couple billion dollars on a new stadium district nobody dies in dumb ways.
- Here are some renderings of a proposed North Carolina F.C and North Carolina Courage soccer stadium in Raleigh that looks like somebody sat on it and bent the roof, I guess that’s how future Raleighites will be able to tell they’re living in the future. After the Raleigh planning commission rejected rezoning for the project — which could include up to $335 million in public money — last December, the city council went ahead and approved it, presumably because the area where it would be built is, according to The Architect’s Newspaper’s report, “sleepy” and “underutilized,” and we can’t have that.
- Images of the Somerset Patriots‘ stadium underwater after last week’s torrential rains in the Northeast set off a flurry of articles about how climate change will make flooded stadiums a more frequent sight, whether in cities prone to sea level rise (Miami, San Francisco, Washington, San Diego, New York, St. Petersburg) or those along flood-prone rivers (Cincinnati, maybe Pittsburgh?). There’s a big distinction between “occasionally flooded” and “permanently underwater,” obviously — something I tried to address in my Defector article earlier this year, which also raised the issue of cities like Phoenix becoming too hot to live in — but in the meantime let’s all just enjoy this image of two Cincinnati Reds pitchers crossing Crosley Field in a rowboat after a flood in 1937.
- Is it safe to go to a packed football stadium even if you are vaccinated? Six out of seven public health experts who spoke to Kaiser Health News say no, but says if you do, wear a mask, and also try to get the other 50,000 people to wear masks as well, because that’s what will keep you from catching Delta more than your own personal masking decision. (Also presumably whether you’re in a domed or outdoor stadium, whether you spend time in enclosed areas like restrooms and concessions areas unmasked with other unmasked people, whether vaccinations are required for entry to the game, and other variables, but KHN didn’t really get into all that.)
- Sports fans are increasingly dropping their cable subscriptions, and the sports industry needs to address this with what kind of plans they offer, says … okay, a guy whose column is called Cord-Cutter Confidential, so maybe not the most unbiased source. Anyway, I gotta go update my credit card for my ESPN+ subscription so I can watch Spanish soccer, I sure hope the sports leagues figure out a new system of charging people to watch sports without cable soon!
Though I might have mentioned this before, it bears repeating. I’m a cord cutter, but due to some stupidity, I can not watch my local baseball, basketball, or hockey team.
Because their contracts with regional sports network are exclusive to the local cable companies.
And I can’t pick them up via the various league passes. So I can follow a team from far away all I like, but can’t see my local team unless I un-cut or go in person.
That makes little sense to me. But it just means I give them no ad revenue and my family merely says “whatever” so they’re not building a fan base either.
Some of that has to do with the difficulty of untangling long-term cable rights exclusivity deals, as I wrote about ten years ago:
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/13291/the-payoff-pitch-blackout-and-blue/
Yes, you would think that they would have figured a way out of it over the course of ten years, but long-term collective thinking isn’t exactly sports team owners’ forte.
With MLB.tv, at least, a VPN should get you around the territorial restrictions. Though it’s almost certainly against the terms of service, which I am not recommending you do, certainly not.
Of course not. And I would never do such a thing. That would be wrong.
It’s just curious how they only think about profits. And not fans
You don’t get to be rich enough to own a sports franchise without thinking only about profits.
I use a VPN that was once a bit player in the space and I could access local games on MLB.tv connecting through a server located out of market. My VPN then became far less tiny because it tracks nothing and keeps no logs. The following season I could no longer circumvent geographic restrictions as the VPN’s IPs were blacklisted. This was maybe three years ago and I’ve mostly given up trying to give MLB my money. Anyway I’m not sure simply using a VPN is enough to get around MLB’s restrictions. But this is just my experience and mileage may very depending on the service you use.
Can you get your local RSN if you subscribe to YouTube TV, Fubo, et al.?
Those are essentially the same as cable but easier to turn on and off without the guy (it’s always a guy) coming out to the house.
I’m thinking about doing that for football season, at least and then maybe for hockey season. I’m not really a Flyers or Penguins fan, but I don’t want to be shut out from their games. And I might watch the 76ers. I hear this “basket ball” game is catching on with the young people.
How much longer will the public and the sports league be asked to prop up cable companies? It’s the kind of thing supposedly sensible people make fun of European countries and Japan for doing.
Besides, if I’m not mistaken, most of us who don’t have traditional cable are getting whatever services we are getting whatever we are watching through the internet provided by the same company. So they win either way.
The issues for cord cutters’ access to their local sports teams are very VERY real. I cut the cord years ago and now I can’t watch the White Sox – who are actually good these days – unless I get cable again!
Mlb. Tv
MLB.tv is blacked out if you’re in one of the teams’ geographic areas. (Or if your IP is, anyway.)
I think that I was one of the earliest cord cutter since I was the latest to cell phones.
Happened at the same time.
I get a kick out of the symmetry.
Also used to be a big sports fan now get off my lawn!
It doesn’t seem to be an issue for college sports.
Not sure what the history of that is.
We are just reaching the point where the earliest of the money grubbing premium content sports and leagues should be starting to see the longer term impact of SCR (selective customer reduction) programs.
Some sports (the NFL specifically, but also MLS and to a certain degree MLB… they still have a network contract and also make a variety of games available on the main MLB network) have actually worked to make sure that some of their content is still available over the air or at least to non-premium customers. Others (NBC Gold/Peacock, we are looking at you) seem to exist solely to show games for a season or two and then move them to the next new premium/super premium/platinum/plutonium tier service you just know they are going to create as soon as they have enough people paying for the current service.
They replace the live sports with highlight shows, at least for another couple of seasons… at which point they move those to the premium networks as well. After that the base/tier 2 service – for which the customer is still paying extra – appears to mostly exist as a promo channel for the other services interspersed with fan selfies and sometimes the selfies of the fan’s pets (which I guess makes them non selfies).
This is why a good portion of my base tier sports channels’ day programming involves poker, dog shows and reality tv shows with vague sports themes. A good part of the evening service is highlight shows on a loop – Highlight shows that now spend less than 24 minutes out of every hour showing actual highlights, the rest being non sport features and those appallingly low energy player interviews which are *NOT SPORTS.
Does anyone else find this model familiar?
In some countries, it is impossible to watch elite Rugby or the national soccer teams without subscribing to a premium streaming service (or prior to that, a very expensive single sports channel). This has been going on for close to two decades. I wonder how the viewership numbers will look 5-10 years from now when the vast majority of “desirable demographic” viewers have grown up with essentially no exposure to these sports on television?
I am guessing the short term profits have been excellent, but it seems unlikely that the next 20 years will be as lucrative as the last have been.
This should be a case study in how to drive customers away. I love sports, but I can always find other things to do if the rights holders make watching an unattractive proposition.
… and I managed to complete that without mentioning that, among other corporate institutions, the vanguard of modern self absorbed MBAs that specialize in having no knowledge of or interest in the product or service they actually market have now destroyed the reputations Pacific Gas & Electric, General Motors (the last iteration), Boeing and are working really hard to do the same to MLB and other sports leagues.
Oh, damn, now I have mentioned it…
You forgot AT&T with their HBO Max debacle
That I did… there’s lots and lots of examples… some financially successful but customer relations nightmares, some just total nightmares.
I can’t think of one where both the business and the customers win though. Can you?
HBO Max is the best streaming service in terms of it library.
People were confused by the branding but over the long run, they’ll figure it out.
As someone who lives in Raleigh, the idea of these guys putting this complex in an area which is surrounded by intersections named “Stab Me” and “Run” is quite amusing. And I’m grateful – that they’re focused on the diametric opposite side of town to the one I live in.