The Oakland city council met last night to discuss what to do with its half of the Oakland Coliseum site — Alameda County having already sold its half to A’s owner John Fisher, though that sale may yet turn out to have been illegal — and they had three options in front of them:
- Open exclusive sale negotiations with a group led by former Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb and San Francisco nightclub owner Ray Bobbitt, who have offered to pay $92.5 million for the city’s half of the site and promised to bring in a Black-owned NFL team and a Black-owned WNBA team (the basketball team would play in the Oracle Arena and be run with the help of former WNBA star Alana Beard, the football team would play they haven’t said where, since they presumably plan to demolish the Coliseum), plus also build housing and a “Black Wall Street” district and a “cultural hub celebrating Black culture.”
- Open exclusive sale negotiations with a group led by former A’s pitcher Dave Stewart and baseball player agent Lonnie Murray, who have offered to pay $115 million for the city’s half of the site and promised to “refurbish” the arena for concerts, build youth sports fields, housing, and other development, and who touted their backing by former baseball players Rickey Henderson, Brian Shaw, and CC Sabathia and current NBA star Damian Lillard.
- Don’t open exclusive sale negotiations with anyone, since city staff had determined in a report to the council that “staff’s initial review suggests that the teams have not shown strong evidence of extensive experience with building comparable large-scale, multi-phased real estate projects similar in size, scale and cost as what is being contemplated for the Coliseum Complex.” The staff is still analyzing the two groups’ financials, and said it would be able to provide a report in January, if the council could just wait that long.
And the winner is … the Bobb/Bobbitt group! They now have 18 months to negotiate an actual sale and development agreement with the city, and presumably with Fisher as well, since owning half the rights to a piece of land actually allows you to do nothing at all with it.
There’s really no way to know what the council just bought itself here, since both groups’ plans same down to “We’re Black developers who wanna build a bunch of Black-owned stuff and lookit all these (mostly Black) former athletes who have endorsed us!” (Bringing out famous people to get your stadium deal approved has a long, inglorious history; sadly the New York city council website is missing the transcript of the March 2006 subcommittee hearing where Reggie Jackson was hauled out by the Yankees ownership to endorse their stadium plan, but we do have reporting that reveals Jackson said, “I’m for people of color, I’m a man of color,” while team president Randy Levine showed a video of current Yankee players saying, “I play for the New York Yankees—and I’m proud to play in the Bronx.”) The devil will come in the details of whatever gets negotiated over the next year and a half, or possibly of whoever else the city approaches in early 2023 if sale talks fall through or if the A’s ownership refuses to go along with it, or who knows, really.
The important thing is: Things are moving ahead! Or moving in some direction! Voting to vet the two groups more, or ask them to come up with more concrete plans, would be thinking, and thinking is not doing, so here we are. Check back in a year and a half to see how that all works out.
Off topic Neil (although potentially A’s related). You’ve obviously seen the news that Staples Center LA will be renamed “Crypto.com Arena” in a naming rights deal worth $700 MILLION! I could see the A’s also seeking a massive naming rights deal in Vegas, what would go along way at financing a ballpark. I’m sure there are many a company who would love to have their name splashed on a ballpark in the desert. ;)
It’s $35m a year over the next 20 years, which isn’t really “worth $700 million.”
As for whether somebody would pay as much for a stadium in a small city used 81 days a year as for an arena in the nation’s second-largest city used by multiple sports teams plus concerts … I guess there are lots of stupid, desperate crypto companies out there, just as there used to be lots of stupid dot-coms, so anything is possible. The Raiders are reportedly getting $20-25m a year, but NFL games get a lot more eyeballs than MLB ones.
And, needless to say, whatever goes for a stadium in Vegas goes equally for a stadium in Oakland. So it doesn’t really argue for a stadium in one place or the other (though it would seem to make a case that Fisher should get less public money, since he can just go hit up some naming-rights sponsor for crazy money).
I’d argue “Vega$” has more cache than “Oakland” re potential naming rights values and partners. Also, millions of tourists/visitors seeing a company name splashed on a ballpark has to be worth something, plus other events outside of 81+ home dates. I could see naming rights going for $300-400 million in the desert; definitely not $700 million (but you never know..).
I guess Crypto.com (also a McLaren Formula 1 sponsor) beat out PSInet… did they even last long enough to get their logo installed at Baltimore’s NFL stadium? Chris Noth’s commercials for the company were longer than it’s existence, as I recall…
Weird. Oakland seems to be giving Tampa/Hillsborough a run for their money on strangeness.
I get that because of the presumed deal with Fisher they don’t really have a fixed, definable asset to sell… but one would have expected that their partnership with AC gave right of first refusal to the other partner in the JPA. Did Oakland not think to either exercise it or sell their interest in the site to AC first?
You never want to be left in joint ownership of something with a partner you did not select. It is even worse when the asset you share ownership of cannot be divided.
I am confused as to what makes the candidates interested in being in a forced partnership with Fisher. Do they think they can use their ownership to extort extra money from him? If so, I would only point out that when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you (Nabokov, I think).
“seeing a company name splashed on a ballpark has to be worth something”
I’ve always wondered why this is thought to be so. I’ve seen stadia named after energy companies; how does that work? “Oh, I’m going to buy my electricity from THEM!” As if you had a choice of electric companies. Or how about Phillips Arena – are they pushing electronics, gasoline, seafood, electrical connectors? I say the value of naming rights is zero; change my mind!
I would agree it has little if any value to the company. This is especially the case if the company is not the “first” naming rights deal for a given property. Fans might remember the corporate name if it has been in place since day one. If you are the third rights holder in the last decade, they aren’t even going to try.
For the executives, on the other hand, committing their company (and shareholders, generally) to pay a significant amount of money to a naming rights deal means the C-Suite bods get all sorts of team related perks.
And really, isn’t that what the free market is all about?
Let me know when that 34th NFL franchise is ready in a town that the Raiders left twice.
(I heard on more than one occasion that the NFL refers to the Madden games as their 33rd franchise.)