The New York Post, which I can’t remind you enough is a terrible newspaper that doesn’t even deserve your hate-read clicks, reported back in April, citing its patented unnamed sources, that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred was ready to let the Oakland A’s move to Las Vegas so long as Nevada kicked in around $275 million for a stadium, which Nevada wasn’t necessarily ready to do. That story having gotten zero confirmation in the two months since, the Post is back now to declare that MLB is ready to give the A’s owners another gift: waiving the league’s relocation fee.
Major League Baseball doesn’t plan to charge the Oakland Athletics a relocation fee if the team moves to Las Vegas — a rare accommodation that shows the league is concerned about the team’s ability to find a viable home, The Post has learned…
It has been speculated that if the A’s left Oakland, the team’s home of 54 years, they might need to pay a relocation fee as high as $1 billion. But MLB held its owners meeting earlier this month and a relocation fee was not discussed in an open session, sources said.
Those “sources” again! The Las Vegas Review-Journal says its own “source with knowledge of the situation” confirmed the no-fee story, so that’s at least two people who may or may not be anybody who say that MLB is ready to waive its relocation fee.
As for how much that fee is typically, the only MLB team to relocate in the last 50 years has been the Montreal Expos, whose move to become the Washington Nationals was accompanied by no relocation fee at all, unless you count having to sign a one-sided TV deal with the Baltimore Orioles as a fee. Other leagues have imposed fees as high as $645 million for the San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Rams moving to Los Angeles, though the Oakland Raiders only paid $378 million for the right to move to Las Vegas the same year.
Relocation fees, in other words, aren’t a set thing that you “waive” so much as a number sports commissions throw a dart at and then decide whether it’s too much of a cut to demand. The notion that A’s owner John Fisher would move from the 6th-largest market in the U.S. to the 40th and pay $1 billion for the privilege of doing so was always extremely silly, so the idea that this is money he’s now being absolved of paying is bizarre — unless you take it as Manfred, or at least some A’s-friendly functionary deep in MLB’s offices who can claim to have “knowledge of the situation,” wanting to do Fisher a solid in his move threats with Oakland as a key vote on the use of port land approaches, which is probably what this is. The Post also claims that the A’s “were hoping to announce a move to Las Vegas, potentially contingent on getting public financing, this month,” but if you went through life believing things you read in the New York Post, you would believe, uh, all sorts of things.
Here is the link for the meeting tomorrow if you want to listen in
https://bcdc.ca.gov/cm/2022/06-30-agenda.html
It start 9 AM pacific and goes through 5
Tomorrow’s BCDC meeting? Meh!!! Another “procedural win” that will be pumped up by HT supporters as some major milestone, when in reality it’s just that; a procedural win. Much like the EIR approval before it (has an EIR ever NOT been approved in California?!). Wait till they start talking actual money for this boondoggle and addressing the awful transportation situation that exists at the HT site. That’s when we’ll start getting real news on this fantasy..
“has an EIR ever NOT been approved in California”
Yes, it has:
Court Reaffirms Victory Against Seeno to Protect Hills between Pittsburg and Concord
APR 14, 2022
The court upheld its previous finding that the EIR failed to properly analyze the project’s impacts on air quality, traffic, Pittsburgh’s water supply, and special-status plant species.
https://www.diablogazette.com/2022/04/court-reaffirms-victory-against-seeno-to-protect-hills-between-pittsburg-and-concord/
I think you can take it to the bank that will get the bcdc vote. The tea leaves as to whether Fisher/Kaval want to move depends on how they react. If its ho hum i think lv is in the cards
Neil, regarding Oakland v Vegas: does market size really matter if most team revenue is coming from NATIONAL TV contracts?
That’s a little like asking, “Does anyone care if they earn $20 or $30 an hour if the minimum wage is $15?”
Yes, it matters, since local revenue is the only thing that teams have any power to change, and going in the wrong direction is certainly not something you’d pay $1B to be allowed to do.
Thanks Neil. Having lived in $an Jo$e/The Bay my entire life (save for 4 years in military), I can tell you that much of that “6th largest market” is spoken for by the Giants, Warriors, Niners and (to a lesser degree) Sharks. Especially in Marin/the North Bay, SF/SF Penisula and $J/Santa Clara County. The actual “local revenue” of the Oakland market is abysmal in terms of corporate support/disposable incomes, perhaps being on par (or less) than the Vegas metro (which makes the extremely-hard-to-get-to HT proposal even more of a head scratcher).
Any dollars per hour scenarios for what I just described Neil? ;)
“The actual ‘local revenue’ of the Oakland market is abysmal in terms of corporate support/disposable incomes, perhaps being on par (or less) than the Vegas metro”
Gonna need to ask you to show your math, there.
Their local revenue is no doubt hindered by playing in a stadium that nobody really likes, having a relocation threat hanging over them, and having a small payroll. Moneyball is all well and good until the Dodgers and Yankees start doing Moneyball too.
An A’s team in a new stadium in the Bay Area would almost certainly be more valuable than an A’s team in a new stadium in a city that will be uninhabitable in a generation or two.
The Bay Area is not only big enough for two teams, it’s also one of the richest cities that has ever existed or probably ever will exist.
The vast majority of the tech, big companies are located in $ilicon Valley proper ($an Jo$e/Santa Clara County) and on the SF peninsula (City of SF included); NOT Oakland or immediate metro. Lack of corporate support was one of the reasons cited by the Raiders for wanting out of Oakland, and perhaps the main reason the Warriors bolted across the Bay (while the dubs did ok revenue-wise at the Coliseum Arena, it had more to do with them being the only game in town so to speak). So while I can’t provide you with hard numbers (math), I’ve followed this dam saga since around 2005, and based on my own personal knowledge accumulated since I know what I put out is 100%.
But I digress: IF you’re fate is to remain in poor @$$ Oakland, wouldn’t you want to provide easy access to money from the Peninsula and $outh Bay (BART/880), rather than build in a spot that will take over $1billion+ in public funding to spruce up and remain extremely difficult to access? Food for thought..
81 milion votes cast for Mr Magoo
https://www.cbre.ca/press-releases/cbre-report-bay-area-tech-industry-grows-by-100-million-sq-ft-more-than-doubling-in-the-last-decade
You really should do a lot more research on the area you stay in. Technology companies are not exclusive just Silicon Valley.
True. And it’s not like if companies get outbid for Giants or 49ers sponsorship opportunities they just give up on sports altogether.
If the A’s are having sponsorship issues it’s far more likely that that is down to the way they do business than the actual marketing opportunity itself.
You can only behave like incompetent clowns for so long before people refuse to believe anything but the obvious… that you are incompetent clowns.
It’s mostly SV and SF. The East Bay has very little tech, as this report shows. Further, the report is pre-pandemic/pre-corporate exodus from CA so the corporate sponsors/buyers have thinned further.
Oakland just doesn’t have the local corporate support for luxury boxes, etc that SV/SF do. My professional contacts talk about tickets to the Giants and Niners, and not about tickets to the A’s.
Not that I expect the A’s to move (I think either HT gets approved or they’ll ultimately settle for the Coliseum site), but if they did MLB should extract a few hundred million out of the Giants for suddenly being gifted the entire market.
As for Vegas, whatever. If the Stephen Ross/Reggie Jackson group had gotten the team in 2005ish and gone to Vegas like they planned this team would’ve made a fortune. Now there’s an NHL team team, a crown jewel (as far as fan support) NFL team, Oak View building another privately funded arena for an NBA team, dozens of major boxing/MMA events a year, minor league sports, and a million other entertainment options available. No one other than maybe the suburbs will give the A’s a dime of public money. If they move they’ll be the least relevant major league franchise there by a mile.
The issue is that the Coliseum site is where they are planning to make their money. Get a free stadium down the road, redevelop the Coliseum area, call it something stupid like North Alameda, rake in the $$$$.
Isn’t the reason the A’s want out of the coliseum site allegedly that it is so terribly dangerous and nasty that no-one wants to go there? (well, that and no-one wants to pay major league prices to watch a AA level team).
So it’s too dangerous for a stadium but ok for people to buy condos and send their kids to school in? I am confused…
I doubt the Ultimate Failson cares about the coliseum site either way. He can always sell the half he owns/has an agreement to purchase/might one day own once his stadium shell game reaches a conclusion.
The site is right next to the freeway, so you do not really have to drive on any city streets to get there (at least for the north half of the parking lot). For baseball, you can get in and out of the parking lot without getting your hands dirty, but the downside is that there is nothing to do pre- or post-game in the vicinity. I assume that any development would be self-contained with easy freeway access. Not sure about the schools, but the housing market is so insane that any units would fetch a pretty penny by anywhere-else-in-the-U.S. standards.
And the airport is right there, and Alameda is right next door. Weather is great there, there could be views, BART is there, etc. Rehab the airport side of the freeway (which might be underway, I haven’t flown out of OAK for a long time) and there’s more opportunity.
Most of that number 6 market basically belongs to the Giants. The A’s basically have Alameda County(pop. 1.66 mil)
That’s not true in terms of local TV revenue. The A’s are right in the middle in terms of that (or were in 2016, at least, still looking for updated numbers), which would not be the case if they were in Vegas:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/estimated-tv-revenues-for-all-30-mlb-teams/
Here’s updated numbers from 2020, A’s still pretty close to the middle of the pack for local TV money, just below the Giants: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-update-the-estimated-local-tv-revenue-for-mlb-teams/
Stand corrected. Thank you.
Thanks for the updated numbers Neil. I see they left the (RSN owned) Jays out. The last numbers I have for them are a few years old and come from a corporate budget sheet (basically how much the owner puts into the budget that is NOT funded directly by team revenues). It works out to around $43-46m/yr (USD).
As I understand it the way the Jays are viewed inside the corporation is a bit like a non-profit arm… the Jays division will neither make nor lose money as the corp pays any net operating losses in lieu of broadcast rights/media content fees. The rights fees are not formally “sold” as there would only be one bidder.
I would assume that as the payroll shot up in 2014/15/16, the sports media owner was paying significantly more than $43m per year.
Neil:
Didn’t MLB own the Expos? If there was a relocation fee wouldn’t have MLB just be paying itself. Perhaps the fee was the sale price when the team was sold.
Yes, though the sale price for the Expos/Nats wasn’t significantly different than what other teams fetched during that time.
Wait, why hasn’t Dave Kaval’s twitter feed weighed in on all this as yet?
That’s just too suspicious to be a coincidence…
Should they move, (and I hope they don’t) is there a feasible temporary stadiumfor the A’s to play in now in LV? If not, even if a new LV stadium were to be constructed beginning in 23 for arguments sake, the A’s would then have to play probably 3 lame duck years in Oakland? I know the Raiders did at least 2? but that’s the NFL 8 home games.
The Las Vegas stadium, which is called Las Vegas Stadium despite not being actually in Las Vegas, holds 10,000. The way the A’s roster is constructed, that’s probably more than they’ll need for the next few years.
The big problem is finding a way to pay for a real new stadium in Vegas. In order to make it worth Fisher’s while, it would have to be a sweeter deal than whatever he thinks he can get in Oakland, and right now there’s no sign of that.
I really think everyone might be underrating the fact that it is too hot to be outside in Las Vegas in the summer and it is only getting worse.
Right, and “Nevada is almost out of water” is another big problem. But as it’ll likely be another decade or two before Vegas fans start spontaneously bursting into flame, that may not be something John Fisher considers to be a priority.
Not sure anyone is underrating it, Reed. The same thing applies to several other cities in the same geographic region (particularly as regards to water).
“We” have known about this problem for at least 20 years… and during that time, the Phoenix and Vegas metro areas just keep expanding into the desert… in fact the rate of expansion appears to be rising despite the fact that the “wall” is clearly there.
I last travelled to southern Arizona nearly 20 years ago and I found it unpleasant then (even in the winter, which is when we went).
I’m not sure what to make of it except that people and sports teams seem to believe there will be some sort of technological solution to a fundamental problem of resources and habitability.
I’m not sold on the A’s (or any other baseball team) moving to LV anytime soon. But if they do, they can jig the schedule to minimize the number of home games played at Summerlin during the hottest months. They may even have to move a few series to another facility or neutral site some July/Aug games for example until a covered stadium can be built.
John Oliver this week was pretty grim on this subject:
It’s nearly 30 years old now, but Marc Reisner’s “Cadillac Desert” was a great read on water use in the west. And was the basis for a hard to find three part PBS series. (you can find parts of it on YouTube.). https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised-ebook/dp/B001RTKIUA/ref=sr_1_1?crid=NHKGFWHSPVXL&keywords=cadillac+desert&qid=1656601027&sprefix=Cadillac+de%2Caps%2C62&sr=8-1
I hope they don’t either, but that is down to the whim of Fisher, not actual logic. Judging by his “pay increased ticket prices to watch AA baseball” in 2022, I think we can see which way he is leaning.
Since he has driven attendance down from an average of 18-20k (only a couple of thousand below the A’s historic average from the 1970s to today) to under 5k, I would assume his plan is to play at the Aviators publicly funded stadium in Summerlin.
https://www.thelvballpark.com/
snap!
10,000 seats in Vegas would be more profitable than 5,000 pissed off fans in a 55,000 seat stadium, especially when you could charge more per ticket. If a move is announced, I don’t see any way that Oakland and the A’s don’t come together for a buyout of the last year of the lease (2023), as it would make/save them both money. The economics of baseball attendance is vastly different from that of football attendance.
There’s a big difference between a story reported by the Murdoch media and a story reported by Las Vegas’ legacy daily.
The relocation talk has picked up because — and it’s not a coincidence — the Aviators have outdrawn their parent club several times this season when they were both home on the same day. The A’s are projected to finish 2022 with the smallest home attendance for any big-league club in 50 years.
That’s what happens when you:
a) tell everyone you are leaving.
b) tell everyone that the stadium is terrible and no one should go there.
c) sell off all your best players not for prospects but for aging AA or AAA talent that other teams have given up on.
d) increase ticket prices so that the few remaining long suffering fans you haven’t already pissed off now have to pay a premium to watch AA level baseball.
e) Let your (capable) manager walk (for no compensation) to manage another team because you are so utterly incapable of fielding anything like a real major league club.
f) Hire an administrative employee who’s entire job description is to post on FB/Twitter how shitty the current location is and how great other home cities would/will be.
Failson Fisher has literally done everything but keep the gates locked so fans can’t get in. The ‘record low’ MLB attendance (we’ll see about that… the Marlins are always a contender there) you speak of, should it happen, is entirely the result of team management’s plan. It is antimarketing at it’s finest/lowest.