A’s owners reportedly still hunting for Vegas stadium land, five months after saying final choice was imminent

There is news, of a sort, about the Oakland A’s owners’ perpetual claim that even as they seek a billion dollars in city money to build new roads and other infrastructure for a Howard Terminal stadium development, they’re working on a “parallel path” to move to Las Vegas if they don’t get what they want. Per the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Casino magnate Phil Ruffin is heading to the Bay Area on Tuesday to meet with Oakland Athletics brass about a potential site for a new ballpark, a source told the Review-Journal.

Ruffin has ownership of multiple properties in Las Vegas, including Circus Circus and the Las Vegas Festival Grounds adjacent to that.

I mean, sure, maybe? Kicking the tires on various Las Vegas properties doesn’t cost A’s owner John Fisher anything, and, like sending his execs to tweet from Las Vegas hockey games, it rattles sabers about the possibility of the team relocating. Not sure whether Ruffin’s property is supposed to be one of the five in Vegas that team president Dave Kaval said in March he was focusing on, though given that he said then that he hoped to pick a winner by April, either 1) words that come out of Kaval’s mouth are not to be trusted, 2) something went wrong with the other five sites and now Kaval is trying to drum up new options, or 3) both.

The more important question than which particular slice of desert Fisher and Kaval will target, of course, is who on earth would foot the price tag for a Vegas stadium, and nobody at all is talking publicly about that. Moving to a teensy media market for a sport that requires selling tickets to 81 games a year seems like a risk, to say the least, especially a market that could be uninhabitable soon thanks to climate change and the West’s water crisis; spending $1 billion or so in order to do so seems riskier still.

Over in Oakland, meanwhile, Fisher’s stadium dreams, currently waiting on Mayor Libby Schaaf’s continuing attempts to dig under the office sofas for spare change to spend on them, is facing a new lawsuit from a bunch of port unions that charge the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission’s June vote to allow the project to move forward was made “arbitrarily and capriciously” — that would seem to describe how a whole lot of government decisions are made every day, but in the U.S. anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason and usually does, so more power to ’em. The timing does raise the question as to whether the Review-Journal’s “source” leaked the news of a Ruffin meeting over Vegas land as if to say, “Yeah, go ahead and sue us, we’ll take our ball and go to Vegas, see if we don’t”; it certainly would be in character for sports team owners, let’s just leave it at that.

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12 comments on “A’s owners reportedly still hunting for Vegas stadium land, five months after saying final choice was imminent

  1. Still, we are seeing practically no enthusiasm from Vegas or Nevada officials regarding the A’s. It’s only the A’s and some media talking about this. When the Raiders plans for Vegas were in their infancy Vegas was absolutely jacked for it, putting billboards all over town, elected officials and casino magnates publicly hyping it. We’re not seeing any of that with the A’s. Just the A’s saying Vegas is in play.

    If I were Oakland I wouldn’t fall for the bluff. It would seem the only option for the A’s in Vegas would be for the A’s to foot the bill. What would be the point in coming out of their pocket book in Vegas but not in one of the most prime real estate regions in the country? Lame bluff attempt by The Gap heir.

    1. Failson Failosophy.

      I agree with you Robert.
      And this would be the perfect time for Oakland to issue the A’s a deadline.

      They have offered just under $500m toward the HT project and the team has not accepted. So give them until Sept 30th to accept and move forward, with an option to provide exactly half that amount towards a new stadium at the coliseum site (because the city owns just half of the coliseum site).

      As noted in previously, the deadline should be accompanied by notice that no lease extensions will be issued for the current coliseum (in no small part because both the tenant and MLB keep saying how utterly unsuited it is for their purpose).

      Give the A’s 60 days to accept either $495m toward HT or $250m toward a new stadium and remediation costs at the coliseum site. Either one requires a 35yr lease and non relocation agreement. If either option has not been accepted before expiry of the offer, the money will be reallocated to other priorities within the city.

      Kaval and Fisher’s sabre rattling has accomplished just one thing: it has proved the A’s literally have nowhere better to go. Any move to another market will be a smaller and/or less lucrative market than the one they are in now.

      If they would like to go build their own ballpark in Montreal, San Antonio, Vegas, Portland or Mexico City, they should just do that.

  2. We’ll see convoys of water trucks down 15 before they kill that cash cow. But in either case I agree that the A’s are 100% bluffing on pretty much everything. Too bad Jerry Brown isn’t still the mayor, that would be entertaining.

    1. They’ll build water pipelines from the Pacific NW to feed the Colorado River before the cash cow is ever killed. Viva las Vegas!!! ;)

  3. I know folks try to portray Oakland as being “Big Market”, as opposed to the “teensy media market” that is Vegas. But the harsh reality is (living in the bay myself) is that Oakland itself is TEENSY; i.e. corporate support and disposable incomes. And the A’s and Oakland want to make it worse! By building a ballpark in a location that is extremely hard to get to/get out of. You think folks from the big money regions outside of Oakland ($an Jo$e, Fremont, Concord, Livermore, etc), where most A’s fans reside, are gonna get 81-game season tix to a HT ballpark?! Good luck with the horrendous 880 traffic, +1 mile BART walk through a desolate urban landscape, dodging freight/commuter trains and heavy port traffic! Oakland, Vegas: the A’s are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

    BTW, did anyone see the Raiders Forbes valuation after 2 years in Vegas? $$$$!!! is an understatement! Just saying Neil, just saying…

    1. NFL valuations have virtually nothing to do with market size, since NFL revenues are almost entirely national.

      As for Oakland, Alameda County has 1.6 million people, and there are more in Contra Costa and Santa Clara who can get to Oakland more easily than to SF. The fact that my friends in Martinez choose to drive across the bay to Giants games than to the Coliseum says more about the AAA team that the A’s are fielding than market size of the East Bay.

      1. The A’s have a decent fan base all through Solano,Yolo and Sacramento counties as well as the East Bay/Delta sides. Coming from Sac the A’s were always easier esp in the Candlestick days. I hate Pac Bell though, they could put it in my backyard and I wouldn’t go.

    2. Honestly Antonio sounds like a hurt coyote. We understand the fiasco of the Blue Ribbon Committee. But, San Jose was never getting the A’s. Get over it already.

      1. You have to have faith Bill. Selig’s Blue Ribbon panel will be making it’s final final final report any day now, and it’s going to be a doozy I tell you.

        San Jose/Fremont…. agreed, was never happening (although if the A’s really wanted to get there, all Fisher has to do is write a big enough check that Giants ownership – in the words of Marlon Brando – lack the moral courage to refuse the money). What Fisher wants is something for nothing. It’s not really any more complicated than that.

        That said, moving somewhere within their designated territory that makes it easier for the wealthier fans in San Jose/Fremont to attend would be possible.

        Sure, you might have to eminent domain several thousand families etc to get it done… but Atlantic Yards and all that. Urban blight can mean whatever in the hell you want it to mean…

    3. The NFL is different. You have huge tv contracts all teams benefit from and 50k fans who are going to show up 8 times a year no matter what. You don’t have that in baseball, for any team really outside of the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs and Red Sox. The A’s get skewered for not meeting the numbers of these 4 clubs however the A’s aren’t that much worse than the middle of the pack. Attendance is dismal across the league.

      The first NFL team to get to Vegas was going to be a winner. That was obvious from the get go. It was just perfect timing for the Raiders. There is no way the A’s, or most MLB teams, will get the boost that the Raiders got out of Vegas.

      1. Agreed re: the A’s Robert. If we actually look at the team’s long term attendance we find they are in the bottom third (and sometimes bottom quartile) of MLB attendance.

        However, the gap (no pun intended) from them to the other small to mid market teams floating around the median attendance number is really quite small… and a distance the A’s could cover quite easily by actually spending some money on genuine major leaguers rather than trading them all and fielding a double A team while increasing ticket prices (even in the aging stadium).

        Their long term avg attendance (back to the early 1970s) is and always has hovered in the 20-22k range. It’s not great, but it’s not significantly worse than 12-15 other MLB teams.

        Will it be worse this year?
        Of course. That is what Fisher and Kaval want and it’s why they have simultaneously raised prices and traded practically every player who makes more than the MLB minimum (and given away their manager). If that doesn’t keep fans away I wouldn’t rule out Kaval ordering the stadium gates locked two hours before games begin and the bricking up of the doors to all the bathrooms.

        IF MLB would allow it they would order their fielders to play without gloves as well. Fisher & Kaval are going all the way on this and hoping no-one remembers that a $500m ballpark improved the pathetic Marlins attendance for only a few months before it’s return to the mean.

        The A’s spoiled brat ownership has already adopted it’s poison pill (they’ve done it in the past, but I would argue that this time is a little further over the line than before).

        Surely the ball is now in Oakland’s court?

  4. You have to remember that the A’s mascot is the Elephant. “Imminent” could mean 25-30 years. In fact, it already has…

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