Back in September, Oakland’s then-mayor Libby Schaaf revealed that she was looking to piece together another $320 million to pay for infrastructure around a new A’s stadium it Howard Terminal, to go along with the $495 million in property tax kickbacks the city had already approved and $279.5 million from the state. The biggest chunk of this, it was later revealed, was to be a $180 million request for a federal Mega Grant under Joe Biden’s new infrastructure bill, which is supposed to go toward highways, bridges, freight rail, passenger rail, and other “critical large” transportation projects.
The federal Department of Transportation did not award Oakland a grant that the city had identified as a potential key funding source for the A’s proposed Howard Terminal development and ballpark, a source with direct knowledge confirmed to SFGATE…
The requested $183 million was by far the largest tangible source of potential funding for Howard Terminal. The city administrator’s office cited five other possible regional, state and federal grants that Oakland can apply for this year, but they total $140 million — and that’s assuming all are rewarded.
This is not entirely surprising, since cities all over the country are applying for these grants, and the federal DOT was always less likely to see a private baseball stadium development as “critical” than local officials are. But it does mean that Oakland’s $320 million budget hole remains a $320 million budget hole, and that’s not the kind of gap that can easily be papered over.
Not that Oakland probably won’t try: The city mentioned in a September memo that it could sell limited obligation bonds to cover the missing funds, though it would still need a way to pay those off. But then, “the city” in September was not exactly the same city as now: Schaaf was replaced by Sheng Thao as mayor in the November elections, and while Thao has committed to keeping the A’s in town, she has also promised not to stick Oakland taxpayers with any additional costs. That could be a tough needle to thread if neither the federal nor state governments show interest in riding to the rescue, and A’s owner John Fisher continues to insist on not covering any infrastructure needs out of his own pocket.
If this staring contest remains in place, it raises interesting questions about what Fisher would do next. “Move to Las Vegas” is his official Plan B, but Las Vegas has shown no interest in building him a baseball stadium there, and Nevada has a new governor who hasn’t tipped his hand as to his thoughts on throwing money at luring a new sports team. (Gov. Joe Lombardo is supposedly a “fiscal conservative” but “pro-business”; do with those tea leaves as you will.) If the choice is between spending his own money in Vegas and spending more of his own money in Oakland — or reducing his wish list for new roads and shuttle buses and sea-level-rise berms — would Fisher be willing to renegotiate on Howard Terminal? Or reconsider building at the Oakland Coliseum site, which wouldn’t make for as lucrative a site for his planned private housing development but also wouldn’t require any of that infrastructure money? Or will he just keep rattling sabers and send Dave Kaval back to Vegas to tweet about what a great place it is? You can probably guess which one my money’s on.
Do you happen to know why Fischer has focused on Las Vegas to the exclusion of Portland, which has a larger and wealthier metro population, as his moving threat? Is it because he’s convinced that Nevada is an easier sell on sports (probably true)? Is it because the Mariners can block it, as the Giants have with San Jose?
One of the ironies in this case is that for all that MLB, like other sports leagues, uses the common playbook you developed to get deals for its clubs, by establishing firm boundaries around team marketing regions and allowing individual owners to police them MLB has shot itself in the foot with the A’s. I mean, the A’s could have been in San Jose two decades ago! A league with a plan to work this out would, at very least, be talking to not only Portland but also Sacramento and possibly points east (Montreal, Nashville, Charlotte or Raleigh), but MLB seems really stunted by “it’s Oakland or Las Vegas.”
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not unhappy about this. Just noting that it appears to be true.
(Sorry – you didn’t “develop” the playbook. You reported on it in a pathbreaking manner.)
I don’t think the Mariners can block an A’s move to Portland like the Giants did with San Jose — San Jose is within the Giants’ territorial rights region, while Portland is just in the Mariners’ TV territory, which is a different, larger area. So it would be more like when the Expos moved to D.C.: The Orioles were able to demand a tithe of Nationals TV revenue, but couldn’t outright block the move.
(Las Vegas is actually in *five* different TV territories, those of the Dodgers, Angels, Giants, A’s, and D-Backs — see: https://library.sportingnews.com/2021-08/mlb-blackout-map-embed-031020_nbquebelwu3l1fqbkl0nklu8p.png)
As for “Why Las Vegas?”, I’d guess it’s partly because Fisher likes the place or thinks it’s a viable option to get public money from, but more so because the Raiders just moved there from Oakland, so it makes for a more emotionally resonant bogeyman. Portland might be a better place to move, in other words, but it scares people in Oakland less.
Bingo Kenny! MLB is acting as if the A’s are in a “Big Market,” but basically imprisoning them to the least wealthiest portion of said market. Doesn’t MLB want ALL of it’s franchises to be successful and financially sound?! They could easily have two healthy franchises in the Bay Area’s largest city’s, SF and SJ, separated by 40+ miles. But no, MLB continues with it’s “it’s Oakland or Las Vegas” bull $hit!! And to think San Jose/Santa Clara County was a neutral territory prior to 1992, but was made exclusively Giants (with the A’s blessings) to keep them from relocating to Florida.
Portland has no stadium to move into, temporary or permanent. Plus, there is no appetite for government funding at the state or local level for a $B+ facility. Yes, there is a local effort to bring baseball to Portland, but they want to OWN the team, not pave the way for Fisher to move in. Those local folks have not settled on a location of a new stadium or figured out how to pay for one (sound familiar, Oakland fans?). Given all that, why would Fisher believe that Oakland city leaders would view Portland as a viable threat?
Las Vegas also has no stadium to move to, no site identified, and no indicated appetite for government funding. (Nevada gave a pile of cash to the Raiders, but hasn’t been eager to do so for baseball.)
If you just mean as far as optics, though, yeah, I think Vegas feels more like a viable threat, or at least can if you squint a whole lot.
Agreed. My intent is to enlighten those who wonder why Portland is not a candidate for relocation or to be used as a threat of relocation. Especially those who are generally aware of a local effort to bring baseball to Portland. At this point, Fisher seems to want to continue to own the franchise, not sell it to someone who intends to move it to Portland or Las Vegas or anywhere else. If Fisher would like to move it to Portland himself, then he would face many (most?) of the same obstacles there, e.g., no stadium location and sparse government financing. If he wants to start over from square one yet again, I am not sure that Portland would be a top candidate for doing so. [Frankly, I believe a big, super-secret impediment to Portland for him is that he would not want to deal with another regional battle like the Giants/San Jose with the Mariners.]
The difference between a temporary move to Vegas and a temporary one to Portland is that Vegas has a suitable stadium to play in for 2 or 3 years while waiting for the new one to be built whereas Portland HAD a suitable stadium and in typical Portland fashion, turned it into the worst MLS stadium in the league, all the while leaving them with no temporary option for relocation. Therefore, Portland can only be an expansion site which limits their MLB options
I think my point is being missed here. Any city you are not presently in has serious logistical issues associated with it, and – as Neil says – Las Vegas isn’t offering any kind of red carpet to distinguish itself from other places. What is weird, in this context, and needs to be explained is that the A’s threat is being directed at a single fairly unlikely target. It is possible to imagine a “we have a franchise and we will move to anywhere that gives us a good bid” resulting in a good deal of jockeying among other cities. It is even possible to imagine a targeted one attracting specific cities that know they would have an edge based on demographics and/or location.
The fact that all the A’s seem to have is a deeply idle threat suggests that they are being boxed in by other MLB actors – folks who actually don’t care about the well-being of the franchise. I mean, it is helpful obviously to know something about what’s going on on the ground in Portland, but on the other hand I could have pursued the same line of thinking about Sacramento, which is less obviously desirable than Portland but far more than Las Vegas both from an overall population draw area and because you might keep a real percentage of your remaining Oakland fans. And Sacto has given hella money to sports facilities over the last several decades. So why not? I assume it’s the Giants, full stop. The Giants remember that in the 1990s (pre-downtown stadium of course) the A’s outdrew them for a while and they simply want the A’s boxed in, and THERE’S NO ONE IN MLB that cares to stand up to that.
And that still implies the assumption that the west coast is the best or final landing place. The fact that the A’s won’t just say Nashville or one of the Carolina cities is a serious target is … suggestive? … of a dynamic where, unlike the norm in Neil’s thinking where the league plays an important part in extracting shit from public actors, in this case the collective interests of the other owners are to let the A’s die. Exactly how that happens isn’t mapped out, but one can take some guesses based on what was done to the Expos a couple of decades ago.
Obviously I’m way ahead of myself here. The one thing I’m fairly confident in is that the A’s are not receiving the full-service treatment from their own league that franchises usually receive when trying to extract shit, and at this point they are being given literally nowhere to go.
(Given how personal these things can be, I wouldn’t be surprised if the continued willingness to let the Giants call the shots isn’t simple resentment left from Billy Beane 20 years ago.)
While all that makes sense in rational economic terms, I suspect that the reasoning here is more one borrowed from horror movies: A specific threat is scarier than an unspecific one. “If we don’t get our way we might move” is one thing; “If we don’t get our way we might move to Las Vegas” is another, since it creates a Big Bad that fans and elected officials can actually put a face on.
We’re all guessing here, but there have been enough cases of sports team owners fixating on extremely random-seeming move targets (Pittsburgh Penguins to Kansas City, anyone?) that it seems like this is just what the playbook is telling them to do, even if a bidding war might seem to make the most sense in the abstract.
That wasn’t totally random. KC actually has an arena.
Vegas has businesses and municipalities that will take meetings and play the game. Kaval can come to town and meet with Phill Ruffin, Bally’s , Caesers, MGM, city of henderson, city of Las Vegas, city of North Vegas, Clark county commissioners, the Howard hughes company. Everyone will play nice with the press, no one will point out it’s a goofy market for MLB.
I think it’s time to reach an almost completely unbelievable conclusion: absolutely no one in baseball or in politics except John Fisher gives a shit about this anymore. Literally everyone else is checked out or content for the standstill to continue. There are so many ways that so many people could make something happen – but who cares?
Nobody in power in baseball gives a $hit about the future of the sport at all.
Fiscal conservative + pro business = throwing money at the wealthy and corporations but screw the working class and poor who should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become rich.
Amen, and pass the tambourine…
Las Vegas is to the A’s and baseball what Los Angeles was to the NFL from when the Rams & Raiders left in the 90s until Kroenke plopped down a billion plus to return with the Rams in the 2010s.
Sure, there were mentions of an LA stadium in those years (AEG’s pie-in-the-sky downtown location that actually had a corporate name attached). But no owner took the bait because they would have to give up a portion of their team.
Vegas is the boogeyman to sports fans in the Bay Area. The big bad that “stole” the Raiders. Portland just doesn’t exude fear that they’d ever be able to convince a team to move.
As for Nashville, they’re in the process of dropping a billion on a new football dome just to get a Super Bowl or Final Four. Charlotte can’t be far behind in starting afresh with the Panthers. Neither city could likely afford to throw a wad of cash to MLB for a number of years.
Whether or not it’s accurate, there’s a perception that Las Vegas has a magical pot of cash ready.
Pretty sure the A’s fans have not missed the images of LV Raider fans holding up “we deserve better” signs.
Speaking of the Ultimate Failson Challenge…
Mark Davis. John Fisher. You never see them together in the same room, do you?
The real ‘game’ here isn’t Las Vegas or somewhere else… it’s playing Oakland off against itself.
And Oakland politicians appear to be too stupid to realize that.
The city isn’t a great MLB market, but one look at the avg MLB attendances from the last few years shows that there are plenty of “not great” MLB markets where fans aren’t willing or able to pay $30-40 a seat to watch a double A team get humiliated by an actual MLB team.
Watch the Forbes valuations next spring to see what Fisher and Sternberg (as well as a few others) have in the way of net operating income for 2022. They aren’t suffering. And the numbers clearly show that they could spend another $40-60m on player payroll and STILL turn a profit at their current attendance levels.
What Fisher is engaging in here is nothing more than asset stripping his own business so that he can farm a stadium subsidy rather than his fellow MLB owners’ revenue sharing subsidy (which, as I understand it, he loses if he builds a new stadium).
Either way, he gets welfare for billionaires. All that is really being argued here is who will be doing the paying.