Last night, Oakland A’s stadium-search czar Dave Kaval told the San Francisco Chronicle that team execs had entered an agreement to buy 49 acres of land just west of the Las Vegas Strip for the purposes of building a $1 billion, 35,000-seat stadium and relocating the team.
“For a long time we were on parallel paths and right now, at this moment, and with this transaction that we just entered into, we are really focusing our efforts on Las Vegas and on bringing the 20-year saga of the A’s stadium venue efforts to kind of a final positive conclusion,” Kaval told the Chronicle. He later told the Las Vegas Sun that the plan is to enter a public-private partnership — more on that in a minute — and open a “partially domed” (the Sun’s words) stadium at the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Dean Martin Drive by the start of the 2027 season.
So far, this wasn’t yet necessarily a death knell for the Oakland A’s: Team owner John Fisher will still need to negotiate the public share of that billion-dollar price tag, making this very much like the Chicago Bears situation with Arlington Heights, where the team owners have control of the land they want but are still jockeying for the tax kickbacks they say they need to build a stadium. But what happened next might well put the A’s on the fast track to their fourth city in the last 70 years:
- Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao announced that she was cutting off talks on a new A’s stadium at Howard Terminal, effective immediately. Declaring herself “deeply disappointed that the A’s have chosen not to negotiate with the City of Oakland as a true partner,” she said that “in the last three months, we’ve made significant strides to close the deal. Yet, it is clear to me that the A’s have no intention of staying in Oakland and have simply been using this process to try to extract a better deal out of Las Vegas. I am not interested in continuing to play that game — the fans and our residents deserve better.”
- Kaval, told of the mayor’s remarks, replied, “That’s the first I’ve heard of that, to be honest with you. And I guess what I would say is we are always open to a dialogue.”
There are two ways to read this — as Kaval genuinely being surprised because he was hoping to use the Vegas plans to get a bidding war going, or as Kaval trying to spin the team’s relocation plans as “Hey, we wanted to leave the door open to staying in Oakland, it’s the mayor who shut down talks” — and your tea leaves are as good as mine for determining which is the case. But for now, at least, it’s full speed ahead toward the Las Vegas A’s, which raises an absolute ton of questions:
- Where will the money for a stadium come from? Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo immediately declared his happiness at the prospect of the A’s moving to his state, but decidedly did not commit to anything about stadium funding, continuing his tightlippedness on the subject. Finding a billion dollars — or more, depending on whether “partially domed” means a retractable roof as has been discussed before or just an elaborate sun roof — is not a trivial matter, especially when Kaval seems to have just given up all his leverage by burning his bridges in Oakland. The Nevada Independent, however, reports, citing unnamed sources, that Lombardo has secretly signed off on kicking back sales taxes from a ballpark district, plus providing around $500 million in “transferrable tax credits,” which would allow the governor to provide a Raiders-level payout to Fisher while still technically sticking to a “no new taxes” pledge. (UPDATE: Kaval confirmed to The Athletic that he’s working on an “incentive package” worth “$500 million,” though “we’re not all the way there.”)
- Where would the A’s play until a new stadium is ready? The team’s Oakland lease expires after next season, and Thao seems unlikely to agree to extend it for a lame duck franchise. Fisher does own the Las Vegas Aviators [CORRECTION: Fisher doesn’t own them, he just has a development agreement with them], who play in Summerlin, Nevada (and who Kaval said would stay put as a Las Vegas A’s farm club), so a timesharing arrangement for that team’s stadium is possible [NON-CORRECTION: still possible!] — it only holds 10,000 fans, but then, it’s unlikely more people than that are going to want to turn out to see an A’s squad that is currently last in the majors with a beyond abysmal 3-16 record.
- Would MLB approve a move? Three-quarters of the league’s owners would have to vote to approve a relocation, and while they’re generally supportive of each others’ plans and would undoubtedly love to see the A’s situation finally resolved, you also have to wonder if they’ll all be quick to okay trading down from a second team in a large market to what would be the smallest media market in the league. There’s also the matter of any relocation decision taking place against a backdrop of the U.S. trying to figure out how to reallocate the Southwest’s dwindling water supply from the Colorado River, which could throw a wrench into a lot of plans not just for Las Vegas but for other cities like Phoenix as well.
I have absolutely expressed skepticism that the A’s would move in the past, for the simple reason that it wasn’t clear any deal Fisher and Kaval could extract from Nevada would be better than the $775 million in infrastructure money he has on the table from Oakland — though if the reports about Nevada tax kickbacks are true, that could well shift the financial incentives. But regardless, as the history of sports, not to mention other things, shows clearly, this is how momentous decisions tend to get made: not by calm, rational thinking, but by gamesmanship and impulsiveness and falling in love with a dream even if it turns out you haven’t fully thought through all the consequences. Unless there’s a major curveball soon — Kaval told the Sun the A’s face a January 2024 deadline, though it wasn’t immediately clear for what — it looks likely that we’re going to see only the second MLB relocation in the last 50 years, for better or for worse. Which means all that’s left to do is to haggle over the price: Hold onto your wallets, Nevadans.
Seems like an odd thing for Lombardo to stake his political career on. The Clark county commission has not shown any interest in public financing, and I don’t think the near super majority Democratic house/senate will acquiesce to the governor unless they get a ton of stuff in return.
I don’t understand how Allegiant cost $1.9 billion, and this stadium with a a retractable roof will “only” cost $1.5 billion.
I agree that the A’s have put themselves into a Bears type of situation. Until the deal is signed in Carson City and with the Clark county commission they don’t have much of anything.
Regarding stadium cost comparisons, could be the difference between one that seats 65,000+ and 32,000.
Globe life field in Arlington cost $1.1 Billion but labor costs in Texas are less then nevada.
From The Athletic article
“We’re not all the way there in Nevada,” Kaval told The Athletic. “We are in serious discussions with the elected leaders and public policymakers at the state level and at the county level, for an incentive package for a public-private partnership, for their contribution. That’s basically the way that the Allegiant (Stadium) deal for the Raiders went. And so that part isn’t done yet. We’re working with them. And we’re having very good conversations.”
My theory is that they just have the Governor on board here 100%. Sounds like the D caucus and the Clark county commission are waiting for the public’s reaction. If the Governor can sell the idea to the people, the Ds will play ball but extract whatever they want in return.
The Allegiant stadium deal got thru because there was a popular outgoing Governor AND the funding including convention center expansion to placate the casinos. The current political equation is different- the casinos are more cool with sports, and don’t need the carrot but the general public is more hesitant toward funding another stadium.
The stupidity of the A’s in all this is it appears like it shuts down any possible Howard Terminal deal, and leaves them homeless in 2024 or playing in an outdoor minor league park in 110 degree weather.
MLB players association will have fit over that, so Manfred speeds up his expansion timeline (expansion = more player jobs) despite there being no relevant progress in Tampa.
This feels premature and I can’t help but feel like this was in response to all the bad press this week.
We only have the possum to blame here. And Fisher, of course.
As an old friend of mine used to say, looks like Kaval dumped in his mess kit. I can’t believe that was the response he wanted out of Oakland. Hopefully Sheng and company find something better to do with their $700 million and tell Fisher he’s welcome to either go to Vegas or build himself a stadium on the Coliseum site he partially owns.
Exactly right. Kaval appears to have nothing but an option to purchase.
FWIW I believe Tao is doing the right thing. I wouldn’t just end negotiations, I would recind any outstanding offers (which, for reasons only elected officials could hazard a guess at, do not have any fixed expiry date). Following that, you could open up RFPs for the HT lands AND the coliseum/arena site (both Fisher and the city own it, but that doesn’t give either one an advantage… barring the city’s eminent domain capacity of course).
Oakland should not be disappointed. While many fans will miss the team if they do go, they were never going to get a reasonable deal from Fisher. Not Ever.
Now they can move on and spend their money on things that actually matter to the citizens overall, not just baseball fans.
Yes, in theory this opens things up for sensible development of the Coliseum land and doesn’t close the door on private development of Howard Terminal, just that a stadium won’t be involved.
The coliseum site is actually pretty awesome from an infrastructure standpoint, tearing down the coliseum for housing, reducing the arena capacity, making it an 11,000 seat concert/WNBA venue.
The only thing I’m sad about is that once the A’s leave, we’re probably not going to get any more pro sports teams again, which is a major blow to civic pride. If any local fans want to go to a game, it’ll just be SF teams or the Sharks.
I’m not super familiar with the geography, but it seems to me that any team that wants to appeal to the maximum number of people in the region would rather be in Oakland than San Jose.
Perhaps someday the Sharks or the Earthquakes might want to move to the East Bay.
The Earthquakes’ stadium is fairly new and the Sharks’ arena is 30 years old, so probably not any time soon.
The geography doesn’t matter as much as you think. Oakland is definitely the closest of the Bay Area’s three big cities to the region’s geographic population center, but that really doesn’t have a measurable impact on attendance. San Jose by itself has 2.5x the population of Oakland. The parts of Alameda and San Mateo Counties that are closer to San Jose than to Oakland or San Francisco respectively add to that “population shed”.
The Shark Tank is still a very good venue that they’ve continued to invest in and it’s right next to a major train station that has rail service from the peninsula/SF (Caltrain), the inner East Bay & Sacramento (Amtrak), Tri-Valley and San Joaquin Valley (ACE), and VTA light rail from around the Santa Clara Valley. Eventually BART will reach the station as well, but it’ll be some years because America can’t build infrastructure on a reasonable timeline or at a reasonable cost. The Sharks actually played their first 2 seasons in the Cow Palace, which had previously been rejected by the NHL as a venue when the California Golden Seals came into existence. The Chase Center where the Warriors play isn’t designed for hockey, so that’ll never happen (and for other reasons too).
There is a site immediately adjacent to Diridon Station that the A’s tried to build at but were prevented from doing so because Bud Selig sided with the Giants over exclusive territorial rights that they had been given by former A’s ownership to help prevent the Giants from being sold off and moved to Florida in the early 90s. Lew Wolff was one of the principal owners of the A’s at the time of Selig’s decision and still got shafted despite he and Selig having been fraternity brothers from back in the day at University of Wisconsin.
Wolff no longer owns the A’s with Fisher, but he does still own the SJ Earthquakes. Ironically, they were ultimately able to get a new stadium in San Jose themselves.
“The Shark Tank is still a very good venue that they’ve continued to con the city to invest in in exchange for lease extensions…” fixed it for you
Seems that you’re trying to correct a point I never made…
Do you take the Oakland Mayor at her word that they’re done negotiating? Chicago’s lame duck mayor tried playing hardball with the Bears at first, only to offer a $2B renovation as the election drew closer.
Anything is possible, sure. But Sheng has been lukewarm about offering the A’s the moon from the beginning and doesn’t face another election until 2026. Plus the A’s are not as popular as the Bears right now, to say the least, given what they’re currently putting on the field.
If she’s at all worried that she will lose the election over losing the A’s, at least she can know that history will be on her side. At least on this issue.
After all this time nobody has hired someone to remove the possum!!??
SMH…..
The possum remains at large: https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/04/15/mets-announcers-forced-from-oakland-booth-due-to-possom
I’m pro possum. They’re misunderstood. They eat ticks.
It may be the new team mascot!
Well, if you watched the Mets games last weekend there were a large number of stuffed animals that look a little like possums in the stadium. I have to assume that they weren’t allowed in unless fans bought them from a Fisher approved rip off vendor.
You know the old saying, when life gives you possums…
LV POSSUMS? Hmm. Come to think of it, there once was a CFL team in Vegas called the LAS VEGAS POSSE. They’re mostly known for drafting a dead guy. I remember their slogan: ImPOSSEable Dreams. Great marketing bc they folded after one season.
I had to go look this up, and it turns out the Posse did not draft a dead player themselves, but another CFL team drafted a dead player off the Posse’s roster after the Posse folded. Also, a different CFL team drafted a different dead player the next year:
https://apnews.com/article/c4d173ab5dff71ce04383d287c3b763c
Neil, stay out of it …this is a family matter…
May 17, 2022
Oakland A’s latest problem: a possum in the press box at RingCentral Coliseum
“This is hardly the first time the A’s have had to deal with a possum. The critters have made documented appearances at the Coliseum in 2014 and 2015.”
“So prevalent was the possum in 2014 that the hashtag #RallyPossum began trending on Twitter.”
https://www.sfgate.com/athletics/article/Oakland-A-s-latest-problem-a-possum-in-the-17177773.php
To be fair, the possum could probably outhit Tony Kemp right now.
They call the big one “Bitey”.
I wonder if the A’s have explored the deeply ironic possibility of playing at Allegiant Stadium while their new ballpark gets built?
Is that even possible? Can you get even a ridiculous LA-Coliseum style layout in a modern football stadium?
Seems unlikely. Most of the Allegiant seats are fixed in place, would probably require significant renovations.
Also, why would the Raiders and the Stadium Authority do anything to help the A’s? An A’s stadium is direct competition for concerts AKA the big money for venues like this.
No way in hell will Mark Davis let him play there even if it was feasible, which it’s not. After the comments that Davis made the other day, there is no way it will happen
Hey Neil, will media market size even matter in the near future? With all the cord-cutting going on and the demise of regional sports networks? Especially if MLB goes the way of MLS with all their telecasts on Apple TV.
It looks more and more like MLB is going to go the “every team gets to sell their own streaming rights” route (see: Yankees’ new $25/month streaming plan), in which case media market size will continue to matter a whole lot.
This would deteriorate Vegas as a market even further. Dodgers would do very well here under a plan like that.
The Athletic had an article 6 days ago about MLB (possibly) going to an all 30-team streaming service. Also discussed the current issues with the St. Louis Cards regional TV service. I’m terrible at linking articles here but it’s easy to find with a quick Google search.
https://theathletic.com/4409306/2023/04/14/mlb-streaming-tv-blackouts/
Key section:
The individual teams control their digital rights inside their market. Presumably, then, to create a streaming service that lets you watch every team’s games no matter where you are in the country, without territorial blackouts, all 30 teams would have to be in agreement.
“Major League Baseball has zero chance of putting all 30 teams together in a national package,” said one lawyer in the sport familiar with the contracts who was not authorized to speak publicly.
I think that will definitely be how it goes in baseball.
But I have feeling based on no data that hockey and basketball are more like MLS (or even the NFL) than MLB in this regard.
The fans of those sports that would be willing to spend anything at all to watch those sports will want to be able to see all the games without blackouts on the same platform, like what MLS has set up.
And I suspect those leagues will be happy to sell it to them for $20-$30 a month and then figure out how to share the money.
Obviously, this isn’t their preferred model. But their preferred model – the RSNs extracting a big fee from every single cable subscriber whether they like sports or not – is no longer viable.
It’s not the fans’ preferred model either. The fans want to see all of their local team’s games for free and maybe see the other teams’ games for very cheap and somehow have it all be easy to find like it was in 1980 when the Yankees were on 11 and the Mets were on 9, etc.
That’s not an attractive business model either, so it won’t happen.
Baseball, on the other hand, seems content to stick with it’s idiotic model. If I wanted to invent a system that would ensure that a few teams pay way too much for all the top free agents while other teams are in perpetual tank mode, I don’t think I could do better than what MLB/MLBPA have created.
Yes, well, the alternative is to tell whichever Steinbrenner failchild is in charge of the team that he’s going to get the same cut of TV revenue as the Royals. The last time anyone seriously tried that, the owners warred with each other until they decided to take the money out of the players’ hides, leading to a lockout that canceled the World Series and forced Sonia Sotomayor to step in.
tl;dr: MLB owners don’t play well together.
Is a retractable roof worth the expense if it’s likely to be open for about 10 (15 if you’re lucky) games a season?
Early April evenings can be chilly while the heat from May through September is well documented.
If they play in Summerlin temporarily, does that mean (other than April) all games – including Sunday are at night?
That’s how the Aviators do it. One stadium hosting an MLB team and a AAA team seems like a logistical nightmare. I’d expect Fisher to relocate the Aviators to Fresno or Tucson under that scenario.
Kaval claims that the Aviators would stay put as well. Which raises the question: Why would people still buy Aviators tickets when, if they want to see a AAA team, they can just go see the A’s?
Yeah, until the A’s are in a real stadium in Vegas, the Aviators are direct competition.
I think the idea is to push the Aviators as the locals team; that if Athletics tickets are too expensive for you, just head over to Summerlin and see the A’s prospects.
… the problem is we already have that example over in Gwinnett and the Stripers, who regularly are last in AAA attendance, and they try a similar push. It’s not impossible; the Twins finally got that affiliation with the St. Paul Saints they wanted, but the Saints had years of experience establishing their own identity in the independent scene plus St. Paul is a large enough city on its own versus the rural Lawrenceville, Georgia that’s filled with people who would, if the choice was given, would rather just see the Braves in person.
I’m not trying to meander, it’s just more figuring out what to do with the Aviators. Building stadiums ain’t cheap, and we saw places like Tucson just refuse to build anything new even back before MLB made it mandatory.
I think the Aviators might be able to beat the A’s in a best-of-7 right now.
Ideally, a major league team wants its affiliates to be within the region of people who would naturally support them as their favorite major league team. They can help to promote each other, but they don’t really compete with each other.
An hour to 90 minutes away seems to be about the ideal gap – Dayton-Cincinnati, Worcester-Boston, Allentown-Philadelphia, etc.
The problem in Las Vegas is that once you get about 45 minutes from the center of the city, you’re in the desert. There really isn’t any good place to put a team that’s close-but-not-that-close.
“Rural Lawrenceville, Georgia” is actually suburban/exurban. Gwinnett County is a municipality whose peoples would rather not go inside the Perimeter (I-285) unless they really have to.
3am starts and everything should be fine.
The might as well play at Las Vegas Ballpark, not like they are getting close to 10k a game in Oakland anyways. LV will fill that up nightly (obviously day games would have to be scheduled for the evenings). I’m a Red Sox fan, but Vegas is home for me, been waiting for this for 20+ years. Gonna go grab my A’s hat today.
Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland to Las Vegas. Athletics is a great name, but Vagabonds would also work.
Fisher should have burned a bus and said “I am not moving east!” if he wanted to fulfill the prophecy.
“… saga of the A’s stadium venue efforts to kind of a final positive conclusion…”
Well, after a firm commitment like that from Kaval, I’m certainly convinced…
He has negotiated an option to purchase land. And the Chronicle headline is “A’s on verge of leaving after reaching stadium deal in Vegas”.
Yeah. If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.
This announcement obviously happened now because the A’s are in freefall. I mean Mark Kotsay called the A’s a “noncompetitive environment” last week, and I’ve got to say if your field manager is saying stuff like that there is no chance of turning it around. So this is desperation – a Montreal Expos level situation which probably has no chance of improving unless the other owners step in and take it over.
As a baseball market, Las Vegas remains a joke, and it’s hard to see why anything thinks otherwise.
I agree. The difference is that in the Expos situation the principal owner (Brochu) had been handed his 15% (?) stake in the club by the outgoing owner and was woefully undercapitalized. He was also legitimately losing money on operations.
Neither of these things is true with ultimate failson contestant Fisher, who is turning a handsome profit on the bargain basement operation even with 4,000 tickets a game “sold”. And, of course, he has the ability to fund a potential losing proposition for several seasons/decades if he so chooses.
So, really, the emergency is entirely self created and not an actual emergency at all. Fisher knowingly and willingly adopted the poison pill of higher prices to watch a AA team.
Personally, I hope he does move his AA team to Vegas. He will be on the hook for nearly a billion for the stadium even if he does manage to con Nevada pols into a $500m subsidy (still less than he already has in Oakland. Or had). And then he will find it is a lot harder to sell tickets to 81 baseball games a year in the desert than it is to sell 8 home dates for the NFL.
If nothing else we can look forward to a Chronicle headline like “Failson Fisher Flees”
Nobody is happier about this development than the Giants because it puts them that much closer to finally having all of the Bay Area baseball market to themselves. And I have to think MLB would be perfectly fine with having the A’s move to a smaller market rather than splitting an existing one.
Not just the whole Bay Area, but the entire northern half of the state. It’s hard for me to see the owners of the Dodgers, Padres, and Angels being thrilled about this.
None of this would probably be happening if the rest of baseball didn’t let the Giants claim San Jose as their own.
How did that ever make sense? As far as I can tell. San Francisco is closer to Oakland than San Jose, is it not?
Correct. Probably more importantly, all of the teams in other 2-team markets share common territorial rights — Yankees/Mets, Cubs/White Sox, Dodgers/Angels. I *think* the Orioles and Nats also share territorial rights but not media market rights. I recall there being some complexity in that arrangement.
Which raises the question: If the A’s leave, do the Giants get territorial/TV rights to the East Bay/Northern California for free? Or would they have to compensate the SoCal teams and the D-Backs for losing their Vegas TV territory?
That’s why the prospect of no relocation fee doesn’t make sense to me. That should be what compensates the Dodgers, Angels, Padres, and D-Backs for a team moving or expanding to Vegas.
Why should the Giants have to pay for that? In terms of exclusive territorial rights (not media rights) they’d only be getting Contra Costa and Alameda counties. In terms of media rights they’d get nothing because they are also broadcast locally in those counties. The Giants are typically on NBCS Bay Area and the A’s on NBCS California covering the same geographic area. I could also imagine the Giants losing the Reno market to a Vegas team, so their net media territory might even get smaller.
Hard to see owners going for that, but who knows?
And just to think Reed, The A’s helped the Giants acquire those exclusive “rights” in the early 90’s to help keep them in the Bay Area (Proposed San Jose ballpark at the time) and from bolting to Florida. Talk about a bunch of back stabbers in MLB! Forever @#$! the Giants and @#$! San Francisco!!
I’d forgotten that.
It was more because the then-A’s owners were hoping to get the Giants to move to San Jose so they could have SF/the East Bay all to themselves. Still, very bad planning not to get a rights reversion clause if the Giants then stayed put, like they did.
The Northern California media market which includes the Bay Area, Sacramento, Fresno, and even out to Reno and up to southern Oregon in some cases is *SIGNIFICANTLY* larger than the Vegas media market, even if that included the entire state of Nevada. The Bay Area alone has 7.75M people to the entire State of Nevada’s 3.1M and the Vegas metro’s 2.3M. Even being a distant second in the NorCal RSNs is far more valuable than having Vegas/Nevada to yourself.
The RSN is just going to be tiny, state of nevada plus maybe southern utah? Not even 3.5 million.
There’s just no money in the thing that has mattered most in terms of MLB revenue. That being said- if streaming is the new big thing, that probably makes it worse for the Las Vegas A’s.
Agreed. In literally every way that matters (including competition for fans/viewers in the local marketplace) Las Vegas is very much second best compared to Oakland (or most other MLB franchise ‘homes’).
I’ll believe they are actually moving when Fisher buys the land (not just negotiates an option) and asks his fellow owners to schedule a vote on relocation.
Until then? This is just another weak Kaval ploy to make it seem like something is happening. Did this negotiation even cost more than his trip to a hockey game last year? Probably not.
Yeah this scheme to move the franchise to Vegas isn’t any sort of validation of Vegas as a media market or a baseball market, as it is a desperate ploy by a desperate owner who’s willing to plop his team in any city that will let him build a new venue (and/or give him very favorable terms for the construction of said venue).
Rob Manfred and his puppeteers might still ultimately be cool with that arrangement, though — particularly if they’re able to cash in on the new ballpark in the short term, and because it would also (presumably) get them out of the TV blackout nightmare involving pretty much every team in CA and AZ. And if the league is really interested in expansion (I’m still skeptical that it actually is), then a bad solution that puts them closer to that goal is still better than no solution.
Taking Vegas off the table as an expansion option (wouldn’t be one of the 2 places I’d put a new team personally, but still) seems like a confounding self-own.
Small correction: the Aviators aren’t owned by the A’s. They’re owned by the Howard Hughes Corporation (hence the name & why their mascot is the Spruce Goose).
They also just spent $150 million on the stadium, a centerpiece of their summerlin development (alongside the Knights practice facility). Any stadium deal probably includes their input, although they’re smallish players at the table.
I think the Diamondbacks experience shows a retractable roof is probably not worth the money in the desert. They had to keep the roof closed on days before night games so the AC could cool the stadium before game time, which meant the grass didn’t grow, so they went to artificial turf, which defeated the purpose of the retractable roof.
Exactly. If the roof can only be open for 10-20 games a year max, it isn’t worth the money. Then again, when the owner/team isn’t paying… everything is worth the cost isn’t it?
Many fixed roof facilities these days are built with plenty of natural light coming in through carefully designed and sized glass/plastic panels. The days of the fixed roof stadium as dingy cave are long gone.
And for late season games when it might actually be nice with the roof open… we know from history that MLB typically orders the roof closed for ‘fairness’.
Once again the taxpayer gets conned by the sports business cartel.
Also, it’s Las Vegas. Daytime is 110 degrees while night falls to, like, 60. I would think fans prefer to keep things at a consistent temperature the whole time instead of the novelty of a retractable roof, as someone who has a stadium with a roof that opens, what, twice a year?
I say go fixed roof with lanai-style outfield glass sliding doors like Allegiant Stadium. Also incorporate “blue sky” ceiling lighting similar to Ceasars Forum Shops and Venetian Gondola shops. No need for a full retractable roof that will rarely be open.
I’ve thought since at least the Laney debacle that the endgame will be a new 30-35k-seat stadium on the Coliseum site, with Fisher raking in real estate money from the rest of the parcel.
To be honest, this news has only pushed me off that prior a little bit — if they had a funding partner lined up in NV surely that would have been part of the announcement, and the quality of play on the field isn’t exactly going to get many Nevadans excited about season ticket packages.
If anything, this may be an attempt to pull a Loria, and get Fisher an expansion team in Vegas (while zeroing his operating expenses until a stadium is ready) while one of the many local suitors for the A’s pays him handsomely for a AAAA roster and advances their own stadium plans. And then Fisher gets paid again for his half-ownership of the Coliseum site in the end anyway.
Seems the better move would be to Portland- the largest media market (22nd) without a MLB team and has one 1 other major sports team in the market. Only drawback is no interim ballpark to use.
Portland Timbers average 23,000. They’re more of a major league team than the A’s.
It seems like Portland would be a good option for the Coyotes if and when they move. I think it could be more successful than Houston or Atlanta or Phoenix (of course) but I don’t know if there are any ownership groups interested in that.
I’ve been saying that for awhile as well. It actually came close to happening. When Glendale city council was deciding on whether to extend the Coyote’s lease back in 2014, Portland was considering the leading candidate for relocation had they not extended
Looking back on it, they probably wish that they had given the thumbs down back then. We may actually have seen the Coyotes in Portland. Not saying it’s too late now but they’ve put all their eggs in the MLB basket, are doing a lousy job of it, and will probably lose out on both leagues as a result
Yep. Portland has lousy vision for sports.
They say that they want MLB but the one temporary stadium was converted to a soccer stadium so now the Timbers play in the worst stadium in MLS while on the same token, don’t have a temporary place for a baseball team to play
They try to develop everything with public transportation in mind but chose a possible expansion MLB baseball stadium site that’s nowhere close to MAX rail
The Jan 2024 deadline is one written in the latest CBA noting if the A’s do not have a stadium deal by then, they will be kicked off their revenue sharing program and no longer get a slice
The A’s have hired a bunch of lobbyists (Kaval registered as well himself as well) to push this in front of lawmakers before the end of the legislative session (June 2023). It’ll be interesting to see what happens in a scenario where this isn’t green lighted by LV and the A’s have to crawl back to Oakland
Every league, including MLS and even NLL, really want to be in Las Vegas, even though it’s the 40th ranked US media market.
Maybe it’s just my intense bias against hot weather places, but I just don’t get what makes it so desirable.
It’s not very big relative to some other cities without teams in every league.
It’s not especially rich, per capita. A huge part of its economy is tourism and I can’t imagine many people who travel to Vegas are there to see sports (which they can probably see in whatever city they came from).
The assumption seems to be that it’s just going to keep growing and be a top 30 market, but is that really realistic? Surely the water and heat problems are going to constrain its growth.
Is it just that the sort of wealthy people who want to own teams are enamored with it because they enjoy their weekends there and see it as an easy mark for “pro-business” politics?
That last one, almost certainly.
The sports market is completely saturated already in Vegas. I think the other leagues have seen the success of the Knights and figure it’s repeatable, but it’s more of a fluke than anything.
1)they were first, and as an expansion team brought no baggage
2)they play in an excellent privately financed arena, and have a tremendous game day experience. I’d argue the best in the NHL or NBA
3) the expansion draft rules were generous, and the knights took advantage of it by forcing teams into a ton of pick swaps and trades. This has allowed them to acquire a team of superstars
4) The team has been really good, and incredibly engaged in the community. Bill Foley wants to win, not collect a revenue sharing check.
Tickets on the secondary market took a bit of a dip this year, probably to be expected considering they missed the 2022 playoffs and the new car smell is gone. But they’re still a big deal and outdraw most of the NHL.
All that being said- the A’s have a cheap owner, who is only coming to Vegas so they qualify for a revenue sharing check in January.
Bill Foley backed out of an MLS expansion bid because he didn’t like the economics of the league (best described by others as a Ponzi scheme).
The raiders got their stadium, but when they’re bad, every game will feel like a road game.
As fitting their location, the Knights also got a bit lucky. Even after all of their clever wheeling and dealing in the draft, nobody really expected the roster they assembled to do particularly well.
But a lot of guys had particularly good years.
They also benefited from having a fairly blank slate at a time when the salary cap was not growing as fast as most teams expected/hoped because of COVID. They weren’t saddled with a lot of bad contracts.
The same could be said for the Raiders… it’s early days yet.
Sure, the Knights have exceeded all expectations. And full credit to the owners for marketing the hell out of their property.
But we’ve seen this before in new markets… everyone is crazy about the new franchise until they aren’t. Until the team is sub par and the cost of going to games starts to appear unreasonable (and, in most cases, it is).
When the novelty wears off (as it has for many in Winnipeg – the flood of season ticket and flex pack buyers from the first decade is fading… as prices go up and people realize what supporting a professional sports franchise actually costs) we will see how solid a market LV really is for either NFL football or NHL hockey.
The Raiders tickets are an easier sell as they only have 8 home games (insert playoff joke here). I don’t think it is likely they will continue to have sellouts indefinitely, but in a city with tens of thousands of hotel rooms and many attractions to fill them, it’s not impossible that a significant portion of the tickets will continue to be bought (directly or indirectly) by out of towners. If you want a winter getaway from Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Chicago you might just plan it around the time your team will be playing there.
That is unlikely to be true for hockey, basketball or baseball at any time.
Eighty comments on an Oakland A’s article.
Man, it sure is a shame nobody cares about them…