I had to choose yesterday between posting here and free hotel breakfast, and you can imagine how that turned out. So you’ve had to wait for this morning for my take on Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s plans, revealed on Friday, for demands in exchange for allowing the Oakland A’s to keep playing at the Oakland Coliseum beyond next year while a new Las Vegas stadium is being built:
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao has already informed MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred there is a price for a lease extension, her chief of staff, Leigh Hanson, told the Chronicle. Hanson said those demands could include a provision that the A’s leave their name rooted in Oakland when they go. Or, even bigger, the city could extract a guarantee of being awarded a new team when baseball expands, as it expects to do fairly soon.
And my carefully considered take on this is:
Huh.
Positive things first: Thao has clearly identified that the city of Oakland has some leverage here, which is rare among city officials, and deserves props for that. A’s president Dave Kaval has said that the team has three options for where to play the next few seasons — the Coliseum, the Las Vegas Aviators‘ minor-league stadium, and the San Francisco Giants‘ Oracle Park — and the latter two have huge problems: The Aviators’ stadium only holds 8,000 people, and the Giants ownership is unlikely to approve the use of their stadium for 81 A’s games a year. So the much-maligned Coliseum has to be a leading option, even if it’s unclear how many Oakland fans would turn out to see a team that was in the process of being moved out of town.
Demanding that the A’s name stay in Oakland is likely something A’s owner John Fisher and MLB would consider, if only because they might want to rebrand when moving to Vegas anyway. But a team name isn’t worth much without a team, which brings us to the potential demand for an expansion team. While this sounds great — Oakland rids itself of Fisher, but gets a replacement team with the same name, a la the Cleveland Browns — even if MLB went for it, it would leave open lots of questions: When would Oakland get a new team? Would a new Oakland owner have to match the expansion fee bids of other cities? And would Oakland be required to fund a new stadium as part of any expansion deal? Cleveland, don’t forget, did get a replacement Browns, but had to spend even more on a new stadium than the old Browns had been requesting, so it was hardly an unmitigated victory.
This would also all have to be negotiated both with Fisher and with MLB, and the two parties’ priorites might not completely align. As John Shea explained in the San Francisco Chronicle last week, if the A’s stay in Oakland (or San Francisco) temporarily, Fisher gets to keep collecting $60 million a year in TV rights fees for his lame-duck team; that’s something both the A’s owner and other MLB owners would no doubt salivate over. Fisher can also keep collecting up to $44 million in revenue-sharing money if he has a “binding” (whatever that means) stadium deal in place by January 15 — which Fisher obviously would desperately want, though the other MLB owners might not feel the same pressure. If Fisher blows that deadline, he might prefer to relocate to the Aviators stadium, where he would be eligible for revenue sharing cash by virtue of being in a tiny market.
And as if that weren’t enough, there are also all sorts of unresolved questions about TV rights: Would the MLB teams that currently share rights to Vegas (in addition the A’s and Giants, the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Angels, and Arizona Diamondbacks) be compensated for losing part of their TV territory, and if so who would pay that? Would the Giants have to pay a fee for getting the whole Bay Area TV market to themselves? Would the Giants get territorial rights to veto a new Oakland team, and if so would any money change hands there, or would the East Bay be considered up for grabs? Presumably all this will need to be worked out among the MLB owners, but how it’s decided could shift the dynamic for where Fisher and MLB as a whole would prefer the A’s to play while awaiting a permanent Vegas stadium.
And all this, of course, is assuming that a permanent Vegas stadium is set in stone, which it very much is not: Fisher still needs to come up with about $1 billion to cover the costs not being paid for by Nevada taxpayers, and has to then figure out how to squeeze a domed stadium onto a 9-acre site; plus there’s that whole teachers’ union referendum campaign to overturn the public money, which is still moving forward. So the A’s could be looking for a temporary home for two years, or three, or five, or forever, depending on how all this plays out.
All of which makes Thao’s demand for a replacement A’s a perfectly good ask, but there are a lot of moving parts to be worked out before seeing if it would amount to anything. The mayor’s chief of staff, Hanson, also said she plans to play hardball on the size of lease payments — noting that “a regular market rate (currently $1.2 million per year) is not going to cut it” — and demanding that Fisher kick back a sizable chunk of that $60 million a year in cable fees to the city might actually be an easier negotiating point. Really pretty much anything can still happen here, so expect the betting lines to move around like crazy between now and January 15.
Let’s not forget the MLBPA would have to approve of playing in the Vegas minor-league ballpark. Not sure if players are enthusiastic about playing in 100+ temps. I read in the SF Chron, travel days require games to be played during the day particularly for east coast teams playing in the pacific time zone.
Doesn’t 4am count as daytime? It sure does.
Don’t rain on our parade. We are onto a new new operation here and it is working just great.
If the A’s name stays in Oakland, who owns/controls the copyrights/trademarks? Would the city of Oakland get revenue for licensing merchandise? Could the city create a barnstorming team like the Savannah Bananas or Harlem Globetrotters? Could their be an independent Oakland A’s team playing in the Pecos League?
MLB controls all copyrights/trademarks. So when you buy Expos or Brooklyn Dodgers merch… none of it goes to the former home cities.
At one time teams owned their own trademarks/wordmarks/logos, but Raiders – II essentially took care of that and most (if not all) sports leagues centralized IP after that decision.
Go Thao!!!….throw Fischer, Kaval and the A’s over the barrel.
“The Oakland A’s of Las Vegas”
I feel bad for A’s fans but the city of Oakland has no more right to the A’s name than Kansas City did when Oakland got their team, or Philadelphia when KC did the same a decade prior.
It’s not that Oakland has any “right” to the name, more that this would be a quid pro quo in exchange for not making the A’s go play in the street starting in 2025.
If you replace Las Vegas with Oakland in the expansion/move equation, I wonder how attractive it really is vs the usual suspects, Charlotte, Nashville, Portland and Montreal. Oakland is small, but the east bay is massive, over 7 million. The same as the 3 US cities combined. But California doesn’t give out free stadiums without a lot of hurdles. So Oakland might be without baseball for a while.
I would pay significantly more towards a stadium to have it in Oakland (because of the population base) or Fremont than I would to have it in any of the other cities you mentioned.
Montreal has the population base but facilities are even harder to get public money for in Canada, and you have very limited RSN rights fee opportunities (though that seems to be coming to all sports leagues thanks to streaming/cord cutting… and the RSNs have completely done this to themselves so I have no sympathy for them). While I would personally love to see the Expos back, given the financial challenges on the income side I don’t know if it could ever truly work as a business. I think you could break even with an $80-85m payroll on a regular basis. But that isn’t a very big payroll by modern MLB standards is it?
Nashville, Portland and Charlotte do not have the population base to make an MLB team truly viable. With a sweetheart stadium deal and free/tax exempt commercial land could it work? Sure, but at some point you are better off just overpaying for an existing team in a better market than trying to build a new business from scratch while compensating someone else for moving in to their territory.
Manfred has his heart set on Nashville – so he says – but I do not see it as being anything more than the Rays’ ‘split home’ with Montreal was, or any of the other extortion plays that the Office of the Commissioner is always so eager to help with.
Whether a prospective Nashville owner has to pay Atlanta, St. Louis and several other owners direct indemnity or whether some portion of their $1.5Bn expansion fee is taken to share among those owners, it’s still money that the other teams aren’t getting.
Nashville isn’t really a sexy, destination city the way Vegas is either, unless you really like country music. If a new team is placed anywhere in the South, New Orleans is really the only place that makes sense. Oakland (and Montreal) were done dirty by bad ownership, and as much as I’d like to see some new places (Vancouver, Buffalo, Indianapolis, New Orleans) get MLB, this needs to be remedied, like the Browns, Hornets, Winnipeg Jets, and probably soon the Supersonics will be.
Nashville is significantly bigger than New Orleans and it is growing faster.
And in 30 years, New Orleans might be in permanent ankle-deep water.
It was interesting reading the articles after the TB/MTL Rexpos saga where Mitch Garber (2nd biggest investor on the MTL end) basically said he thought 80 home games was impossible, and selling 40 annually was the was the only way he’d invest in a team.
First instinct on this site is to think he’s saving face, but he’s typically a pretty straight shooter and knows the city better than most.
The turf fight that would erupt when the Rogers monopoly over an entire sport in a country is threatened would be epic.
It was worth the wait, Neil. I hope breakfast was worth more than the price…
Good move by Thao. Yes, lots of other shoes to drop. However, I would imagine she has already had conversations with ‘people’ who have expressed interest in or even tried to buy the A’s from Failson Johnny over the past few (dismal, shameful and disgraceful) seasons.
I completely agree on the Browns front… there’s no way that a replacement team is going to come cheaper than a new stadium (for which Oakland has already put forward a guarantee of about $500m with add ons for ‘other stuff’). But the fee – whether it is called an expansion fee or something else – would be paid by the new owner and not the city.
But at this point I – and I would guess many actual A’s fans – think no price is too high to rid themselves of Fisher. If they do get the “Browns” deal and send Gapman & Robbin’ packing, this may work out best for everyone (except the taxpayer, who always gets screwed no matter what). There is probably a compromise to be made on the expansion/replacement fee front, given that Fisher should be paying to relocate to his chosen market and Oakland may or may not be seen as a viable full on expansion market ($2bn + stadium costs) a decade down the road. Perhaps a prospective owner could negotiate the fee down significantly if he/she agreed to be permanently placed on the disqualified (or partially disqualified) for revenue sharing list. It’s really just math, so it doesn’t matter if you pay the extra up front and use the RS share to cover the debt service or don’t pay and don’t get the RS.
I am sure Joe Lacob is watching this with interest. And he may not be alone in doing so.
“But the fee – whether it is called an expansion fee or something else – would be paid by the new owner and not the city.”
Technically, yes. But if the fee is set so high that new owners will only be willing to pay it if they’re getting a free (or at least subsidized) stadium, then part of it could end up being effectively passed through to the cities.
There’s really no reason for Oakland to give Fisher or MLB anything at this point. (Including the the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally).
What do they have to lose with these demands?
The best case scenario is that they get a viable MLB expansion team called the A’s in a few years owned by somebody vaguely competent.
The worst case is that they lose the A’s and never get an MLB team back. But as things are now, that’s what is probably going to happen anyway.
Fisher and Manfred are hellbent on leaving.
And if, by some unforeseen confluence of events they don’t move to Vegas and try to stay in Oakland, then Oakland will just be stuck with a terrible team in a terrible owner in a stadium that is gradually being reclaimed by nature. At this point, I suspect Oakland fans would rather lose the team than keep the team with its current ownership.
The other possibility is that Fisher/MLB refuse these terms and attempt to temporarily play in the Aviators’ stadium. That will be a disaster that all of Oakland can enjoy watching from afar.
BTW, as far as I know, the A’s do not own the Aviators. They cannot just force them to move or give them better dates. They can try, but there will be lots of lawsuits.
A lot of the speculation about the A’s playing there seems to assume they can just move right in, but I don’t see why the Aviators would want to do anything to accommodate an MLB team that will almost certainly force them to move or go out of business.
They do not own the Aviators, quite correct. And if I read it right, Summerlin is not going to be able to prevail on the team to allow the Athletics to move in (much less surrender the best dates to them) either (not that they would even want to).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes_Corporation
And these guys are worth several times what Failson Fisher is.
Isn’t that the sort of thing you would check out if you were a business genius like Fisher or Kaval???
I hope you at least got fresh hot waffles.
And maybe an omlet, too.
Though generally, omlets aren’t that hard to get. But every time I order a restaurant waffle, it comes out lukewarm and the butter doesn’t melt right. The only place I can get a real good waffle is fresh off the waffle iron in a hotel.
I believe that fresh hot waffles are now required in all hotels by some sort of consent decree.
There were also eggs, though I don’t think they rose to the level of an “omelet.” Well worth the price, though!
Hampton Inn waffles you make yourself FTW.
These were Best Western waffles you make yourself. Hampton Inn’s waffles you make yourself are better.
Seattle and Kansas City did it in 1969. Why not?
Oakland should charge Fisher
$60 million a year in rent!
Seems fair…..
Lol. Nice Jorge!
$60m might be a tad steep… but given that he has enjoyed many years paying well below market rate (despite what Thao called the $1.2m a year figure… it is not market rate), I would not be surprised to see a significant increase for Fisher.
IIRC, Fisher and the A’s have been deadbeats as far as paying their required amounts into the stadium improvement fund (I don’t know how much they are delinquent on, but it has to be millions by now) for years as well. While complaining about the state of the stadium and it’s maintenance obligations (which they are refusing to fund).
Didn’t the Raiders just have to pay the ‘reconfiguration’ cost for each home game (which I believe was $250k/gm) when they played there?
No reconfiguration required these days, of course, but I would say that sets a reasonable high water mark. $15,000 per game is a joke and does not come close to covering the JPA’s costs to stage games at the facility. $250k might be too much given that no seats or field areas need to be modified/moved… but it certainly sets the high end nicely.
So maybe they can make an agreement for 3 years (minimum, with no escape clause) at $120k-150k per game? Oh, and the team will have to make an immediate cash payment to cover their obligations on the stadium maintenance fund. And why not assign your current interest ($20m according to the article) in Alameda’s share of the property to the city while you are at it? He’s not going to finish paying for that and everyone knows it. Including Alameda. And yes, that will probably require knocking the rent down to $100k a game… but that’s ok. It gets Oakland full control of the site (or, they could just wait for him to fail to fulfill his purchase option and watch ownership revert to Alameda county…)
Or the A’s can spend $30-40m building a temporary stadium somewhere to play in. That’s an option too. But probably not outdoors in Vegas.
Yes, Dickhead Dave and the Failson (wasn’t that a Starsky & Hutch episode???? Season 4 if I recall correctly… but maybe I don’t…) have really screwed themselves this time. And no-one who has been watching their ‘management’ of the team or the prospective move is at all surprised.
I would love it if they called off the move (or just didn’t get MLB permission) and then asked to stay in Oakland… only to have Thao and co say “we would only offer the team a new lease if John Fisher sells his entire interest in it”.
Ok, not likely to happen… but hey, it’s fun to dream…
One thing I haven’t seen here is what about the giants in all of this. If the A’s leave I think the giants will want to keep another team from ever locating anywhere in the Bay Area.
To the person who suggest 4:00am games to get around getaway game on the west coast having to be day games, not going to happen because you can’t have a game that early and who would pay for the TV rights to the games
As Neil says the TV rights have to be worked out and while the Las Vegas market might be given up I can’t see a team in Vegas being given any ability to enter the LA, San Diego, Orange County or any of the Arizona or Colorado markets. That squeezes the local TV market into a pretty small hole, smaller than Oakland.
I see two questions that need to be answered
1) where will fisher get the approximately $1 billion to fund the stadium?
2) will the other owners be willing to grant the A’s revenue sharing forever?
More problems for the Las Vegas A’s, the Dodgers, Giants, Diamondbacks and Padres are all in the NL West, only the Angels are in the AL West. Very few visits by teams within driving distance of Vegas and how many will really fly to Vegas for 3 baseball games versus shift their trip to Vegas to when their team is in Vegas. Vegas has zero corporate base beyond gaming and the only cities over 10,000 within 250 miles of Vegas are Kingman, St George and Cedar City. The Las Vegas A’s would have a difficult time building even a small fan base in Utah, which is already dominated by the Dodgers, followed by the Rockies and Giants. Moving to Daybreak makes more sense than the Tropicana site, given the rapidly growing population and tech corporation base.
But Jeremy Aguero says 3k people per game would fly to Vegas to watch their teams! Even Tampa Bay fans, who won’r drive across a bridge, will fly to Vegas for a Tuesday night-Wednesday night-Thursday afternoon series!
As is typical, fanboy thinking doesn’t reflect reality.
First: The Padres’ and D-backs’ pop-up TV channels are not available in the state of Nevada.
Second: Utah’s baseball loyalties are distant but not for brand-name teams. The only RSN available in Utah is the Rockies’ RSN, which Warner Bros. Discovery will shut down when the Colorado season ends. The Angels do have their Triple-A farm club in Salt Lake City.
Wild and crazy idea that just popped into my head. The Orioles lease at Camden expires end of the year and they have yet to extend it. What if the state of Maryland signed the A’s to a lease agreement and all of a sudden the O’s have no where to go.
Will never happen, but I am all for it.
Hmm. Even if Angelos doesn’t sign a new lease, he still has territorial rights to Baltimore, no?
Seems like this would precipitate an antitrust lawsuit. Which I am all for as well.
I like how you think Matt!
They need a Columbus Crew circumstance: Fisher pays for an expansion team in Vegas, someone buys the A’s and keeps them in Oakland.
Of course, there is still the teensy little problem of still needing a stadium solution, but my sense is Fisher does not even want a local stadium solution. They might have a chance of a deal (a bad-for-taxpayers deal, but still a deal) with an owner who operates in good faith.
“There is no Oakland option”
– Lew Wolff c (2006)
“The A’s cannot and will not continue indefinitely in their current situation.”
– Bud Selig, (March 2009)
“We have analyzed Howard Terminal upside down and sideways,and it has no ability to be implemented for a ballpark.”
– Lew Wolff (Aug 2012)
And all that before Fisher became the main mouthpiece for the team… although I suspect he was pulling the strings when Wolff spoke as early as 2005.
I think you are absolutely right. With a new owner a stadium agreement gets done pretty quickly. With Fisher, never in Oakland and I wouldn’t be too sure anything gets built anywhere else either.
Seems to me this would actually solve the problems for everyone. Oakland keeps the A’s, Fisher gets his Vegas team, and the problem of where to play in the meantime for the Vegas team disappears. It’s such an obvious win-win-win that it will never happen. lol
For Thao, this would be a good start! If Fisher Moves the Current A’s to Vegas, he would have to Leave the A’s name and Green and Gold Colors in Oakland! Therefore, rembrand the current A’s, to a New Name and Colors in Vegas! I agree with that! Also, the MLBPA would have to agree on the Temporary stadium the Vegas team is playing while the New Ballpark is being built! The way things look here, a lease extension is the only option for Fisher here and of course he will have to agree on certain terms to make it happen!
Now, if the MLB Owners approve the A’s Move to Vegas, this is what needs to happen:
1) Fisher Gives up the A’s name and leave it in Oakland and MLB controls the rights. Fisher would have to rembrand the team to a different team name and Colors.
2) Oakland would be guaranteed an Expansion team down the road in a few years say 2027 or 2028. By this time, you have new Ownership which rids Fisher, and Yes the HT would still be in play!
3) Fisher would have to agree on a lot of things between MLB here to make the move to Vegas Happen. How he will come up with the remaining $1.2 Billion and whatever the Cost Overruns are after that remains to be seen in order to cover the New Vegas Ballpark.
4) Mayor Thao will play hardball on this to help the A’s! I love this! Go A’s
Can’t they play a few seasons at Arizona State until taxpayers build them a new stadium? Bettman knows a guy who has a friend…