The MLB owners meetings are today through Thursday, and the agenda item everyone is waiting to see come up is Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s request for approval to move his team to a new stadium in Las Vegas. Let’s see what everyone is saying about it:
- MLB commissioner Rob Manfred seems to be assuming a yes vote, telling Sirius XM host Chris Russo that the A’s are “going to be fine” in Vegas, because it’s “a different kind of market.”
- The San Jose Mercury News is likewise predicting the move request will be approved by 23 of 30 owners, because although “Fisher has likely frustrated some of his fellow owners with the negative publicity generated by the proposed move,” it’s still unlikely that eight owners would vote against a fellow owner doing what he wants, regardless of what’s best for the league.
- Evan Dreilich of The Athletic cites “people briefed on the process” as saying a yes vote is expected on Thursday, with Manfred already having a press conference set for Thursday at noon. One source told Dreilich, “I haven’t heard anyone who’s against” even though the market seems “iffy.”
- Even if Fisher wins the owner vote, there’s no guarantee that he’ll complete the move, given that he still needs to find $1.1 billion in stadium money on top of the $600 million he’s getting from the state of Nevada — not to mention the possibility that the $600 million will get pulled in a potential 2024 public referendum.
Anyone have any words to sum up where things stand? Yes, you in the back, Marc Normandin:
This is all a bit of a no-win situation from where I sit. Either Las Vegas gets a team and hands over hundreds of millions of dollars to Fisher — money that should go to a Nevada school system that’s near the worst in the nation in far too many areas — or the A’s stay in Oakland and… get even more public funds to build a brand new stadium. For the sake of precedent, not having a team successfully rip itself out of an established region that they themselves caused their problems in would be a positive, but… yeah. The end result here is still an MLB team getting a series of massive checks of other people’s money to build a stadium.
Yup, pretty much.
Let’s make this an open thread for now, and I’ll post updates as they come in. While the writing may seem to be on the wall in terms of how owners will vote on an A’s move, we could still learn something about how confident they feel in Fisher’s plans to spend over $1 billion out of his own pocket to move to what would be baseball’s smallest market. Let’s watch and see.
UPDATE 11:45 AM ET: If the owners are going to be swayed by things written on the sky, the first gauntlet has been thrown:
Currently above the #MLB Owners Meetings in Arlington. The @Oakland68s have no quit in them.
✈️“A’s belong in Oakland – #VoteNo”✈️ pic.twitter.com/mzbIMnlWLH
— Casey Pratt (@CaseyPrattABC7) November 14, 2023
UPDATE 8:05 PM ET: Also nothing to do with a vote, but the Nevada teachers’ union has announced plans for a lawsuit claiming that the Las Vegas stadium subsidy bill violates five different parts of the state constitution. So there’s that.
UPDATE 10:10 PM ET: John Fisher talked to three A’s fans handing out “STAY” t-shirts in the hotel lobby, and it went about as well as could be expected, which wasn’t that well at all.
UPDATE 11:17 PM ET: Could the A’s play the next three seasons in Mexico City? You can’t prove it couldn’t happen, somewhere in the multiverse!
There is someone full of shi*t here and it’s not him.
This team will fail in Vegas with present ownership. Yes, the state of nevada gave them too much money, but cost overruns mostly are being paid for by the A’s. Every major Las Vegas project built this century has gone over budget.
The service on the debt is going to kneecap this team out of the gate, there’s no evidence at all that you can build a sustainable fanbase in Vegas with a losing professional sports team.
I agree Al. But even if the debt service doesn’t handicap the team, we already know Fisher isn’t going to spend the money he makes (net) on players. We know that because he has literally never done that. He takes the subsidy check, grins, and puts it in his pocket (and then his bank).
I completely agree with Normandin on this one: either way tax dollars are going to be funnelled to a billionaire for no reason other than ‘because’.
I think Oakland has been and will be a better market for baseball in future than Las Vegas ever could be. So maybe Oakland and it’s fans will win by losing in this specific case… they send Fisher and his flunkie to Vegas and negotiate an agreement with MLB (and one of the prospective owners they have lined up) for a new franchise. Or not.
IF MLB is so short sighted and stupid to not only permit this move but allow special exemptions (relocation fee waived, permanent revenue sharing welfare checks for GAPboy, a likely exemption on the minimum size/capacity of new MLB stadia etc) then the billionaire boys club deserves all the negatives that come out of this.
Good luck selling local media rights in the Vegas market, boys.
According to calculator.net the service on a 20 year $1 billion loan at 6% is just under $86 million/year or about double the A’s 2023 payroll (just the salaries)
My guess would be that billionaires will do what they do… which means that even though it is Fisher and whatever baseball LLC he has created that are required to fund the $1Bn, they will ask to be allowed to use the city or state’s credit (under an agreement in which LVBco pays all carrying and administrative costs), meaning the ‘private entity’ will be able to access lower cost credit than 6%.
But even at 2.75% over a 360 month simple loan, it’s $45m annually to borrow $900m (I am assuming they will require LVBco to at least put 10% actual cash in… or maybe that’s the kind of assumption that reveals to billionaires that I am not one of them…), and then of course Fisher would need at least 12% on his actual $100m contribution annually (hey, his money doesn’t work for free… even for him). So make it $60m in total and we see what his MLB welfare checks are going to be used for.
Phew! Looks like the 2028 LV GAP51s are gonna have to rationalize their player payroll even further…. here come the Single A short season players!
The fed rate is currently 5.25%, so nobody’s getting a 2.75% rate loan, not even the city or state. (Though Fisher could always refinance.) And they would have trouble getting them approved as tax-exempt bonds anyway, unless Fisher were making less than 10% of the payments, which would require another state subsidy bill or two.
10yr muni bonds are now listed around 3.2% (AAA) to 3.5% (AA).
(https://www.fmsbonds.com/market-yields/ – I have no affiliation with and do no business with that firm, btw)
It sounds to me like Fisher would not be considered a prime (enough) candidate to get any kind of beneficial rate himself, but if the bonds were to be issued by the city or state and “covered” by the team, he could do significantly better than 6%.
I would not be at all surprised if when the costs are more firm than they are now, FishKo comes back and asks for changes. As with the stadium design and cost, it’s really all about moving the goalposts once you have established them (which he hasn’t, so far).
Vegas and Clark County need to issue about $5 billion in school bonds, not take the risk on a goofy baseball stadium/Tropicana redevelopment
I’m not saying they should, DPT, just that in the end, they probably will… or do something just as outrageous, but in a slightly different way (IE: many jurisdictions have laws prohibiting the ‘extension of public credit’ to private projects… and many jurisdictions also have interesting workarounds for just those kinds of prohibitions).
Look at the huge crowds of maybe 5,000 the dbacks were drawing recently, Vegas will be Calico 2.0 unless the A’s return to their 1970s glory.
Do not see how any of the economics work to put a team in such a small market where the TV and radio revenue will be less. The biggest mistake made in this whole tragic episode for the A’s was not moving forward with the Fremont location and work to get a full loop of the BART system built to San Jose and back up to Dale City to have a true regional rail system. The A’s could have still called themselves the Oakland A’s or changed it to the San Jose A’s or whatever the hell else they wanted. Angels get away with all themselves the Los Angels Angels even through they play no where near LA. Hell in the NFL the Jets and Giants still call themselves New York even though they play in another state! Same for the Commanders!! Bay area can support 2 baseball teams. It’s been bad ownership that hasn’t gotten this resolved. If the A’s move from the San Francisco Bay area, the most logical market in the West would be Portland, not Vegas.
There were a lot of problems unique to this situation that have brought the A’s to this point. The Giants blocking San Jose, the construction of Mount Davis, the inherent challenges of Howard Terminal, Fisher buying the team, etc.
It’s all just a series of unrelated calamities and historical accidents. It has nothing to do with whether the fundamental demographics of the market can support two MLB teams.
And Las Vegas maybe could be a viable market for MLB, but everything about this is set up to fail. They don’t have enough money. Their stadium plan is, at best, inadequate. They don’t have anywhere to play while it’s being built and the owner refuses to spend money on the team.
A few possible ownership groups – for MLB and the NHL – have kicked the tires on Portland.
There just doesn’t seem to be much of a groundswell for publicly funding a stadium and I’m not sure an owner that was willing to build his own would be welcome in the MLB club because they don’t want to be made to look ridiculous.
I’m not sure about MLB, but if a billionaire wanted to put an NHL team there and could build his own arena, the NHL would be very interested in that.
Nashville’s new mayor has been pretty vocal being against MLB stadium subsidies. Portland’s political culture seems like they would be opposed.
The only expansion cities with money available for this are Vegas and Oakland. Maybe Charlotte? But the panthers owner looks like he’s asking for handouts or will be soon.
Baseball royally screwed up expansion. They should have been much more aggressive.
If the size of the market were the problem, the A’s would have left in the 90s.
As Brodie has said, if we imagine a world with no Rockies or Diamondbacks and the A’s wanted to move to Denver or Phoenix, it would be hard to argue against that.
But by any reasonable metric, they’re moving to a smaller market.
I agree, it’s a bigger market than Vegas.
I agree, it’s a bigger market than Vegas..(Sorry, I replied to the Reed comment below, instead of John Covello’s comment)
I know the Bay Area denizens don’t want to hear this, but it isn’t a two team metroplex. “Shifty” Thao and the CA DNP wanted MLB and Fisher to put in billions for their measly mid-nine figure commitment. Raiders left for a reason, the Kings will be in Vegas in a decade… follow the money. LA and NY are the only metropolitans that can support multiple teams in a single major sports league, the only reason the Bay gets propped up as a cosmopolitan metropolis is when New Yorkers feel threatened by LA and try to use it as a hedge against the perceived paranoid threat as “America’s Greatest City.” Fisher’s a tool bag and he deserves the derision, but he’s going to get what he wants in Vegas (subsidies and permanent welfare status with MLB), these guys almost always do. A’s fans, I’m sorry, you stole the team from KC (who stole it from Philly) and now you can either root for the Giants or keep your allegiance like some of the Raiders fans do. What goes around comes around…
Neither the fans nor the cities ‘stole’ anything from anyone. And Vegas has not stolen the Raiders, nor are they possibly about to ‘steal’ the A’s.
Owners make these decisions. And as you see with Fisher, they sometimes make them for ridiculous reasons.
The A’s left Philadelphia in part because their then-new owner (Johnson) already owned or controlled the stadium in Kansas City…. and attendance had dwindled in Philadelphia over the years as the A’s management cut payroll, allowed the stadium to fall into shameful disrepair and fired baseball operations staff to save money.
Any of this sound familiar??
“the only reason the Bay gets propped up as a cosmopolitan metropolis is when New Yorkers feel threatened by LA and try to use it as a hedge against the perceived paranoid threat as “America’s Greatest City”
Interesting
And being one of the drivers of the world’s 4th largest economy means…less tourism?
Sacramento is a bigger and better TV market than Vegas, and it’s only about an hour drive from the core of the A’s fanbase. There is NOTHING an hour from Vegas, unless you can get to Baker in an hour.
If the A’s move, they should be forced to play in Alliegient Stadium
The way I see it, this will probably happen since MLB doesn’t want to go to court and lose.
Background: When the Raiders wanted to move from Oakland to Los Angeles, the NFL said no. So the Raiders filed a Restraint of Trade lawsuit against the NFL. Surprisingly, the Raiders won and the case set a legal precedent. The next year, the NBA’s Clippers wanted to move from San Diego to Los Angeles. The NBA said no way. So the NBA filed suit as did the Clippers. The Clippers informed the NBA they were going to use the legal precedent set by the Raiders the year before. The NBA then backed down but did impose a relocation fee on the Clippers. And the era of Franchise Relocation begun.
Literally, the only thing which keeps franchises from relocating is a strong lease or if the franchise owns the building.
MLB has an antitrust exemption and can get away with blocking a team move the NFL does not have the same exemption
Good summary Roberto.
The only thing I can add is that Raiders II (the move back to Oakland) lead to a number of changes in all major sports cartel/league operations that centralized control over the individual businesses that form these leagues/cartels. Not least of these was a transfer of IP & trademarks (logos, wordmarks colours etc) from the individual teams to the league itself.
The net effect of this is that the “Al Davis loopholes” – namely the strategies he used to convince the courts that his was an ‘individual business’ operating in conjunction with others rather than a true franchise operating under the kinds of rules other types of franchises operate under – have largely been closed.
I would never say it is impossible for someone else to try to pull an Al Davis, but it is significantly harder now. The closest/most recent effort was Jerry Moyes as Coyotes’ owner.
He claimed he was losing significant money and needed to move or sell. He also claimed no-one was interested in buying the franchise in it’s current location, and negotiated a stalking horse ‘relocation’ bid from an owner no-one in the league wanted.
Who knows whether he actually believed he could force the sale to a buyer who would relocate against the league’s wishes. I would imagine he certainly felt that the $238m bid was the stalking horse that anyone else (including the NHL) would have to match. In fact, the franchise agreement (which is much more of a conditional ownership contract now than it would have been 15-20 years earlier) specified that NHL franchisees surrender the right to seek bankruptcy protection (among other things) and must commit to funding operations indefinitely or surrender their franchise to the league office.
In fact, neither happened because Moyes managed to get the franchise into Arizona bankruptcy court before Bettman/Daly could arrive to seize the franchise from him (they were, as I recall, on a plane when Moyes’ attorneys made the court petition. Not a coincidence, I would imagine)
The NHL did regain control of the franchise, but not via existing contract or franchise agreement… they had to buy it back for about $170m… then lose another $70m+ operating it for two seasons before selling it off to yet another short term ownership group who sold it on… to another group who sold it on… etc.
I don’t agree that ‘the only thing” that keeps franchises from relocating is a strong lease or building ownership. Sports cartels do have more control over these issues today than they ever have. But even when Connie Mack wanted to sell the A’s (because his family no longer had the money to operate the club for the upcoming season), he still needed 5 of 8 ownership votes to approve the sale to a local auto dealer. He didn’t get it, and was forced to take a secondary offer from a guy who owned both the Kansas City stadium and Yankee stadium… and funnily enough Arnold Johnson had no problem getting the 6 of 8 votes he needed to move to KC…
Interesting you bring up the Coyotes fiasco, Moyes and Basilke were 100% right about the Coyotes bad location. Glendale wasn’t on the wrong side of Phoenix, Phoenix can’t support hockey as has been proven year after year. Now the Coyotes have gone mute on a new arena. Are they actually going to buy the Alma School gravel pit? Are they going to bid on state trust land along the 101 in North Scottsdale? Here’s an easy question, do they have around $3 billion to build a hockey arena and development? NO.
“do they have around $3 billion to build a hockey arena and development? NO.”
But as we’ve seen, Gary will stop at nothing to make sure they stay…