It’s a bit of a crazed day over here, so apologies in advance if this roundup is more perfunctory than usual or arrives at an unusual hour.* (I don’t know yet, haven’t finished writing it!)
Here’s what’s happening:
- I already recapped Rob Manfred’s post-Oakland-A’s-to-Vegas-approval press conference in an update yesterday, but “In terms of the public support that was available, the waving of a relocation fee made that support stronger. … That’s the best I can do for you on that one” is a keeper in the MLB commissioner’s long litany of word salads. As I wrote yesterday: Rob Manfred, saying the quiet parts loud since 2015.
- Weirdest headline of A’s-to-Vegas week goes to Utah’s Deseret News, which ran with “Could Salt Lake City face more competition for an MLB team?” (Though Salt Lake is at least a bigger TV market than Las Vegas, I’ll give it that.)
- The Philadelphia 76ers held their first community input meeting on their proposed arena yesterday, and promptly ejected some community members for providing input (via signs reading things like “‘Privately-Funded’? State/Federal $$ is still public”) that they disapproved of. People wearing “PRO-JOBS PRO-UNION PRO-ARENA” T-shirts were allowed to remain.
- Bruce Murphy in Urban Milwaukee wrote a long postmortem of the finalized Brewers subsidy deal, and the tl;dr is: The team is profitable and soaring in value and nobody actually studied how much in upgrades the stadium actually needs, yet team owner Mark Attanasio didn’t even have to lobby hard to get the state legislature to hand him everything he wanted (less a few million dollars off the public price tag that he kept ratcheting up as things went along). Even more tl;dr: WTF, Wisconsin legislature?
- Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman still hasn’t made the decision between two possible stadium sites that he promised would come back in September, and now he’s maybe considering a third site? That’s his prerogative as a member of the bourgeoisie, of course, but it’s also our prerogative to then wonder if he’s just trying to throw more rumored bidders into the game to try to get Kansas City and North Kansas City to up their antes.
- Construction unions are pro-construction of pretty much anything including soccer stadiums, local newspaper gives them op-ed space to say this, film at 11. The same paper reports that “new details” of said NYC F.C. stadium were revealed this week, and … nope, no actual new details, other than Mayor Turkish-Bribes (alleged) asserting that it will be the “first fully electric sports stadium in Major League Soccer,” and he does know electricity!
*Sure did! Enjoy your late-Friday roundup, and see you Monday.
“We believe Vegas is such a strong baseball market that we’ll not only forgo a bidding war for an expansion team in that city, but we’ll also waive the relocation fees for any team that wants to set up shop in that potential gold mine” is honestly an impressive bit of double talk. Somebody is gonna have to walk all of us through that one.
Fully electric stadium? The last one of those I saw quickly ended up with all the players bunched into one corner.
We have a winner!
Is that a Giants joke? Because it would be a great one if it is (even accidentally).
And yes, I remember the coleco vibrating football field… I even had one.
I had the same thought.
Look, Bobbie Sherman isn’t going to hang around in Kansas City waiting for you people to agree to give him an undetermined amount of money for an undetermined purpose at an undetermined time.
He can’t wait.
And you Kansanians need to understand that there is a perfectly good Major League Baseball stadium just sitting there in Oakland without a team now. Do you think Allie Sherman hasn’t noticed that? Businessmen are in the business of knowing business things, my friends.
So wait this one out at your own peril Kansas*. Don’t come crying to me if your team leaves for Oakland again. You have been worned. And advised.
If there is an development that would be adverse in the development sense that would be a development with respect to the Kansas City Royals. I can’t make it any planer for you than that.
So on your own recognizance be it.
“Bobbie Sherman”
*Lisa Simpson laughing.gif*
Name the relocated team the Vegas Vigs
Can’t wait for Oakland to be floated as a relocation threat for another KC team.
Thought this was interesting… the piece contains a number of errors (like SF getting ‘all of” the bay to itself… which it does not – at least as far as MLB official territory goes.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2023/11/16/oakland-athletics-move-to-las-vegas-approved-mlb-owners/71602944007/
I would love to know what that ‘binding protection provision’ is. Other sites are reporting it is essentially a back door relocation fee/tax to be charged if Fisher flips the team. No details on whether it has an expiry date or a sliding scale etc, or whether it applies only to a total sale, a sale of controlling interest or a ‘raise new capital’ sale of, say, 1-30% of the team.
Nightengale reported the “flip tax” schedule in another article, though he failed to link to it in the one you mention:
“If Fisher sells before 2028, he will be taxed 20% of the purchase price, which will be split among owners.
“If Fisher sells in 2029, he will be taxed 10%.
“If he sells in 2030-2033, he will be taxed a decreasing amount each year.
“He will be unable to sell the team without being taxed until 2034.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2023/11/19/san-diego-padres-owner-peter-seidler-dies-mlb-peers/71642106007/
Thanks Neil.
I still don’t understand waiving the relocation fee… I mean, even if Vegas wasn’t seen as a desirable (or even viable) expansion city, you still want to charge a base fee for moving a franchise I would think.
I mean, these clowns don’t use public washrooms without wanting someone to pay them for their effort on the public’s behalf…