It’s been almost a week since MLB owners okayed a move of the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas — eventually, provided owner John Fisher can build a $1.5 billion stadium there even with $600 million in public subsidies. So how are the hot takes doing?
- Bob Nightengale on USA Today reports that MLB executives say there’s a 10-year “flip tax” in the A’s move agreement that would see the league take part of the sale price if Fisher sells the team in the next decade: 20% if he sells before 2028, gradually decreasing to nothing in 2034. This is an interesting move to prevent the A’s owner from dumping the team and its stadium debt, but also raises the question: If you’re MLB, wouldn’t you want to create incentives for Fisher to go away and leave you alone, not to stick around as long as possible? It’s also unclear whether he’s prevented from selling minority shares in the club, say — it’s questions all the way down, really, but that’s to be expected with a relocation to a market that one MLB owner called “iffy” but claimed he voted for because he didn’t have any better ideas.
- Jason Burke of SI FanNation says (citing an unnamed member of “A’s Twitter”) that Fisher will have no reason to spend more on players in Vegas, because “with such a large reliance on tourism for this ballpark to succeed, there is no incentive for Fisher to spend money on the roster. The people coming out to the games will be rooting against the home team anyway. Why put money into the roster and disappoint the visiting fans?”
- Former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who launched the Howard Terminal project that Fisher ended up rejecting in favor of a Vegas move, said “Las Vegas would’ve been a very good expansion city for the MLB” but “to rip the hearts out of Oakland’s suffering sports fans was beyond demonic.” The A’s fans behind last year’s “reverse boycott,” meanwhile, are planning a regular boycott for Opening Day, where they’ll turn out in the Oakland Coliseum parking lot but not enter the game.
- Current Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao says that Fisher, who owns half of the Coliseum site, had better not “hold it hostage” by refusing to let it be redeveloped. Fisher’s response: “I appreciate that you want specific answers to the Coliseum question,” he told the L.A. Times’ Bill Shaikin, before changing the subject and not mentioning the Coliseum again.
- San Jose Mercury News columnist Dieter Kurtenbach says Thao should tell Fisher to take his team and pound sand after his lease ends following the 2024 season: “I want to see the A’s on a multi-year barnstorming tour of North America, playing games in any venue that will take them. They’d be the Harlem Globetrotters or Savannah Bananas but, you know, awful and no fun to watch.” It’s a sick burn because it’s true! (Also, wouldn’t the Globetrotters but no fun to watch make them the Washington Generals?)
Still to come: Fisher needs to find someone to loan him around a billion dollars for a stadium in that iffy market, needs to find a place for his team to play from 2025 through 2027, and, oh yeah, needs to get past a 2024 voter referendum and lawsuit by the Nevada teachers union that are both aiming to reverse the allocation of that $600 million in public stadium money. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: This is going to be a lot more entertaining than watching the A’s play baseball.
Why does Fisher need to agree to sell. Can’t Oakland just take the land (at market value) via eminent domain?
It’s an idea, certainly. And it would be tough for Fisher to argue the property isn’t blighted after everything he’s said about the stadium.
I’d like to see him move half of the earth via Mayflower moving trucks.
California eminent domain law is pretty property-owner friendly. Without a well-defined public purpose for the taking, the city would have no chance in court if Fisher wanted to fight. A city can’t take private property because it just wants to…
This one is easy; public housing.
There’s so many ways Fisher could fail that it’ll be a delight watching how it all plays out. I hope Oakland doesn’t give him an inch. He made the choice to leave, let him figure out where to play! Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
First housekeeping:
Neil, Happy Thanksgiving!
I’m thankful for the great work you do and sad it is still needed after 25 years.
OK…..
Has Fisher paid for his half of the Coliseum site? I remember hehad one of his famous “binding options” on the land.
And why would he block development? Wouldn’t he share half the profits?
Oh, wait *checks notes*
see: spite face, cut off nose.
That’s my question too, Jorge. Last time I checked, he had bought himself an option to purchase the Alameda county portion/percentage of the land, but had not completed the purchase.
So long as his option remains open, he could potentially be a thorn in the city’s side… but the city has options too. They could simply make an offer of equal or greater value for the asset to Alameda County. This should (unless AC is run by idiots who don’t believe in hiring lawyers to do lawyer work) trigger a short window for Fisher to pay up in full or leave AC free to accept the alternate offer.
Options have deadlines.
I wonder what
this one is?
I recommend to anyone who wants straight, hard truth about this whole saga/turn of events go over to newballpark.org and read latest post “TKOakland.”
NOT suggesting you’re being untruthful/telling lies Neil, but a bulk of your posts (along with reader comments) are too much on the “John Fisher is evil!” theme and completely ignoring Oakland’s many problems that led to this development: piss-poor local politics, lack of corporate support/disposable incomes in immediate region, rep as a crime-infested city to name a few of the many problems confronting “The Town.”
I guess we can all say Joe Lacob and Mark Davis are “evil” for abandoning Oakland as well. Hmmmmm?……
Just checked the archives, and I’ve never called Fisher “evil.” Can we all agree, at least, that he’s a bumbling, self-involved failson?
I think it’s a mistake to make too much of the Warriors leaving for SF. Yes, the Chase Center is better for them than Oracle was but in their last year at Oracle they lead the NBA in ticket revenue. People from other parts of the Bay Area absolutely will go to Oakland for games if the team bothers to try to make it a good experience. The Coliseum site is reasonably convenient for people coming from other parts of the area. I’d also like to point out that the A’s (and Warriors, etc) are regional teams, not strictly Oakland teams. Just because the Stadium happens to be in the Town shouldn’t mean that the relatively poor folks who live there should be expected to subsidize a sporting facility enjoyed by residents of wealthier areas coming in for the games.
Also too – blaming local politics for the failure at Howard Terminal is unfair. It was always an idiotic place for a stadium with a nearly endless list of hurdles to overcome and problems that would have made it less than ideal for fans. That’s not Oakland’s fault. That’s Fisher’s fault because he got a bug up his butt about a waterfront stadium and a huge pipe dream of a multi-billion dollar redevelopment he was never going to be able to build. This is all on Fisher and his second rate sidekick Kaval.
Yes we can agree!
What makes newballpark.org the sole purveyor of “straight hard truth”, Antonio?
They are entitled to their opinion, just as you are.
Impartiality is never going to be found on a site dedicated to giving Fisher whatever he wants without question, or from a fan who wanted the team relocated to San Jose (or from me, for that matter).
But facts are facts:
1. Fisher had more money on the table in Oakland than he has in Vegas.
2. The stadium he must build in Vegas will cost around twice as much as the one he could have built in Oakland.
3. Vegas is dramatically smaller market than Oakland’s side of the Bay Area.
4. The RSN value of the Vegas MLB team will be significantly less than Oakland’s
5. He is moving primarily because he is guaranteed permanent MLB welfare checks if he does (which, as business incentives go, is an insane offer from MLB)
Literally none of those things are within Oakland’s power to control.
I would never argue there weren’t mistakes and incompetence from Oakland’s city management and administration – there were (chief among those: the deal to bring the Raiders back when Davis pretty much had nowhere else to go…. St. Louis Raiders anyone? I don’t think so…)
But all we have ever heard from the ‘anywhere but Oakland’ crowd is how Oakland failed the A’s.
There is no evidence that the Haas family ever put forward a viable proposal for a replacement stadium (despite their comments about ‘getting something done’). Ditto Schott & Hoffman (who were really about building the farm system up – understandable). Lew Wolff began his stadium quest as Fisher’s partner and mouthpiece by saying “There is no Oakland option”. That is very much the position that remains the current ownership’s line in the sand.
“We will not accept any Oakland option except that we be paid to operate a multibillion dollar business development with a baseball park attached at HT”.
Even Wolff himself claimed HT was utterly impossible from a financial perspective. As, I believe, you and I both agreed on… it is impossible to do in a profitable manner.
So the A’s position is and always has been “Oakland – there is only one option and we’ll make sure that option is impossible to do”.
Not much of a negotiating position to work from if you are a city/elected official, is it?
He’s not smart enough to be evil.
So, fun things you can do on your own. Open your Command/Terminal on your computer of choice and at the prompt type in “whois website.com”. It will tell you where the domain is hosted, when it started being hosted, when it was updated, who registered it, who administers, and other interesting details.
Except when you do that for “newballpark.org” because almost all the information is redacted. Contrast that with “google.com” which you will see is both registered and administered by Google LLC.
It’s almost like that site is astroturf, designed to look grassroots while being 100% the exact opposite. And whoever set it up went to a good deal of effort to make sure no one can find them.
Isn’t learning fun?
Except that site ownership redaction is a common service that anyone can use, and lots of people do to avoid spam:
https://developers.cloudflare.com/registrar/account-options/whois-redaction/
The guy who goes by Marine Layer, Rhamesis Muncada, has been running that site for a long time, I’m pretty sure since before he moved from Oakland to Arizona. I’ve agreed with him at times, and disagreed with him at others, but he’s never struck me as anything other than what he claims to be: a blogger and A’s fan who has been following this story for a long time (even longer than our own Antonio2020) and has strong opinions about it (even stronger than … okay, maybe not). Conspiracy theories are fun and easy, but they have the downside of very seldom being right.
Fair enough. But I’d argue it’s not a conspiracy theory.
In my experience, those records are complete and for very good reasons. And also in my experience, records are redacted when you don’t want people to know something. The person doing the redacting is always the one saying “you don’t need to know this”.
I have thoughts…
1) That “flip tax” seems incredibly light, especially given that the relocation fee was waived.
2) While I’m philosophically all-in on a boycott, since it costs $20 (?) to park, wouldn’t that be revenue for Fisher? Or does parking money go to the city (or half of it anyway)?
3) Seems like Sheng Thao shouldn’t give Fisher ideas. Normally, I’d say the A’s would have come up with that on their own, but it’s Fisher et al, after all.
4) Completely on board with the city not extending the A’s lease. Pound sand. I also hope the Giants don’t accommodate them either. Yes, it would be revenue, but there would be some blowback from Giants ticket-holders who find everything about Fisher to be distasteful.
2) They could take BART to the stadium. That may preclude them from setting up grills to BBQ, but they would still get to the parking lot without giving money to the team.
I have had Giants season tix for over 20 years . Just sent this to my ticket rep “if you bail John Fisher out of his clown car show by letting him play in Oracle I will burn all my Giants hats and Jerseys”
Nice!
Maybe the Giants could pull a Harold Ballard on Fisher… you know, rent him the stadium for an exorbitant fee, then refuse to turn on the lights or power to the concessions unless they pay more for every single ‘addition’ to the rental contract…
Wow! Is it ever Failson-Rut week!
Maybe they have somehow learned about my proposal for an ‘ultimate failson challenge’ week on your favourite reality tv network? (which, let’s be honest, is pretty much all of them these days).
We’ve got Fisher, Dolan and Irsay all out there displaying for all they are worth…. good job boys! There may still be a handful of people out there who don’t know just how dumb and entitled you three are!
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/sports/nba/knicks-james-dolan-resigned-from-nba-board-committee-positions/ar-AA1kj0il
Favourite part:
“… As you know, I am very busy with all my duties at MSG family of companies. I need to apply my time where I can be most productive.”
As a live music fan, I can only say ‘from JD’s lips to God’s ears… with all haste’…
Dolan loves owning MSG. Dolan also doesn’t give a fuck about the Knicks. Even he’s not stupid enough to sell that building. He might sell if the building isn’t part of the deal though.
You cannot blame them for wanting to leave Oakland or California.
Yes you can. Especially since they’re moving to a stadium that does not exist in a city that should not exist.
2022 personal income in Alameda County, CA (page 7) was $97,754. 2022 personal income in Clark County, NV (page 33) was $59,150.
https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/lapi1123.pdf
I would pay real money if someone would explain to the former mayor of Oakland and everyone else who started doing it recently that they should stop calling baseball “the MLB.”
If it actually stands for “Malevolent League of Billionaires” it is grammatically correct, at least.
Of course, there’s also “Manfred Lobbying for Boneheads” and many other possibilities…
So one question I have is what are the media territory rights for fisher in Vegas? I would not think the the A’s would be able to broadcast anywhere in California or Arizona. Neveda is very populous and being hemmed in to only neveda seems like losing proposition
Neveda isn’t very populous
They probably would be granted the state of Nevada and a bit of southern Utah. But by the time they get to Vegas the media rights for smaller markets will be pretty useless. If Minnesota can’t get a broadcaster with their sizable RSN territory, Las Vegas doesn’t have a chance.
By the time the Fisher Clown Car lets the team off in Vegas, RSNs will be dead. Fisher or whomever ends up owning the team will get a few bucks for broadcasting games on an over-the-air Las Vegas TV station, and maybe one in Reno as well, and that’s it.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Now they’re saying Kaval and Fisher are just going to do a copy of the rangers stadium in Arlington. The really funny thing is that the Hokkaido Ham-Fighters already did this.
On nine acres?
10 acres
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2023/04/03/Insiders/facilities.aspx
I guess if they knock off 5,000 seats to get to 30,000 they might be able to fit it on nine acres. Still going to be tight. (The Rangers’ stadium is 40,000 seats and 13 acres.)
And the Rangers’ stadium actually takes up 18 acres:
J.C. Bradbury @jc_bradbury Nov 22
The story says Globe Life Field “sits on 13 acres,” but that doesn’t account for the space needed to open the roof, which is kind of important. I don’t see how this design will work on the Las Vegas plot.
I just like how Kaval and company promised an unforgettable unique state of the art baseball experience to the legislature- and at the end of the day they’re copying something that’s already been copied. You can literally experience this ballpark in 2 other places
Well Al, like everything associated with those two clowns, ‘it’s not as big/impressive as it is supposed to be’.
Smallish, shabby, unimpressive, unsuited to the job it was intended for… really the jokes just write themselves at this point.
And given the -ummm, lack of size issue, I would bet they have already given up on the roof opening part. Whatever shitty cheap design they finally settle on will have a fixed roof and maybe a couple of discount fake glass panels that can be opened somewhere under the non moving roof.
If there is one thing we have learned about these two idiots, it is that nothing they ever say should be believed by anyone.
The public money allocated to the A’s for the Las Vegas move is “only” $380 million, but who needs facts when you’re trying to spin the story to fit a narrative?
Don’t get me wrong, John Fisher is complete garbage and the A’s move to Las Vegas will be even more of a dumpster fire than Oakland has been, but the least you could do is get the facts right.
The $380 million figure is widely quoted, but it doesn’t include several items: excess TIF proceeds to be used for additional capital improvements, a full property tax break, and a waiver of the state’s entertainment tax. Add those in, and you’re at $600 million at least.
More details and citations here:
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2023/05/27/20012/vegas-as-stadium-could-cost-public-500m-counting-property-tax-breaks-and-hidden-renovation-fund/
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2023/05/22/19981/county-worries-over-vegas-as-tif-fisher-prepares-new-100m-tax-break-request-oakland-stadium-still-a-possibility/
I thought that the Rams move to Los Angeles was a shit-show, but this makes that fiasco look like the bumblings of amateurs.
Well, at least the Savannah Bananas have a home stadium.