Friday roundup: Fresh A’s vaportecture incoming, OKC readies for $850m arena vote, Revolution stadium hits snag

I don’t even know where to start with this week, but suffice to say that this keeps rolling on, with no end in sight. At least, for the second consecutive day, Henry Kissinger remains dead.

And, like death and union-busting, the great stadium swindle shows no signs of going away anytime soon:

  • New Las Vegas stadium renderings for the Oakland A’s are due to be released on Monday, and A’s owner John Fisher is even scheduled to show up. (Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz notes that “Fisher is known for not interacting with fans and making public appearances to discuss his baseball team,” which is a polite way of saying that he don’t like people.) Ha ha, the Las Vegas Sun illustrated its article on this with the June stadium renderings that Fisher’s honchos immediately declared to not actually be what the stadium will look like — LOLSun, go read Snel’s coverage instead, if only for his awesome photo filenames. Meanwhile, Nevada Independent sports business reporter Howard Stutz warned that Fisher still has a lot of hoops to jump through before he can move the team — the referendum, the lawsuit, the finding another billion dollars — and “we’re not going to see much other than public meetings and different announcements over the next year,” so enjoy the dogs and ponies for now.
  • Elsewhere in A’s news, Fisher hasn’t officially notified Oakland that he plans to leave town, in order to postpone a $45 million payment to Alameda County for purchasing half of the Oakland Coliseum property. San Jose Mercury News columnist Daniel Borenstein notes that “county supervisors never bothered to require that the team stay in Oakland as a condition for acquiring the rights to the Coliseum property,” whoops, that would have been an idea, somebody make a note of that for next time.
  • The Oklahoma County Democratic Party held a panel discussion in anticipation of next week’s voter referendum on spending $850 million on a new Thunder stadium while team owners spend $50 million. Party affirmative action officer Nabilah Rawdah said the funding mechanism would be “a regressive sales tax,” which, yup, all sales taxes are regressive, and would cost city residents “around $1,200 per person,” which, yup, math. Central Oklahoma Federation of Labor president Tim O’Connor countered, “JOBS!!1!,” because he got an agreement that the project will use union labor. (Yes, it is possible to hate union-busting and to accept that actually existing unions are maybe not their most perfect selves right now.)
  • Plans for a New England Revolution stadium in Everett, just north of Boston, hit a speed bump in the Massachusetts state legislature when the plan was removed from a state budget bill in conference committee. The Boston Globe notes that the stadium would cost $600 million and “no public money is being sought — for now,” which is maybe not the most reassuring; the memorandum of understanding is only seven pages long and doesn’t provide any details on the project finances, more like a memorandum of misunderstanding, amirite?
  • They’re still talking about that damn Dodger Stadium gondola five years later — LOLgondola, don’t make me send Alissa Walker in there.
  • Baltimore Orioles owner John Angelos may now sign a new lease and work out the details of his insanely lucrative 99-year development rights agreement later, after insisting he wouldn’t sign one without the other, wut? Guess he’s convinced now that the state is happy to give him everything he wants and he doesn’t want figuring out what he wants to get in the way of having a stadium to play in next year, guess the state had leverage after all, somebody make a note of that for next time.

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10 comments on “Friday roundup: Fresh A’s vaportecture incoming, OKC readies for $850m arena vote, Revolution stadium hits snag

  1. Since OKC population is growing fairly quickly, shouldn’t the city just approve construction of apartment buildings to get money in the pockets of the unions? Meh, those are probably different unions.

  2. I enjoyed the headline this week that the Oakland Bs (for baller they say) want to take the town by storm. It’s unclear who they are, what league they’re in, but they want to play in the coliseum.

    It seems like a lot of blather. But I’m sure some sort of stadium funding will come up in conversation.

    Note: I will admit I didn’t really look into the details. Just the headline and the few paragraphs that accompanied the article was enough to elicit a chuckle.

    1. The B’s are the Pioneer League, which used to be affiliated but is now a “partner league” like the Atlantic League. And they’re playing at Laney College for now. I was going to link to it in this post, but ran out of time:

      https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/11/28/oakland-is-getting-a-new-minor-league-team-the-oakland-bs/

      1. I’m not sure why the B’s chose a league where the nearest team is in Boise, 635 miles away, instead of the Pecos League, where the furthest team is in Bakersfield, 272 miles away, with the rest of the teams within a reasonable bus ride.

        I’m a fossil, but when 3 independent leagues merged to form the North American League, travel costs were challenging for a league with teams in Alberta, Texas, and Hawaii.

        I’m a big fan of Independent Baseball, and would love to see the B’s succeed.

        I’m not seeing a way around the travel costs.

      2. I agree Joe. I would love to see an indy league succeed, but to do so it would need to be based in large enough cities to warrant television coverage.

        It might be possible to run a decent indy league based on some sort of shared revenue from OTA broadcasts (advertising supported, obviously), but you would need relatively large markets and very deep pocketed owners willing to lose money for a decade on average before the league/teams could build up a reasonable following (if they could).

        It’s possible (Lamar Hunt did it twice, once with Anschutz and co in the 90s and the other in the 60s, of course). But is it likely? I’m not sure.

        Unless you are very wealthy and just want to thumb your nose at MLB and do things differently, I don’t see the payback (moral or financial). As these folks are playing in an affiliated league, clearly that is not the case here.

        There are a handful of super wealthy individuals who could start their own 10-12 team baseball or football league (and build their own stadia) using cash.

        It looks to me like the B’s ownership are just another in a long line of sports owners who mean well and will work hard and probably have close to no chance of succeeding. Maybe they are wealthy enough to absorb the losses… but we have seen many times that hard work and honest effort isn’t enough.

        I really hope this time is different.

        1. There’s a reason there hasn’t been a serious attempt to challenge the existing major leagues in 110 years:

          You can’t get players.

          The 1994 strike and 1995 spring training showed us the level of player they’d be looking at, even if they could get them. And they could not possibly outbid MLB teams for legitimate players.

          A third, independent, quasi-major league simply would not fly.

          As for the idea that they could pay for stadiums/ballparks with cash…who does that, exactly? People don’t do that when they’re guaranteed to draw 2 million people in a season. (That’s literally the point of this site, isn’t it?)

          Good luck with Federal League II.

          1. The independent leagues try to get players around the AA level.

            A lot of players peak at that level. The major league organizations want to move them out to make room for potential prospects, but they still are decent players.

            And there are guys coming back from injuries etc. who bet on themselves and get on an independent team hoping to get back into a MLB organization and maybe get to the majors.

          2. KT: Literally nowhere in my post above do I suggest an independent major league was in any way related to the Oakland “B’s”. Nowhere.

            Yet you ran with it like that is exactly what I said. Possibly a 2am thing?

            I’ll answer your points anyway:

            1. The downsizing of MiLB has left hundreds (over the course of a few seasons, thousands) of college and HS players with nowhere to play. You absolutely can get players, and now you can get players who no longer have any hope of a place to play in affiliated baseball (or who are offered something like an internship during which they have to pay to launder their own uniforms while working for free in an MLB affiliated league…), much less any legitimate path to the major leagues. They exist in large number – and that number is growing every year thanks to MLB’s myopic decision to assault the minor league system and gut the draft.

            Would these players be MLB calibre? Most of them, no.
            Could they play an attractive level of baseball? Yes they could. And they do.
            What we are talking about is something more akin to the independent PCL of decades past. It would start quite humbly as an attraction for baseball fans whom MLB have banished or otherwise lost in one way or another: People who love baseball but despise the people who run MLB.

            2. The reason owners don’t pay for their own ballparks/stadia is because they think they can stick the general public with the cost of doing so. Because we have weak and vain politicians dying for a photo op, they are often (but not always) right. There is simply no argument that can be made to defend spending $225m on player salaries annually while claiming poverty when the need to float a $30-40m annual mortgage or bond payment for a new stadium arises. Hence the name of this site.

            Lucky for the NFL that Jeff Bezos isn’t a football fan. He could have bought the XFL (or simply started his own league), built his own stadiums and hired his own players – including NFL level talent – and put the product on his own tv platform. All without putting his personal wealth in any serious jeopardy. He is not only wealthier than any NFL owner, for example, he could be wealthier than all of them put together.

            And he is not alone in that in this, our new gilded age.

            With respect to your comment about “replacement players” in 94/95, they were never used in a Major League game. Secondly, due to union rules, only players not on an MLB 40 man roster (or not eligible to be) were able to be signed – and in a hurry. The owners put that plan together in haphazard fashion and without much thought to the consequences (at a time when the national broadcast deals were expiring…)

            So you had a collection of retired players and a few young ones who would go on to MLB careers (Kevin Millar, Benny Agbayani, Cory Lidle, Shane Spencer, Brendan Donnelly etc) mixed in with a significant number who had no future in the game at all. It is also important to remember that many good young players who could have been eligible refused to sign because they knew they had a career in baseball ahead of them… and were warned by MLBPA members not to undermine the PA’s position in the strike.

            In the strike/lockout year, the situation was dramatically different. The pool of available players was much, much smaller than it would be today, and the short timeline the owners imposed lead to a hodge podge of far-from mlb level talent playing. Also, if you’ve watched spring training baseball, you know the quality isn’t great even when the best players are available (that’s what spring training is for…).

            3. There have been efforts to start other major leagues. One of the reasons MLB expanded/relocated franchises to the west coast was precisely because they were concerned the PCL was growing in both stature and financial base and might become a legitimate competitor. You appear to have forgotten the Continental League also. It was reasonably well funded (at least as far as owner’s commitment went) but never played a game – in no small part because MLB hastily approved expansion to several of the cities the CL had targeted. Indeed, it’s founder had the Mets/Jets new stadium named after him just a few years later. The CL was different in that it intended to be part of affiliated baseball and respect NL/AL contracts, not an outlaw league like the AFL/original USFL were (and, of course, the original American League…), but it was a legitimate effort with real backing. And of it’s 8 designated host cities, all but one would get an MLB franchise within a decade.

            Finally: it is not 1914.
            And like most ‘startup’ competitor leagues (including the original “players league”), the Federal league was woefully undercapitalized. The ones that have committed owners and capital (the AFL, MLS, the American League) have tended to survive and sometimes even prosper.

            New leagues that spring into existence and expect/need to be profitable immediately tend not to last more than a year or two (the list is long). The only conclusion to draw from that is that if you don’t have the money to do something you shouldn’t do it – not that it is an impossibility.

  3. This Kurtenbach article pretty much sums it up:

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/17/kurtenbach-its-time-for-oakland-to-stand-up-for-itself-send-the-as-packing-early/

    Unless the AC – FishCo option to purchase agreement was written by an idiot (or more than one), it should contain several sunset clauses that can be triggered by the seller in the event the purchaser fails to pay or otherwise shows signs of non compliance with the agreement (in letter or principle).

    At a minimum, ANY of the team ownership’s multiple binding agreements for land purchase for a ballpark elsewhere should have triggered a 90 (or better yet 30) day window to either complete the purchase or abandon their interest – with no refund due on any money already paid. This is effectively just a rent to own, and anyone who has been on either end of those knows that you do not own until payment is complete.

    Whether or not any “intent to leave” clause has been triggered (and pause to consider how stupid the county would be to leave that completely in the tenants’ hands…), the County could easily (and should already have) send a letter to the club demanding that they notify the property owners – within 60 days – whether they intend to vacate by the end of 2024 or earlier. Further, a failure to respond by the 60 day deadline would be taken as evidence of departure no later than 1 December 2024 and require the team to meet it’s payment obligations under the terms of the option to purchase.

    The thing that always gets me in these situations is that billionaires are handed swiss cheese contracts/options that would never be offered to anyone else.

    When you are dealing with someone who has expensive lawyers on retainer, that is the last thing you want to do.

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