Before we get to the news, please take a moment to vote in yesterday’s poll on the fate of the Oakland A’s if you haven’t already done so: So many of you responded that Survey Monkey made me pay an obscene amount of money to see the results, so may as well get my money’s worth! I’ll close the poll and present the results on Monday.
While we wait for the returns to come in, how about some nice, crunchy news?
- The Cleveland Browns owners are reportedly “looking at” land in the southwestern suburb of Brook Park as a possible stadium site, though the mayor of Brook Park says he has heard “nothing” from the team. “As part of our comprehensive planning efforts, we are also studying other potential stadium options in Northeast Ohio at various additional sites,” the team said in a prepared statement, which either means 1) we’ll consider a stadium anywhere that we think we can get a pile of money for it, 2) we don’t want to move to the suburbs, but if it helps throw a scare into the city to give us money, that’ll work, or 3) either way works, we’ll take what we can get.
- Arizona Coyotes CEO Xavier Gutierrez met separately with both Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and her chief of staff before filing an application to buy state trust land for a new arena at auction, and the chief of staff used to be a lobbyist for the Coyotes, and this is just a rat’s nest of conflict of interest. “That is just one of those fundamental principles that you can’t go into government and then help your former employer,” said Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota Law School professor who co-authored an ethics guide for public employees, and it’s possible he has mistaken “can’t” for “shouldn’t,” because [gestures at the entire history of U.S. politics].
- MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday that he’ll be “disappointed” if a new Las Vegas stadium for the A’s isn’t open by 2028, and that a decision on the team’s temporary home will be made “in the next few months,” adding, “it’s clearly going to be someplace in the West.” No word at press time on whether Manfred indicated how many syllables it will have, or what it rhymes with.
- Speaking of commissioners commissionering, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says if a new Chicago Bears stadium, wherever it may be, has a dome, it could host “additional events,” and even if he didn’t say “Super Bowl” you know he meant the Super Bowl. And you get a Super Bowl, and you…
- Now economists J.C. Bradbury and Geoffrey Propheter are tag-teaming all the misinformation Washington Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis is spreading about the economic benefits of his new $2 billion Alexandria, Virginia arena project that would cost the public more than $1 billion, and it’s kind of awesome.
What this really underscores is that as far as these leagues are concerned, there always has to be a bottom team when it comes to the venues game. There is *never* a time when every team has its stadium situation sorted out, when every team is being “supported” adequately by their respective market/municipality.
Once the NFL gets the Jacksonville issue sorted out — whether with a new deal locally or with a move across the ocean — it’ll be some other city like Chicago or Cleveland that “needs” a stadium resolution. Ditto MLB whenever Oakland and Tampa Bay eventually figure out what to do, in spite of how much it loves to talk about expanding.
That is true.
The Coyotes are really the only team that absolutely has to move as soon as humanly possible. Maybe that could also be said about the Oakland Coliseum or the Trop, but not to the same degree.
If the Jags move to London, it also opens up Jax for potential ‘maybe we move there’ leverage for other owners looking to extort money for a new stadium. Win-win for the NFL..
There is absolutely no need for a new stadium in Cleveland. It’s only been open since ’99. Let Haslam pay for the whole stadium or tell this fraud to hit the road and keep the current stadium.
London is 25 times the size of Jacksonville, move them already. Move them to the AFC East wth New England, Jets and Buffalo(should be Toronto) and travel times will be slightly more than the West Coast and the NFL gets alot of 10am ET games to sell to a TV provider for £££billions.
If a european based franchise played most of it’s home games at 7 or 8 pm local time, there would be no issue with the games being outside of a “normal” tv window for the NFL on Sunday.
There are really no significant impediments to having a full “international” division in the NFL beyond the usual kvetching about stadium cash (which non-north american countries are less inclined to do) and how broadcast rights would be sold (IE: as part of the standard NFL package? To domestic rights holders in the country of origin? As part of some as yet not existing NFL international service? Sell them three different times??).
Both Montreal and Toronto consider themselves “international” cities. Either could form part of an international or european based division (yes, I know, but Dallas isn’t an eastern city, and St. Louis – despite being very much a midwestern/central city, has played in the east and west, but never central.
It’s easy to see one or two European cities as hosts for NFL teams (London, Berlin, Frankfurt etc). But if you need four or six, the math gets more complicated… and the more teams you have the fewer interlocking games are needed for the “world” division. Teams in Mexico or Japan pose more significant issues in some ways, but none are insurmountable.
It could easily be done if the will was there.
It would be a pretty big disadvantage for a European team to have to travel 5-8 time zones for every road game. I guess they could bunch road games so they could stay in North America for a month at a time, but then they would be away from their homes that whole time.
Not saying it’s impossible, but there would be challenges. Having a team in London would benefit the NFL a fair bit by staking a claim to that TV market, but whichever owner ended up there would be getting a bit of the short end of the stick.
The timezone shift is underappreciated.
It would be very hard for them to attract free agents.
American football is probably more popular in Germany than in the UK, but that is even further away.
With a nice, customized 777-300ER, 4 or 5 one week trips to the US (2 games per trip) wouldn’t be too bad. Playoffs could be a problem, but not too big, given Jacksonville has only played 8 playoff games in the last 24 years. And Miami is in the East with those other teams near Canada? Owning the TV rights for the only NFL team in all of Britain wouldn’t bring in any dollars, but the £££ would be rolling in.
All good points, Gentlemen, but if a full division of four (or more) teams were set up in Europe, the number of transatlantic crossings would be reduced dramatically. And each one would be ten days duration so that two games are played on each trip. I agree that being “the only” European team would be tough, but it’s still not impossible. For many years, being the Rams/49ers in the NFC was ‘tough’. They flew a lot more than anyone else. They still did it.
NFL owners not in North America would definitely be getting the short end of the stick… which would mean the expansion franchises would have to go for less money and/or the domestic TV money would not be shared… (which amounts to the same thing. Would european teams be full partners or not? If not, what is the point from either the buyer or seller’s perspective?).
The point is it is not a geographic problem so much as it is a financial one. IF the NFL wanted a European team or division, they could have it. The only barrier is their own greed/disinterest.
While I’m certain many free agents aren’t going to be all that keen on playing in Europe, if they are making NFL wages they will go. FAs aren’t all that keen on Jacksonville, Indianapolis or some other (existing) locations either. But they go if the money is there.
It’s all good talking about a European division. How do you fit one into the existing NFL? Perhaps you add four teams to make it 36 total… how will the league shift the numbers to make the divisions and conferences make sense? You can maybe move four existing teams across the ocean (or oceans) to keep it 32… will even one city ultimately decide to let its team leave, let alone four?
To me, a significant part of the NFL’s international push is the league’s belief that it may have maxed out its earning power domestically, that there’s no market left in the US where it could realistically set up shop and cultivate a lasting, lucrative following. Any new growth may have to come from places where the NFL has had little to no exposure, the kinds of places where watching games might require an add-on package on top of a regular TV subscription. This would explain why the NFL might play games in Spain and Brazil next year, instead of, say, Salt Lake City or Orlando.
On the other hand, as much as we refer to places like Jax and Carolina as “struggling” markets, their respective teams still generate profits for their owners; we’d be hearing endlessly about those teams being in the red if that were actually happening. They’re also among the youngest markets in the NFL, and they’re just now at the point where the first generation of fans who grew up with the team are buying tickets for not just themselves, but their own kids as well.
This, in the end, is the desired outcome of expansion teams. If people were this impatient about NFL markets in the 80s and 90s, we could very be talking about places like New Orleans, Tampa, and Phoenix as former NFL markets today.
There’s also an argument to be made that simply taking games overseas is greedy enough of a move in its own right for the NFL. We don’t think of it that way now because we’ve been conditioned to accept the international games as a means to “grow the game,” but the next stage of this is obviously going to be the NFL priming us to the idea of international franchises within the league, which might be a considerably more difficult sell for the average fan.
I will say that beyond logistics — the NFL used the Jaguars basically as guinea pigs last year for the London games (one “at home”, the next one “on the road”), and there was a good deal of backlash about *that* whole experiment — the variation in labor and immigration laws would presumably present far bigger obstacles to the NFL plopping franchises there than anything about stadiums or about their its greed. London alone has two viable locations for a future permanent NFL home; it likely wouldn’t take much for Shad Khan or any other prospective “pioneer” to draw up a lease agreement and present it to the relevant parties (or even for Khan to sell Fulham, buy Spurs and their stadium, and turn his NFL team into co-tenants).
Whether the paperworks check out and the bureaucracies approve of it is a whole different matter. The UK no longer operating under EU regulations would theoretically remove some barriers, but how many more moving parts would be required for this to actually happen, let alone work out well in the long run?
The ideal would be for the A’s to play in both Sacramento and SLC (perhaps 1 year in Sac and then 2 in SLC?). That would allow MLB to sort of test-drive these potential markets and evaluate them ahead of any expansion bids, help generate interest in the A’s and MLB in general across a broader geographic range and help build up MLB’s business/media connections to these areas. Would be even better if they could do one year in Portland, but I’m not sure Portland is actually as interested in a team at the institutional/business level as Sac and SLC are.
Is a barnstorming tour really a fair “test drive,” though? There will be no team loyalty, because everybody knows the team will be gone in short order. There will be no must-see stars on the team, because John Fisher doesn’t spend money. About the only thing you’d learn is how much interest there is in seeing the big-name, big-market teams come to town (Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, etc).
And you have the risk of MLB attendance being upstaged by the local minor-league team, who certainly won’t get forced out temporarily. I know for sure that the Sacramento RiverCats are usually well-attended, especially because the extended Giants fandom can come see the up-and-coming Giants players, or a big-league player on a rehab assignment.
All in all, temporary residency has the distinct risk of being even more embarrassing for MLB than this whole debacle has already been. That’s the thing, Major League Baseball, as the oldest of the 4 big sports leagues, and “America’s pastime” blah blah blah, should not need to “build up business/media connections.” Deciding on a new market should open doors all by itself. But the owners that make up the governing body are throwing away the last scraps of that prestige by letting an incompetent waffler like Fisher hang around, and by entertaining this silly “give, then take away” barnstorming idea. If another major scandal hit an MLB team, they’d be operating on the same level as WWE.
If I had to make up numbers, I’d say it’s 60/40 this ends up with them crawling back to Oakland, and shortly after that you hear rumblings about Fisher cashing out. 20% chance, if the logjam breaks in Vegas, they negotiate a deal on unfavorable terms to play in SF for 3 years. 20% chance at best that this barnstorming silliness, or picking a temporary city, actually happens.
With respect to the “test drive” concept, I have in mind the games that MLB has had or is planning in places like London, Mexico, Korea, DR, the “Field of Dreams” in Iowa, even the time spent by the Jays in Buffalo and so forth. There isn’t always long term team loyalty in those situations, but it nonetheless exposes people in a new geographic region to MLB and provides a lot of insight into that market.
I don’t really think being “upstaged” by a AAA team is a major risk. It would be an embarrassing misstep but I’m not sure it would amount to much ultimately. I’m thinking of something like the Expos playing part of a season in San Juan. It didn’t pan out as MLB expected and there were some embarrassing low attendance games there, but it’s just a trivia note years later.
I’m not sure that this has been much of a debacle or all that embarrassing for MLB. If Fisher does get the A’s to Vegas, I doubt that rando MLB fans across the country are going to be like “yes, but renderings were delayed by [X] months in 2024 and there were low attendance games in Sacramento in 2025” or something like that. *shrugs* It’ll all be water under the bridge by then or just part of the ’30 for 30′ drama.
The London and Australia and wherever MLB games are not test drives. They are brand extensions/money grabs. They are not testing out whether a team would be supported in London.
People in Sacto would turn up for the novelty, but they wouldn’t GAF about the A’s unless they already do.
/ditto the Bills in Toronto series, and any of the EPL/Serie A/La Liga summer tours.
It’s not about anything but harvesting cash.
The “Bills in Toronto” was stupid. People in Toronto who are Bills fans can drive to Buffalo and pay half the price. People who aren’t Bills fans wouldn’t care. There are so many teams within a 5-6 hour drive of Toronto there was no way people were going to pay a premium for a Bills game at Rogers Centre.
Where do you think they’re going to play in Portland? The baseball stadium that they’ve permanently reconfigured for soccer? Gonna have a 180-foot left field foul pole?
Walker Stadium !
“The ballpark has hosted as many as 1,877 fans for a Pickles game”
Sacramento, less than an hour from many far East Bay fans and Salt Lake are both much better options than Vegas, ask Pete Rose.
Ouch.
How is the south parking lot near Soldier Field even close to big enough to build a stadium? It’s smaller than Soldier Field itself which has the lowest capacity in the NFL (well second after Washington lowered their capacity because no one was going to games anyway).
There would probably be some overlap. They would need to do something like Cincinnati did when they tore down 1/4 of Riverfront stadium while building their new stadium. Or the reverse, like St. Louis did, building 3/4 of the new stadium, then tearing down Busch to finish the new one. (During one off season which was surprising). Not that they have the money for either option yet.
I remember someone from the St Louis office of the bank I was working for at the time telling me that if the Cardinals went to game 7 of the World Series they would have had to start demolition 7 hours after the end of the game in order to get it done in time for the next season.
What were the Bears thinking when they turned down a dome at McCormick Place and had Soldier Field “renovated” with a crashed flying saucer?
“Ooh, shiny”?
I work with people that own season tickets. At the time they didn’t want a dome because of “Bears’ weather”.
Neal, don’t know if this crossed your desk, but only this week I noticed a story from last month that Laurene Powell Jobs is looking to cash out at least some of her stake in the Wizards/Capitals ownership group: https://www.sportico.com/business/team-sales/2024/laurene-powell-jobs-monumental-sale-1234762514/
She’s not uninterested in Bay Area sports, as I’ve heard that she’s been involved with the governing authority for Levi’s Stadium, so maybe this could be lining up money to participate in a Bay Area-local A’s buyout bid. But she has her fingers in a lot of pies, so this could just as easily end up being, say, a huge ad-buy for Democratic candidates if it closes before November. But in any event, it’s interesting that somebody is looking to cash out of Leonsis’ hype train before all the financing is even lined up.
“it’s clearly going to be someplace in the West.”
Ok, even by Manfredian standards (if they exist) that has to be an appalling statement for other MLB owners to hear.
‘We are working on it. Should have an answer in a few months… maybe by this time next year for sure. We hope. And we’ve narrowed it down to a single hemisphere’
Everywhere is west of somewhere.
Sounds to me like Manfred has less confidence in this move than either Fisher or Goodman do.
Brook Park being a suburb whose biggest employer (Ford) has closed most of his facilities there, I would guess they are relying on County and State funding.
I think everyone agrees the stadium’s current location wastes good space. Cleveland would be better off selling the land to developers. Heck they would probably be better off just putting a big lawn there and making it a public park.
The bandwagon effect of arena/stadium subsidies is really rolling. San Jose Sharks owner Hasso Plattner’s net worth is somewhere between 11 and 21 billion dollars, depending on which billionaire tracker you follow. This week we learned the time has come to renew his team’s public-private partnership, or something like that: futureofsapcenter.com
Its’ a complete billionaire show in Oakland! its’ not a bad thing to play there and the L.V. hotel lot makes no sense! They still have all the eggs and basket to win this game, two options the Coliseum and land in another area but want to make themselves look incompetent, greedy and shady. They aren’t just greedy but its’ also Oakland being pressured to let its’ sports team go the inner-city, political things there are not liked by some powerful groups.
The only thing keeping news of the Coyotes moving somewhere far from Arizona yesterday is sorting out details of where they’re going. After the ASU Mullett embarrassment, they need to move somewhere a permanent arena is ready, and not shared with the NBA. The TMobile Center in Kansas City and Centre Videotron in Quebec are ready now, and, Gary Bettman’s nightmare, renovations to the First Ontario Centre in Hamilton will be finished by fall 2025. Better move the Coyotes this year or the Coyotes saga could end with the ultimate embarrassment Gary.
Both Quebec City and KC are tiny markets. KC’s arena is famous for being insanely profitable without a primary tenant. While Quebec would be cool it seems incredibly unlikely.
Salt Lake has an agreeable owner and a city/state willing to spend on sports facilities. Houston is a massive untapped market. Either one is a better fit for todays NHL then KC or Quebec
Quebec City is a natural hockey town with a rink built to NHL standard. Le Nordiques 2.0 will instantly capture most if not all of French-speaking Canada.
Houston would be Atlanta, only 10 times worse.
The attendance numbers in Winnipeg this year — ~2,000 short of capacity on average in spite of a good on-ice product and in spite of playing in what was for years the NHL’s smallest rink before the Coyotes’ move to a literal bandbox — is exposing the limitations of how much growth can really be achieved in a market that small.
Winnipeg has NHL, AHL, and WHL. That’s just too much hockey for even a diehard market. Plus Canada has had worse inflation than the US and people have been slower to get back to normal post-Covid.
Winnipeg no longer has the WHL.
Meanwhile, back in Virginia, a powerful state senator has made it clear that legislation for that taxpayer-funded arena in Alexandria is D.O.A.
AP story via ESPN: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/39512382/virginia-senator-says-bill-new-wizards-capitals-arena-dead