Athletics President re: keeping the team in Oakland

[Ted$8roadFan]

I wouldn't be surprised if taxes played a role, given California's high income tax rate and Nevada's lack thereof.

[SP Cook]

Looks like a done deal.  The 2027 date is troubling, playing 3 and 7/8ths lame duck seasons in a ball park that is already decrepit and clearly not going to even be cleaned anymore, is poison.  The AAA stadium in Las Vegas only holds 10K and looks hemmed in by other buildings and roads, but certainly they could bump it up close to 20K, which is probably more than the A's would draw in Oakland more than a few special events. 

This also sets off are, rare under the new rules as teams cannot just move about like they used to, contest to get the relocated AAA Las Vegas team, and then probably cascading down from that. 

[davewiecking]

From what I read, the AAA team is staying in Vegas, and the A's new stadium will only hold 30,000, both of which seem rather odd. Look for more possums than spectators in Oakland...

[gonealookin]

Looks like a done deal.  The 2027 date is troubling, playing 3 and 7/8ths lame duck seasons in a ball park that is already decrepit and clearly not going to even be cleaned anymore, is poison.  The AAA stadium in Las Vegas only holds 10K and looks hemmed in by other buildings and roads, but certainly they could bump it up close to 20K, which is probably more than the A's would draw in Oakland more than a few special events. 

This also sets off are, rare under the new rules as teams cannot just move about like they used to, contest to get the relocated AAA Las Vegas team, and then probably cascading down from that. 

Two reactions to that:

1.  I think the AAA team will stay in their current ballpark in Summerlin.  I've been there a few times, it's a very nice facility, both for the fans and, according to players, them too.  The Aviators can continue to attract locals who want to take the kids to a baseball game without paying major league prices.  This arrangement works in some other areas like Minneapolis (the Twins' AAA affiliate plays in St. Paul) and Houston (AAA affiliate in Sugar Land).

2.  The A's few remaining fans will stay away the rest of this season, and the Coliseum will be a TV studio for their remaining home games.  Their lease in Oakland only extends through 2024, so the remaining year can probably be settled financially.  MLB also controls the minor league scheduling now, and I expect the A's and the AAA Aviators will share that ballpark in Summerlin from 2024-2026, alternating weeks at home.  The arrangement will require an agreement with the Howard Hughes Corp., which owns the Aviators, but they have said they have been in communciation with A's ownership all along so I think that is workable.  The Major League Baseball Players Association will also have to agree to playing in a minor league ballpark for those years and will have to be accommodating as to scheduling issues that conflict with the terms of the current collective bargaining agreement; in many cases the CBA would require the A's to play a day game prior to travel by the visiting team and also themselves, but the Players Association will need to waive the requirement to allow them to play all night games after about the middle of May.  Honestly I think the players will be so glad to have the Oakland Coliseum behind them that there won't be a problem there.

[triplemultiplex]

Booo, Las Vegas sucks.

Insert my normal rant about how it used to be a big deal for sports to distance themselves from gambling, but now everyone has given up. Too many grifters wanting to make a buck off of addicts.

Just makes me think of something like..
"Gladiators demand Rome build new arena to replace aging Colosseum; threaten to move to Carthage."

[SectorZ]

Looks like a done deal.  The 2027 date is troubling, playing 3 and 7/8ths lame duck seasons in a ball park that is already decrepit and clearly not going to even be cleaned anymore, is poison.  The AAA stadium in Las Vegas only holds 10K and looks hemmed in by other buildings and roads, but certainly they could bump it up close to 20K, which is probably more than the A's would draw in Oakland more than a few special events. 

This also sets off are, rare under the new rules as teams cannot just move about like they used to, contest to get the relocated AAA Las Vegas team, and then probably cascading down from that. 

Two reactions to that:

1.  I think the AAA team will stay in their current ballpark in Summerlin.  I've been there a few times, it's a very nice facility, both for the fans and, according to players, them too.  The Aviators can continue to attract locals who want to take the kids to a baseball game without paying major league prices.  This arrangement works in some other areas like Minneapolis (the Twins' AAA affiliate plays in St. Paul) and Houston (AAA affiliate in Sugar Land).

I wonder if they would be re-branded as the Summerlin Aviators if/when the A's move to Vegas happens.

[gonealookin]

From what I read, the AAA team is staying in Vegas, and the A's new stadium will only hold 30,000, both of which seem rather odd. Look for more possums than spectators in Oakland...

It seems to me that in a market like Las Vegas, a small capacity stadium helps to promote a stable long-term base of local season ticket holders.

A 30,000 seat ballpark is probably going to be packed every night.  A lot of those people will be from out of town, following their own team into Vegas for a three-game series.  Locals who invest in season ticket plans can go to a few games of their choosing and be fairly confident that they will be able to resell the bulk of their tickets to the visitors at a premium, because of the high prices created by the scarcity.

If a 45,000 seat ballpark is built, maybe the A's draw 35,000 on average, greater than 30,000 but it leaves an average 10,000 empty seats every night.  Then it's not so clear that being a season ticket holder is profitable; on some of the lower demand games the reseller is likely to have to dump tickets at a loss or maybe not be able to sell them at all.  This problem gets worse as years go by as Royals fans from Kansas City have already seen the Royals in Vegas two or three times and their demand begins to wane.

Visiting fans as a large percentage of the crowd in Vegas has already been very clearly visible at Raiders games.  If the Chiefs went to Oakland you would barely see any red in the crowd at all, all silver and black, but watching KC at Vegas there was an enormous amount of Chiefs Red in the stands.

[Henry]

Sad, but not surprised, that the A's will soon be on the move again. Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland, and now to Las Vegas...that would be the most relocations by an MLB franchise ever after being tied with the Boston-Milwaukee-Atlanta Braves in that category for well over 50 years. Now Sin City just needs to add an NBA team to make its collection complete. Also, the Giants will be the only ticket in town, and I feel bad for Oakland, which has gone from three major league franchises to none at all (thanks to that impending Raiders reunion down on The Strip).

Hopefully the same thing will not be replayed in the Tampa Bay Area; the Rays deserve a better fate than this.

[ZLoth]

I just question the long term viability of major league baseball as a whole, especially with some of the regional sports networks collapsing. That's not a insignificant chunk of change that is received in terms of rights fees.

[cl94]

Might not be as done a deal as people think: the public financing portion has not yet been finalized. Unlike with the Raiders, where the public financing/incentives were entirely local, the A's want state incentives, which may be a hard sell. Allegiant Stadium is also far easier to use for other events (UNLV uses it, for example) than a baseball stadium would be.

Allegiant Stadium wasn't the easiest sell and this will likely be harder, because the state portion of that deal was solely to allow Clark County to raise taxes.

[on_wisconsin]

As Bing chatGPT put it:

"The A's have a written land deal with developers, but the bill that would authorize the funding mechanism for the public portion of the stadium project is still in the works. The bill has not been made public or formally introduced yet, and it will have to go through all the usual steps before it can be voted on. These steps include committee hearings, amendments, and possibly a conference committee. The bill also faces a tight deadline of fewer than six weeks to pass both chambers. Then the full Clark County Commission has to approve the funding and land use. Therefore, nothing is final until the bill is signed into law, but things are looking optimistic for A's about their chances of getting a new home in Las Vegas."

[gonealookin]

As Bing chatGPT put it:

"The A's have a written land deal with developers, but the bill that would authorize the funding mechanism for the public portion of the stadium project is still in the works. The bill has not been made public or formally introduced yet, and it will have to go through all the usual steps before it can be voted on. These steps include committee hearings, amendments, and possibly a conference committee. The bill also faces a tight deadline of fewer than six weeks to pass both chambers. Then the full Clark County Commission has to approve the funding and land use. Therefore, nothing is final until the bill is signed into law, but things are looking optimistic for A's about their chances of getting a new home in Las Vegas."

chatGPT isn't quite right there about the "tight deadline", because as noted in the Nevada Independent article linked by cl94 in the prior comment, the Governor can and does call special sessions of the Legislature to settle specific issues, and it was in just such a special session in 2016 that the financing issues regarding Allegiant Stadium were resolved.  This could be finalized later in this calendar year.

Stuff could still come up to scare the politicians away, but I don't think any of the parties involved would have said as much as they have in the last couple days unless they thought they had the framework of a financing plan that would get through the Legislature.  So I would agree with the overall conclusion about "things looking optimistic".

[Scott5114]

Booo, Las Vegas sucks.

Insert my normal rant about how it used to be a big deal for sports to distance themselves from gambling, but now everyone has given up. Too many grifters wanting to make a buck off of addicts.

You do realize 641,000 people live in Las Vegas, right? That's twice as many people as Madison has. And over 2.2 million people live in Clark County. Like, other things happen there besides gambling. So there are plenty of people living there that, whether they're involved in gaming or not, might want to have a team in their city.

If you're going to say a team shouldn't be in the same town as gambling, you'd probably have to move half the teams. Oklahoma City has 9 casinos in the metro area, one of which is in city limits about 15 minutes from the NBA arena. Do the Thunder cater only to gamblers?

[Road Hog]

40K is probably the sweet spot for baseball. That is where the Rangers arrived for their new park. You want to average out the nightly attendance between when the Yankees and Red Sox come to town and when the Devil Rays and Indians do. 40K a night is 3.2M home attendance, which is damn solid.

[1995hoo]

Booo, Las Vegas sucks.

Insert my normal rant about how it used to be a big deal for sports to distance themselves from gambling, but now everyone has given up. Too many grifters wanting to make a buck off of addicts.

You do realize 641,000 people live in Las Vegas, right? That's twice as many people as Madison has. And over 2.2 million people live in Clark County. Like, other things happen there besides gambling. So there are plenty of people living there that, whether they're involved in gaming or not, might want to have a team in their city.

If you're going to say a team shouldn't be in the same town as gambling, you'd probably have to move half the teams. Oklahoma City has 9 casinos in the metro area, one of which is in city limits about 15 minutes from the NBA arena. Do the Thunder cater only to gamblers?

Heck, in DC both Verizon Center (Caesars) and Nationals Park (BetMGM) have sportsbooks located in or adjacent to the venue. (The one at Verizon Center can be accessed from the arena concourse; I'm not sure whether the one at Nats Park can be accessed from inside the ballpark.) When it opened, the one at Verizon Center got a lot of publicity as the first in-arena sportsbook in the country. But the majority of fans attending games at either venue do not appear to visit the sportsbooks–and, given that at least at Verizon Center you have to go through arena security when you enter the arena from the sportsbook, and that security checkpoint is far smaller than the ones at the other entrances, there's a good practical reason not to go there if you're also there for a game.

I have to say I wouldn't know what to do if I went in there–most of the betting jargon you hear on TV doesn't really mean anything to me.

[triplemultiplex]

Because when people think about Oklahoma City, the first thing that comes to mind is "casino gambling".

Pro sports leagues used to be so worried about being associated with gambling.  The integrity of their sport demanded it.  Pete Rose, banned for life; the Black Sox scandal; it's in the roots of baseball especially, the aversion to gambling.  Now that integrity has been thrown out in the name of profit.

Sports betting at arenas, gambling sponsorships plastered all over the venues and broadcasts, the gambling leeches have even wormed their way into ownership positions for some teams.  I can't look up who is playing when without having the "odds" shoved in my face.  Putting sports teams in the most famous gambling city (or its unincorporated suburbs) is just icing on a shit cake that is going to blow up in everyone's face in the coming years.

A long time ago, we let giant tobacco companies worm their way into every aspect of life and we paid dearly for it.  Still are.  Now another vice industry that exists solely to get people addicted and then profit off that addiction is expanding into every space it can find.  The consequences of this rampant gambling are going to bite our collective ass. Biff Tannen's America is arriving and it's going to damage or destroy the sports we love.  With all these billions of dollars changing hands (mostly from poor schlubs to the predatory gaming corporations) it is only a matter of time before it becomes too tempting for someone to fuck with a game/match/season in order to 'cover the spread' or whatever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_match-fixing_incidents

We then reduce professional sports to an elaborate dog track; a skeezy place where degenerates go to get their fix.

[Flint1979]

I guess the Tigers will have to move out of Detroit if you can't have casinos and a MLB team in the same city. Detroit has 3 casinos, Michigan as a state has 39.

[triplemultiplex]

People keep missing the point I am making.  It's not the fact that there is also a casino in the goddamn city, it's because of the ASSOCIATION with gambling.  I don't know how much more clearly I can say that.

VEGAS = GAMBLING.  Any moron on the street will say as much.  You used to want to distance your sports league from gambling as much as possible because gambling is a corrupting influence on the integrity of sport.  You'd never have an MLB team in Atlantic City, for example, back in the day.  It would be outrageous on its face.  But now the most gambling city on planet Earth is pulling sports teams left and right.

I have many other beefs with Las Vegas as a metropolitan place in that it encapsulates everything wrong with America, so they do not "deserve" professional sports teams.  But that's another topic.

Pro sports playing in Las Vegas is a symbolic surrendering of the integrity these pro sports leagues are ostensibly supposed to have.  Or at least pretend to have.  Now with MLB coming to Vegas, all pretense is gone.

[SectorZ]

I guess the Tigers will have to move out of Detroit if you can't have casinos and a MLB team in the same city. Detroit has 3 casinos, Michigan as a state has 39.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/36253087/wr-jameson-williams-four-lions-suspended-betting

I don't know, looks like the Lions may need some help.

[Flint1979]

I guess the Tigers will have to move out of Detroit if you can't have casinos and a MLB team in the same city. Detroit has 3 casinos, Michigan as a state has 39.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/36253087/wr-jameson-williams-four-lions-suspended-betting

I don't know, looks like the Lions may need some help.

The Lions need more help than anyone can give them.

[Flint1979]

I think Charlotte, NC deserves a MLB franchise more than Las Vegas does. Besides Vegas would be the only place they'd draw from, it's like a major metro area plopped into the middle of nowhere. At least Charlotte and the Carolinas have some population. The two states combined have about 16 million people. Nevada has just over 3 million, with about 2 million of that living in the Vegas area. Outside of Vegas and Reno there is NOTHING in Nevada.

[DTComposer]

I suppose they're counting on out-of-town traffic for a lot of the support - both from weekend or day trips from L.A./San Diego/Phoenix/Bay Area and convention and business traffic from other markets. Given the dismal recent on-field performance from the A's I wouldn't be surprised if there were more Angels fans than A's fans for a series in Vegas, and certainly more Dodger fans for an inter-league series.

That said, I don't know if the tourist factor has helped the Raiders, who have been in the bottom third for both absolute attendance and percentage of capacity in their two seasons there. Granted, the Raiders are still pulling 95% of capacity, but I would have thought the new team in the shiny new stadium would have sold out at least year one.

While the Giants are my team, I do put some of the blame on them - when they were in danger of moving to Florida in the early '90s, the A's allowed the Bay Area to be split into two territories in order for the Giants to explore ballpark options in the South Bay. (the other two-team markets all share their territories). Then, when the A's were ready to move to San Jose (land was available, plans drawn up, city was on board), the Giants blocked it as it was "their" territory. Even though it would have moved the A's 40 miles further away from them, the Giants smelled that sweet, sweet Silicon Valley money. If not for that, the A's would be in their second or third season in San Jose right now.

[Scott5114]

Because when people think about Oklahoma City, the first thing that comes to mind is "casino gambling".

No, the first thing that people think of is tornadoes, our batshit Legislature, and racism. (Or at least that's all that comes up when I search "Oklahoma" on a national news site.) But there's more to it than that, exactly the same way as there's more to Las Vegas than casino gambling.

The casino gambling more or less happens on two streets in the entire city (one of which isn't even in Las Vegas city limits). Now imagine if we decided whether your city was worthy of a sports team based its most obnoxious two streets.

Pro sports leagues used to be so worried about being associated with gambling.  The integrity of their sport demanded it.  Pete Rose, banned for life; the Black Sox scandal; it's in the roots of baseball especially, the aversion to gambling.  Now that integrity has been thrown out in the name of profit.

Sports betting at arenas, gambling sponsorships plastered all over the venues and broadcasts, the gambling leeches have even wormed their way into ownership positions for some teams.

The Black Sox scandal was a scandal because it affected game integrity. The players involved stood to benefit from poor performance. Obviously that should be stopped. Someone betting on the game two blocks away who has no personal involvement in any team has no effect on game integrity.

And surprise! Sports teams are businesses! Who would have thought they'd chase profit! It's almost like you live in a capitalist hellhole of a country or something! Just wait until you hear of the NCAA!

I can't look up who is playing when without having the "odds" shoved in my face.

That's a you problem, not a Las Vegas problem.

Putting sports teams in the most famous gambling city (or its unincorporated suburbs) is just icing on a shit cake that is going to blow up in everyone's face in the coming years.

A long time ago, we let giant tobacco companies worm their way into every aspect of life and we paid dearly for it.  Still are.  Now another vice industry that exists solely to get people addicted and then profit off that addiction is expanding into every space it can find.  The consequences of this rampant gambling are going to bite our collective ass. Biff Tannen's America is arriving and it's going to damage or destroy the sports we love.  With all these billions of dollars changing hands (mostly from poor schlubs to the predatory gaming corporations) it is only a matter of time before it becomes too tempting for someone to fuck with a game/match/season in order to 'cover the spread' or whatever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:IDONTLIKEIT

We then reduce professional sports to an elaborate dog track; a skeezy place where degenerates go to get their fix.

You mean you haven't realized it always has been?

People keep missing the point I am making.

That's probably because the point you're making doesn't make any rational sense.

[bing101]

Does Austin, TX count as a candidate for getting the A's or not. I know Austin, TX has been getting attention here in California because some of the Tech CEO's and VC leaders have been talking about leaving CA for Texas for some time though. But that may not translate necessarily for MLB teams moving though.

I mentioned San Antonio because it's still a much larger metro area than Austin, but a stadium on the north side would draw from both.

OK I went with the Elon Musk type arguments given how much of a big deal we keep hearing about Austin based on the way the investors surrounding Elon Musk are hyping it up though.

[Max Rockatansky]

Pro sports playing in Las Vegas is a symbolic surrendering of the integrity these pro sports leagues are ostensibly supposed to have.  Or at least pretend to have.  Now with MLB coming to Vegas, all pretense is gone.

Pro sports was about integrity?  I thought it was about entertainment and making money this whole time.