Athletics President re: keeping the team in Oakland

[Max Rockatansky]

I'll bet the tickets for baseball games in that venue won't be cheap. The stadium's estimated construction cost is $1.75 billion. That's a pretty big price tag to spread across 33,000 seats.

I don't think there was ever any intention of them being cheap.  So far it seems like Las Vegas can support teams and get a draw from tourists visiting town. 

Eventually a Las Vegas relocation/expansion team has to fail, right? The Knights have the advantage of being Vegas' first team, and the Raiders are in the NFL. Maybe the A's bomb in Vegas and warn the NBA to stay away.

How the NBA has stayed away this long is beyond me.  Basketball seems like the perfect sport for the city.  UNLV Men's Basketball used to have a huge following when they were good.

[jeffandnicole]

From SF Gate:

The A's Sacramento attendance is visibly atrocious

The Athletics' first Sacramento games involved a "sellout" with nearly 10% of the tickets given away and two games not filling up the minor league park's seats.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

Baseball (and I think most pro-sport leagues) count the number of tickets sold and provided, not the number of people that attended. There's always going to be freebie tickets given away to nearly every game.  And there's usually going to be no-shows.  So a sell-out will often include empty seats.

I'm sure the SF Gate knows that too...although the current level of reporting probably doesn't know that, or intentionally excludes that fact.

[SEWIGuy]

I'll bet the tickets for baseball games in that venue won't be cheap. The stadium's estimated construction cost is $1.75 billion. That's a pretty big price tag to spread across 33,000 seats.

I don't think there was ever any intention of them being cheap.  So far it seems like Las Vegas can support teams and get a draw from tourists visiting town. 

Eventually a Las Vegas relocation/expansion team has to fail, right? The Knights have the advantage of being Vegas' first team, and the Raiders are in the NFL. Maybe the A's bomb in Vegas and warn the NBA to stay away.

How the NBA has stayed away this long is beyond me.  Basketball seems like the perfect sport for the city.  UNLV Men's Basketball used to have a huge following when they were good.

Because usually it's difficult for an NBA and NHL team to both do well in a metro the size of Vegas. Prior to the Coyotes moving to Salt Lake this year, the smallest metro with both was Denver.

[Max Rockatansky]

I'll bet the tickets for baseball games in that venue won't be cheap. The stadium's estimated construction cost is $1.75 billion. That's a pretty big price tag to spread across 33,000 seats.

I don't think there was ever any intention of them being cheap.  So far it seems like Las Vegas can support teams and get a draw from tourists visiting town. 

Eventually a Las Vegas relocation/expansion team has to fail, right? The Knights have the advantage of being Vegas' first team, and the Raiders are in the NFL. Maybe the A's bomb in Vegas and warn the NBA to stay away.

How the NBA has stayed away this long is beyond me.  Basketball seems like the perfect sport for the city.  UNLV Men's Basketball used to have a huge following when they were good.

Because usually it's difficult for an NBA and NHL team to both do well in a metro the size of Vegas. Prior to the Coyotes moving to Salt Lake this year, the smallest metro with both was Denver.

I attribute that more to the Coyotes doing everything to fuck up being in Phoenix.  The relocation out of downtown was incredibly stupid.  Games at America West Arena had a party atmosphere and didn't require an absolute slog to the West Valley.  The area in downtown Phoenix has a lot of bars, restaurants, decent parking and freeway access.  The Coyotes had a pretty decent turnout before they decided to relocate out to Glendale, even if visiting team fans were much of the draw.  Following the move all the Coyotes franchise did was crank out bad teams and consistently cry poor or threaten to move. 

That aside, the Suns were always the king of the pro sports franchises in Phoenix.  They have almost always been a competitive franchise, and it probably doesn't hurt they were the first pro team in the city. 

[Rothman]

Well, some of us will be there next Friday to boost the numbers a tad.

Perhaps their prices were indeed out of whack with actual demand...

[SEWIGuy]

I'll bet the tickets for baseball games in that venue won't be cheap. The stadium's estimated construction cost is $1.75 billion. That's a pretty big price tag to spread across 33,000 seats.

I don't think there was ever any intention of them being cheap.  So far it seems like Las Vegas can support teams and get a draw from tourists visiting town. 

Eventually a Las Vegas relocation/expansion team has to fail, right? The Knights have the advantage of being Vegas' first team, and the Raiders are in the NFL. Maybe the A's bomb in Vegas and warn the NBA to stay away.

How the NBA has stayed away this long is beyond me.  Basketball seems like the perfect sport for the city.  UNLV Men's Basketball used to have a huge following when they were good.

Because usually it's difficult for an NBA and NHL team to both do well in a metro the size of Vegas. Prior to the Coyotes moving to Salt Lake this year, the smallest metro with both was Denver.

I attribute that more to the Coyotes doing everything to fuck up being in Phoenix.  The relocation out of downtown was incredibly stupid.  Games at America West Arena had a party atmosphere and didn't require an absolute slog to the West Valley.  The area in downtown Phoenix has a lot of bars, restaurants, decent parking and freeway access.  The Coyotes had a pretty decent turnout before they decided to relocate out to Glendale, even if visiting team fans were much of the draw.  Following the move all the Coyotes franchise did was crank out bad teams and consistently cry poor or threaten to move. 

That aside, the Suns were always the king of the pro sports franchises in Phoenix.  They have almost always been a competitive franchise, and it probably doesn't hurt they were the first pro team in the city. 

Right. But I'm talking about two franchises competing for ticket sales, sponsorships, etc. in metropolitan areas where there just aren't enough resources.

NHL is in Raleigh, Tampa, Nashville and Columbus.

NBA is in Charlotte, Orlando, Memphis and Cleveland.

[SP Cook]

How the NBA has stayed away this long is beyond me.  Basketball seems like the perfect sport for the city. 

https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/basketball/nba-in-vegas-2007-all-star-game-a-disastrous-weekend-2021799/

Las Vegas is about acts that get people into town to spend money.  Some things work, some do not.  The NBA all-star fiasco caused far more problems than it brought people into gamble.  It also failed 20 years before than when Utah played a third of its schedule there for a couple of years.  It just doesn't work.  Not everything does.  It seems F1 is failing there, but to be fair, it has failed in every part of the USA for 70 years.  NASCAR ekes by, mostly because the track is out in the desert and a sunk cost and no one is going to tear it down to put up something else.  Indy didn't work.  The NFL works because it has virtually 100% revenue sharing, it could have a team in any place and it would make money, and because it markets itself to the visiting team.  NHL works because of the same marketing to the visitors strategy.  A weekend in southern Nevada looks good viewed through the lens of most places where hockey is played and followed in winter.  The rodeo worked for a long time, because the people that follow rodeo are really cowboys and that was their one and only vacation for the year.  The bowl game didn't work for a long time, because they got BYU a lot, but it does OK now.

MLB seems to be moving to Las Vegas mostly because the A's have no other place to go.  It will, likewise, follow the market to the visitors idea, which will work for teams like the Dodgers, Cubs, Yankees and Red Sox, but not so much for most of the league. 

[SEWIGuy]

The NFL also works in Vegas because of its proximity to LA where the Raiders still have a sizable fanbase.

I don't think it would have worked as well had a team like the Jags moved there.

I agree with you about the As. I think there are just two or three more teams than viable metro areas that will support them.

[Max Rockatansky]

How the NBA has stayed away this long is beyond me.  Basketball seems like the perfect sport for the city. 

https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/basketball/nba-in-vegas-2007-all-star-game-a-disastrous-weekend-2021799/

Las Vegas is about acts that get people into town to spend money.  Some things work, some do not.  The NBA all-star fiasco caused far more problems than it brought people into gamble.  It also failed 20 years before than when Utah played a third of its schedule there for a couple of years.  It just doesn't work.  Not everything does.  It seems F1 is failing there, but to be fair, it has failed in every part of the USA for 70 years.  NASCAR ekes by, mostly because the track is out in the desert and a sunk cost and no one is going to tear it down to put up something else.  Indy didn't work.  The NFL works because it has virtually 100% revenue sharing, it could have a team in any place and it would make money, and because it markets itself to the visiting team.  NHL works because of the same marketing to the visitors strategy.  A weekend in southern Nevada looks good viewed through the lens of most places where hockey is played and followed in winter.  The rodeo worked for a long time, because the people that follow rodeo are really cowboys and that was their one and only vacation for the year.  The bowl game didn't work for a long time, because they got BYU a lot, but it does OK now.

MLB seems to be moving to Las Vegas mostly because the A's have no other place to go.  It will, likewise, follow the market to the visitors idea, which will work for teams like the Dodgers, Cubs, Yankees and Red Sox, but not so much for most of the league. 

I was at that All-Star game weekend in 2007.  The Millennium New Years Eve celebration on Las Vegas Boulevard had way more debauchery and chaos. 

[SP Cook]

I think there are just two or three more teams than viable metro areas that will support them.

I think that is the point.  As stated, the NFL can work anywhere due to the revenue sharing.  And it is only 8 or 9 games/year, mostly on Sunday.  The NHL and NBA are much smaller scales, half the seats and half the games of MLB, and the local TV money is not all that important.  MLB has 81 games to sell 35-50K seats to, and local TV is (or was before the recent RSN collapse) ONE-THIRD of team revenue.  (To this point, outside Clark County its just desert for hundreds of miles and by the time you get back to a livable place, you are in some other team's local territory.) 

But where else are the going to go?  The usual suspects (Portland, somewhere in North Carolina, Salt Lake City, Montreal, Nashville, some foreign county, etc.) all get thrown out, but all have fatal flaws.  We may just have 2 to 4 more baseball teams than we have places to put them.

[Rothman]

The idea that F1 is failing in Austin or Florida doesn't ring true to me.  The Drive to Survive influence has had a significant influence on American spectation of the sport.  Las Vegas certainly has had issues with the street format, though.

Probably doesn't hurt that the constructor's champion team at McLaren has been headed up by an American, though.

[SP Cook]

F1 has come and gone in every part of the USA since WWII.  It lost about a third of its viewers in Las Vegas in just one year. 

F1 economics are dictated by where it is popular, which is to say Arabia, Europe and east Asia.  In the USA, eventually, our economy gets out of sync with those and the F1 event dies out, and a new one comes back when they sync up again.  Which is why F1 has had over a dozen tracks, all now abandoned by F1, over the years in the USA. 

As to "Drive to Survive", Netflix is notorious about not telling ratings, but if you look at what little info it gives away, which is the most watched shows and how few people watched these, and realize DTS isn't listed, you figure out how few are watching.  We do know the TV ratings for the races, and they average a little over 1M last year.   Which is really low. 

[Bruce]

With the Raiders and A's now gone, is it safe to say the Coliseum is going to be demolished soon? Or will it spend an extended period unused, like RFK Stadium in DC?

The Oakland Roots and Oakland Soul will both be using the Coliseum for the 2025 USLC/Super League seasons. They were looking at building their own stadium in the nearby Malibu Lot, but seem to have dropped the proposal for now.

First game for the Roots at the Coliseum drew 26,575 fans:

[Rothman]

F1 has come and gone in every part of the USA since WWII.  It lost about a third of its viewers in Las Vegas in just one year. 

F1 economics are dictated by where it is popular, which is to say Arabia, Europe and east Asia.  In the USA, eventually, our economy gets out of sync with those and the F1 event dies out, and a new one comes back when they sync up again.  Which is why F1 has had over a dozen tracks, all now abandoned by F1, over the years in the USA. 

As to "Drive to Survive", Netflix is notorious about not telling ratings, but if you look at what little info it gives away, which is the most watched shows and how few people watched these, and realize DTS isn't listed, you figure out how few are watching.  We do know the TV ratings for the races, and they average a little over 1M last year.   Which is really low. 

Well, I suppose with how the economy is tanking we'll see what happens.  I don't think past trends are totally indicative of future performance with this one, although Las Vegas seems the most vulnerable race right now.

[Scott5114]

It seems F1 is failing there, but to be fair, it has failed in every part of the USA for 70 years.

F1 is failing in Las Vegas because it creates a horrible amount of disruption setting up the track on city streets. Meanwhile, it caters to only the richest of the rich when it comes to patrons. It simply can't bring in enough big-money guests to offset the small-money guests who skip out because there's nothing here for them that week but disruption.

Las Vegas tolerated F1 the first year because it brought in a decent chunk of money. Even then there were winners and losers because only certain properties benefited from it (F1 is great if you're Bellagio or Caesars, but the low-budget Ellis Island more or less gets shut down for a month because it's right on the track but is too low-rent for the F1 crowd). Now that the money it brings in seems to be on the wane, and the have-not properties are starting to revolt, the city's patience with F1 is quickly running out.

And that's before you get to the fact that international visitation has cratered because foreign tourists are afraid of ICE...

NHL works because of the same marketing to the visitors strategy.

NHL works because the Golden Knights were setting up the year that the 10/1 massacre happened. The team did a lot to assist in the aftermath, so the local populace holds them in high regard for that. Then they were really good in their first season, and they've had a durable fanbase ever since. (You see way more people in the locals parts of town wearing Golden Knights stuff than you do Raiders stuff...and I haven't see anyone wearing A's stuff yet.)

The Golden Knights basically caught lightning in a bottle, so I wouldn't try to compare any other team in any city in any league to them.

[Max Rockatansky]

I was surprised by how lively Sutter Health Park was during the A's/Mets game on Friday night.  I never saw a crowd that engaged in Oakland or at least the size of the Coliseum hid it.  There was a particular group of A's fans in my section that were pretty enthusiastic and entertaining to listen to.  The Mets had a pretty decent visitor draw.

The parking, ingress and egress at the park were super easy.  I guess that I shouldn't be surprised given how much parking is in West Sacramento and Old Sacramento.  The one thing I didn't care for much was higher ticket price compared to Oakland, but it wasn't stratospheric either.  I'll definitely be going back once the Tigers are in Sacramento.