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MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside


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13 minutes ago, TBGKon said:

This just got reported and I'm curious what it might end up doing, if anything.  The report states that Sternberg's alleged communication could violate the agreement with the City of St Petersburg.

 

Tampa Bay Rays minority owners say Sternberg secretly negotiated Montreal deal in new lawsuit

:censored: Stu Sternberg. Hope Vinik comes in and gets the Rays; he'd make them a far better franchise with how well the Lightning have done since he took over.

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37 minutes ago, TBGKon said:

This just got reported and I'm curious what it might end up doing, if anything.  The report states that Sternberg's alleged communication could violate the agreement with the City of St Petersburg.

 

Tampa Bay Rays minority owners say Sternberg secretly negotiated Montreal deal in new lawsuit

 

This really isn't a surprise, given that Bronfman was at a Rays playoff game in 2019, during talks to become a minority owner.

 

 

Also, this was known over a year ago:

 

The whole situation is scummy as all heck, and believe me, I've seen and researched many a scummy tactic with my series. Like the more blatant ones, this just feels like it'll end in a courtroom or a settlement, with only whatever fans the Rays have (or prospective neo-Expos fans) getting hurt.

 

Tampa Bay was a mistake of an expansion, created only to keep Vince Naimoli and company from threatening MLB's antitrust exemption after so many MLB clubs blue-balled that market to get new stadiums. History has proven George Steinbrenner right when he said, in reference to St. Petersburg trying to build a stadium, "Don't build it. They won't come."1 While it was intentional disinformation on Steinbrenner's part to discredit stadium efforts for his own reasons, the way the expansion has transpired has demonstrated a genuine insight into the market.

 

1 Bob Andelman and Lori Parsells, Stadium For Rent: Tampa Bay’s Quest for Major League Baseball, 2nd edition (St. Petersburg, FL: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), xiv. 

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1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

Tampa Bay was a mistake of an expansion, created only to keep Vince Naimoli and company from threatening MLB's antitrust exemption after so many MLB clubs blue-balled that market to get new stadiums. History has proven George Steinbrenner right when he said, in reference to St. Petersburg trying to build a stadium, "Don't build it. They won't come."1 While it was intentional disinformation on Steinbrenner's part to discredit stadium efforts for his own reasons, the way the expansion has transpired has demonstrated a genuine insight into the market.

Honestly, though, I feel like this whole thing does more to discredit the location for the Trop over the actual support the region has for baseball. The Rays do well for a smaller-market team locally when it comes to viewership, so I don't think it's the overall region that's the problem here, necessarily.

 

The biggest part of the problem for the Rays is that they're not the Lightning, they're the Loria Expos.

 

They don't have Jeff Vinik pushing them to great success by spending; they have Stu Sternberg, an owner that's willing to spend more effort plotting ways to move than he is to try and actually make an honest college try out of the Tampa Bay region.

They don't have a really nice centrally-located park to play out of that's easy for people to get to, they have a decrepit fossil that's a pain in the ass to travel to and from if you don't live in one specific part of the area.

 

Combine a cheapass owner everybody in the local area hates with a decrepit venue that's not fun to travel to or fun to be in and most franchises would struggle.

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50 minutes ago, Ridleylash said:

Honestly, though, I feel like this whole thing does more to discredit the location for the Trop over the actual support the region has for baseball. The Rays do well for a smaller-market team locally when it comes to viewership, so I don't think it's the overall region that's the problem here, necessarily.

 

They don't have Jeff Vinik pushing them to great success by spending; they have Stu Sternberg, an owner that's willing to spend more effort plotting ways to move than he is to try and actually make an honest college try out of the Tampa Bay region.

They don't have a really nice centrally-located park to play out of that's easy for people to get to, they have a decrepit fossil that's a pain in the ass to travel to and from if you don't live in one specific part of the area.

 

Or, maybe the market is the problem. While viewership has apparently been high, it has never translated into ticket sales or any sustained presence in the region. At some point, it can't all be the stadium or the location or the owner. There has never been any string of attendance success with the Rays. During the '08 pennant run, the team had to give away playoff tickets.

 

Give. Away. Playoff. Tickets.

 

AccomplishedLimpBluetonguelizard-size_re

 

Even the worst days of Candles**t, the Giants never gave away playoff tickets. The A's have never given away playoff tickets. That's a new level of bad.

 

50 minutes ago, Ridleylash said:

Combine a cheapass owner everybody in the local area hates with a decrepit venue that's not fun to travel to or fun to be in and most franchises would struggle.

 

Fair, but even a good owner and a good stadium can't overcome the outright lack of interest the region shows in the Rays. It was a Jacksonville Jaguars/Atlanta Thrashers-level error. Two bad ownership groups crippled whatever miniscule chance the team had of being successful, but let's not pretend like regular season MLB was doing well in the Tampa Bay Area after over a decade of blue-balling by MLB. I want Tampa Bay baseball to work, I really do, but I just don't think it was ever going to work in the long or short term.

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1 hour ago, Ridleylash said:

Honestly, though, I feel like this whole thing does more to discredit the location for the Trop over the actual support the region has for baseball. The Rays do well for a smaller-market team locally when it comes to viewership, so I don't think it's the overall region that's the problem here, necessarily.

 

The television ratings are helped by a disproportionate number of games against the Yankees and the Red Sox, the Tampa Bay area's two favorite teams.

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44 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

 

The television ratings are helped by a disproportionate number of games against the Yankees and the Red Sox, the Tampa Bay area's two favorite teams.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious about the evidence of the ratings breakdown per team. I doubt the Rays or their network affiliate want to make it public. What would the 38 Yankees and Red Sox games draw in comparison to the other 124 games?

 

I hear the Yankees-Red Sox sound bite often enough that I want some evidentiary proof. Again, I'm not totally disputing it, I'm just wondering about the statistical validity. 

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20 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious about the evidence of the ratings breakdown per team. I doubt the Rays or their network affiliate want to make it public. What would the 38 Yankees and Red Sox games draw in comparison to the other 124 games?

 

I hear the Yankees-Red Sox sound bite often enough that I want some evidentiary proof. Again, I'm not totally disputing it, I'm just wondering about the statistical validity. 


I don’t think we’ll ever get a television breakdown by opponent.  But that would be interesting. 

 

I was going off the polls from a couple years back that put the Rays as the third favorite team. Among baseball fans. In their own market. 

 

Which would explain the discrepancy between their decent television ratings and their pathetic attendance, which not even winning has been able to improve.  “Stadium location” is often cited by the team’s apologists, but I’m offering an alternate explanation that would fit the facts. 

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On 5/23/2021 at 12:52 AM, DnBronc said:

 

That hockey team probably won't get any support when it starts losing. We'll see how long it stays there.

If the Arizona Coyotes have proven anything it's that the NHL will move heaven and Earth to keep a team in the desert. 

 

They will also threaten to move a team in a Canadian city during the press conference to announce said team. 

 

The Golden Knights' fanbase could dry up faster then that stack of cash you set aside for poker in Vegas and the NHL will keep them there until the heat death of the universe. 

 

On 5/23/2021 at 3:10 AM, Ridleylash said:

I'd be more concerned with the Raiders, honestly. The Golden Knights got to be the first child and happened to come in right at a very important time for locals, so the city has a stronger connection to them then the Raiders, who from what I've seen haven't had the locals enthusiastic at all. If any of the three potential teams is the least likely to move, it'd be the Knights.

 

The Raiders have a history of bouncing from city to city between Oakland and LA. Them bouncing to Vegas and then bouncing somewhere else isn't exactly unfathomable.

The Raiders "bouncing" out of Las Vegas is entirely unfathomable because of that state of the art stadium. 

 

And as for Vegas not being enthused for the Raiders...guy. Have you been living under a rock? Their first year in Vegas was the year teams had to play in front of empty stadiums because of a global pandemic. I think we owe both Las Vegas and the Raiders some time before we write that off. 

 

The NFL is, at the end of the day, infinitely more popular in the US than the NHL ever will be. I don't expect the Golden Knights to leave Vegas either (worst case scenario the fanbase collapses and they become a team like the Coyotes, bouncing from schmuck owner to schmuck owner), but between the Raiders and the Knights? I'm betting on the NFL team having the brighter future.

As I would in pretty much every city that has both NFL and NHL teams. 

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On 5/23/2021 at 3:10 AM, Ridleylash said:

I'd be more concerned with the Raiders, honestly. The Golden Knights got to be the first child and happened to come in right at a very important time for locals, so the city has a stronger connection to them then the Raiders, who from what I've seen haven't had the locals enthusiastic at all. If any of the three potential teams is the least likely to move, it'd be the Knights.

 

The Raiders have a history of bouncing from city to city between Oakland and LA. Them bouncing to Vegas and then bouncing somewhere else isn't exactly unfathomable.

 

How did this post get 5 likes?  Let's start:

 

1.  Don't assume that there's much crossover between NHL and NFL fans.  There's plenty of NFL fans that are barely aware of the NHL's existence.  There may be some people who have to decide whether to spend their money on one vs the other, but there's plenty for whom there's no decision to be made because it's NFL or nothing.

 

2.  "the city has a stronger connection to them then the Raiders, who from what I've seen haven't had the locals enthusiastic at all."  LOL, what are you talking about "from what I've seen"?  What have you seen?  In what way do you have your finger on the pulse of the Las Vegas community?  If you're going by 2020 attendance, then Ice Cap already covered it.

 

3.  The locals don't even matter that much for an NFL team's success.  Come 2022, worst case, the stadium will be filled with visiting fans, and the Raiders will still sell gear to some local fans as well as California fans and people who just like the brand.

 

4.  A "history of bouncing from city to city"?  22 years in Oakland, 13 in LA, 25 in Oakland.   I guess 13 years in LA counts as a "bounce" in sports terms, but it's not obscene.  And they were in crap stadiums in both cities, and their moves were driven by the need for stadium improvements... which they no longer have any need for in the foreseeable future.  

 

There's zero chance of the team "bouncing" in fewer than the 13 years they were in Oakland, and if not for what Ice Cap said about the OITGDNHL way that league protects non-traditional markets, I'd bet my house that the Raiders outlast anyone else there.

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"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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Every Southwest plane going from LAX/Burbank/Long Beach/Ontario/John Wayne to Oakland on fall Sundays was chock full of silver and black fans.  Putting the Raiders in an actual resort destination is going to put butts in seats for a long, long time.

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On 5/23/2021 at 8:37 AM, Red Comet said:

We haven't even seen how Las Vegas will truly support the Raiders yet as the pandemic sabotaged their debut season there. 

 

Why the hell are people thinking that they can support the A's and now an NBA team?  

 

Because Las Vegas has delusions of grandeur when it comes to major league sports.

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3 hours ago, LMU said:

Every Southwest plane going from LAX/Burbank/Long Beach/Ontario/John Wayne to Oakland on fall Sundays was chock full of silver and black fans.  Putting the Raiders in an actual resort destination is going to put butts in seats for a long, long time.

 

People in the northeast can't really understand how close Vegas is to California. It's a different mindset.

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1 hour ago, ShutUpLutz! said:

and the drunken doodoobags jumping off the tops of SUV's/vans/RV's onto tables because, oh yeah, they are drunken drug abusing doodoobags

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1 minute ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

People in the northeast can't really understand how close Vegas is to California. It's a different mindset.

Plus distances are much less significant out here. It’s a 250 mile, 4 hour drive, with most of it wide open highway minus food/gas/bathroom stops in Barstow, Baker, and Primm.

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On 5/18/2021 at 4:55 PM, Joke Insurance said:

 

Could Sutter Health Park be upgraded to MLB standards?


They planned on it originally, but the stability of the land (the stadium is right next to a river, hence the RiverCats name) came into question and nixed those plans. Access is pretty poor (everything is here, really), too. It’s also technically in an entirely different city (South Sacramento, CA), and that’s caused more problems for that site than they had originally foreseen. 
 

The feasibility of fully expanding that entire entire area has been done to death already and the answer for pretty much the last century is a pretty resounding no. One of the reasons it’s sat empty for no joke the last 100 years is because it was used as a defacto toxic waste dump site going WAY back. 

 

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On 11/19/2012 at 7:23 PM, oldschoolvikings said:
She’s still half convinced “Chris Creamer” is a porn site.)
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5 hours ago, LMU said:

Plus distances are much less significant out here. It’s a 250 mile, 4 hour drive, with most of it wide open highway minus food/gas/bathroom stops in Barstow, Baker, and Primm.

Yeah, I recall 26 years ago, my late uncle driving my family from orange county to ... Laughlin and stopped in Barstow.  Left around 7 and arrived around midnight. California in terms of distance from west to east is not that far. 

I have also done San Francisco to LA. That was  longer.

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I saw, I came, I left.

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Trucking Groups Oppose Oakland Stadium Port Site Even as A's Mull Moving

 

Oakland A’s set to come to Portland on a baseball fact-finding mission

 

Finally, there is this bizarre, tone-deaf tweet from the president of the A's:

 

https://twitter.com/DaveKaval/status/1397023219421310978

 

(I made multiple tries at embedding the tweet, but each attempt resulted only in code being displayed in my post.)

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7 hours ago, LMU said:

Plus distances are much less significant out here. It’s a 250 mile, 4 hour drive, with most of it wide open highway minus food/gas/bathroom stops in Barstow, Baker, and Primm.

 

I was on the phone with someone from my health insurance company and they were helping me find a provider.  She said "this one is 5 miles away" and I was like "LOL lady, I'm not trying to take a train or fly to the dr... find something closer."  

 

Totally different culture when it comes to driving.  

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"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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