Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[raysox]

1 hour ago, MiK said:

No one makes a trip to Oakland to see an A's game 

Definitely planning on a trip out there just to cross off the Coliseum before it's gone. AT&T too, I suppose lol.

 

Bummer city

 

[BrySmalls]

54 minutes ago, BBTV said:

The new rules definitely benefit Las Vegas, since people may be more likely to take 2:30 out of their time to go see a game then get back to whatever else they're doing, rather than go from some fast-paced vacation to go sit through a 4-hour snooze fest then get back to whatever they're dong.

 

It's already a win if/when more than 3,050* people go to a future A's game in Vegas.

 

* 3,035 is currently the lowest attended A's game so far in the 2023 season.

[spartacat_12]

3 hours ago, BBTV said:

I read this as "I'd head in to use the restroom and leave a bomb".

 

 

12 minutes ago, BBTV said:

Being in LV might help them attract free agents.  Not necessarily because of the "action", but there's a growing number of players from the LV area that may want to sign with a cash-infused hometown team.

 

I'd say going from a market with a 13% state tax to one with 0 state taxes would be the main appeal for free agents.

[SCMODS]

I believe A's owner John Fisher owns part of the Coliseum property. That's going to be fun negotiations. He'll probably let it rot for 10 years. 

[~Bear]

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

You're assuming there's significant crossover between fanbases.  There's a difference between being a Knights fan and being a "sports" fan.  For example, between tickets and merch, I probably spend thousands on Phillies and Eagles each year, and 0 on Flyers and Sixers.  I simply don't care (unless the Sixers are in the finals, in which case I'll claim to have been a die-hard since day one.)

 

Even if the Phillies moved to Oakland (oh, the irony), I'd still spend 0 on the Sixers and Flyers.  At least in my case, there's no competition for my dollar.

I do think you're underselling crossover fan potential a bit. Philadelphia is also a MASSIVE market that can afford to hold teams in each of the Big 4 leagues, notwithstanding each franchise's long history in the city. Regardless sure, many people might be "just a fan of x sport," but even if there's a split between 2 of the 3 teams in the city, that's significant. Most people aren't going to spend thousands between two teams in a calendar year.  If the decision is to buy a Golden Knights jersey or an A's jersey, sure, diehard baseball fans are going to buy the A's jersey, but a lot of people are going to go for the jersey of the team that's competent and has a preexisting connection to the city.

 

Regardless, sports teams in an area are still going to compete against each other for marketing ground, as they are going to try and appeal to the general middle-class to upper-class base that are going to be spending sizeable amounts on merch and season tickets. I imagine it was a lot easier for the Golden Knights to cater to this crowd when they were the only sports team in town. Obviously, Las Vegas wasn't known for its hockey market when they first came to town, and I remember they would explain general rules before games their inaugural season. But, they had the advantage of filling a sports niche in a city that was lacking it and, through various factors including fielding a consistently successful product, built a strong fanbase. This avenue for "converting" fans is going to be a lot harder for the A's when the Golden Knights and the Raiders are in town.  Hell, the Raiders already struggle with this, but only 8 or 9 home games a year is easier to get away with and easier to make an "event" out of than 81. 

 

I don't know how many baseball fans live in Las Vegas. Maybe there is a sizeable, untapped market there. Maybe there are enough "baseball first" fans to cater to and that will buy season tickets; even if they aren't A's fans, maybe they'll go to enough games when their favorite team comes to town. Obviously, the team CAN succeed. But I look at the race among the Big 4 sports leagues to put teams in Las Vegas, and it doesn't feel like a recipe for success. There's a real chance that Vegas will go from 0 to 4 teams in under 20 years (which as an aside, I think it's an almost guaranteed recipe for disaster for an NBA team to go to Las Vegas). When the dust settles, is Las Vegas really big enough to allow all these teams to coexist? Is there enough fans of each sport to cater to in the market? And is the MLB team, a league that is already having to make radical changes because of its unpopularity among younger people, which is led by a cheapskate owner and constantly fields one of the lowest payrolls, going to be the team that wins out long-term? We really aren't far enough removed yet to judge Las Vegas as a professional sports market, but I have doubts. I'm open to being proven wrong, though. 

[goalieboy82]

how long until someone says, if you are putting a team in Las Vegas, Pete Rose should be unbanned from MLB.

[Dilbert]

9 minutes ago, goalieboy82 said:

how long until someone says, if you are putting a team in Las Vegas, Pete Rose should be unbanned from MLB.

I mean when sports betting became legal in Ohio on January 1 this year, Pete made the first bet at Hard Rock Casino Cincinnati. To no surprise, he bet on the Reds winning the World Series this year. At this point his ban is pretty pointless.

[TrueYankee26]

1 hour ago, BrySmalls said:

 

It's already a win if/when more than 3,050* people go to a future A's game in Vegas.

 

* 3,035 is currently the lowest attended A's game so far in the 2023 season.

Oakland Athletics for the next 312 home games (69 home games left this year plus 243 from 2024-2026) 

[The_Admiral]

They'll play in Summerlin after this year at this point.

[Dilbert]

27 minutes ago, the admiral said:

They'll play in Summerlin after this year at this point.

I mean they have several options.

 

- move all games to Summerlin until new ballpark is ready

- move all or some games to San Francisco (I doubt the Giants would allow it)

- renew the Coliseum Visitors television booth opossums backyard contract and continue to play some or games until new ballpark in Las Vegas is ready.

-Play games at the minor league or spring training ballparks.

- Play in a cow field in Peculiar Missouri.

-Send the team back to Kansas City or Philadelphia.

[The_Admiral]

They're not going to be able to do a Raiders play-out-the-string deal. These are two very different fanbases. They can't do three lame-duck years. One at the absolute most.

 

Remember that one week in 2012 where the Sacramento Kings were kicking the tires on a move to Virginia Beach despite no arena nor shovels in the ground for one, and the tentative plan was just to hang out until it was ready? It would have been an unmitigated disaster. Now we're going to see that.

[McCall]

The A's lease at the Coliseum runs through 2024, so they'll have at least one more year in Oakland, if not more. Or unless they negotiate a leave early between them and the city just to get it over with.

[OnWis97]

If they get out of Oakland before the Vegas stadium is read, where would they play? I would not think it would be in an outdoor minor-league ballpark in the desert.

[monkeypower]

9 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

If they get out of Oakland before the Vegas stadium is read, where would they play? I would not think it would be in an outdoor minor-league ballpark in the desert.

 

Can the Arizona State baseball team fit them in?

[tBBP]

16 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

If they get out of Oakland before the Vegas stadium is read, where would they play? I would not think it would be in an outdoor minor-league ballpark in the desert.

 

We're gonna see another Memphis Oilers situation, aren't we?

[BBTV]

4 hours ago, Dilbert said:

I mean when sports betting became legal in Ohio on January 1 this year, Pete made the first bet at Hard Rock Casino Cincinnati. To no surprise, he bet on the Reds winning the World Series this year. At this point his ban is pretty pointless.

 

If you heard the way he addressed a female reporter at the Phillies game last year and then how he behaved when they dropped the ball and allowed him into the broadcast booth, you'd realize that there's a very good reason for his ban.  Gambling on his own team isn't even the worst thing he's done.

 

And when I was a little kid, Pete Rose was my favorite non-Phillie.  The fact that he was a player/manager blew my little mind, and all I ever wanted to do was see him live, but alas my dad wouldn't take me to a game.

[Sykotyk]

One, Las Vegas Ballpark is a top of the line, beautiful AAA level park. It's honestly to MLB standards in quality it's just small and lacks the numbers of things people want in an MLB stadium. Fewer seats, fewer boxes/clubs/etc. But quality wise it works.

 

Got to see a game there back in 2019.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's not unreal. Arizona Coyotes are playing in a 4500 seat venue. Chargers played a year at whatever they called the StubHub Center that year.

 

The other thing is that the Aviators are the A's affiliate. They could 'swap'... Put the A's in Las Vegas Ballpark and send their AAA team to Oakland until they vacate the LV Ballpark for this new venue. You could even still call them the Oakland A's. Then bring them back or leave them depending how well they do. LV Ballpark could be a A or AA venue (quite large) but to avoid going up against the MLB team now in town.

 

But staying in Oakland will not work. Attendance cratered already with the chance they'd find a new home in Oakland. This isn't the regionalized Raiders fan base that tolerated it somewhat. Plus NFL has ridiculously high standards for their home venues now. They were not playing at Sam Boyd or anywhere else.

 

 

[The_Admiral]

30 minutes ago, Sykotyk said:

It's not unreal. Arizona Coyotes are playing in a 4500 seat venue. Chargers played a year at whatever they called the StubHub Center that year.

Three years! (Which makes me think maybe their standards aren't so stringent after all.)

[SCMODS]

I read somewhere that Dave Kaval said he has permission from MLB that the  Aviators will stay in Vegas alongside the A's and not have to relocate.

[Partycrasher]

16 hours ago, WestCoastBias said:

Portland A's would have been better than the Las Vegas A's

 

just about any of the other options would've been better than Vegas. it's really amazing how hard I've soured on that city over the past five or six years between the standard Sunbelt "People" populace, horrific urban planning, realization that sports betting is genuine pure evil, what the Knights' fanbase has become, and the fact that Fallout: New Vegas was a more accurate prediction of what it'd be like in 50 years than 250.

 

honestly? if I could've picked anywhere for them to move? it'd be Sacramento. hell, you move there and you can basically keep the same fanbase you've already built up.