Oakland A's headed to Las Vegas

I dunno nothin' about Oakland politics, but if had to guess ... city leaders probably have a hard time paying the bills.

 

That's probably some of it. Some of it is the legitimate concerns about paying for a new stadium, and the associated complications with finding a suitable site and making it happen. And I think some of it is also a "Sportsball bad" mindset among the city leaders.
I'm just looking at it from afar, though.
The city's ridiculous proposal for a lease extension to cover the interim period pretty much showed they were done with the A's. It was akin to William Wallace telling the British general to march across the field, put his head between his legs, and kiss his own arse.

 

A sad day for Oakland and the Bay area, indeed. I've been an advocate on this board for building a new yard on the Coliseum site, but the A's wanted a entertainment district, like, say, St. Louis, Baltimore and San Francisco. Ownership hasn't helped much by pulling a Rachel Phelps over the last few years. But the biggest mistakes may have been not letting the A's move to San Jose, where there were plans for a stadium near SAP Center, and Selig (I believe) approving the sale to Fisher rather than Joe Lacob (Dubs owner), who was ready to build a new yard in Oakland, among other things.

 

I would phase it a little differently. The leaders of Oakland will not subsidize a team. It is ironic that one of the most politically liberal cities in the country insist that building sports facilities be left in the private sector.

 

The entertainment districts are the key to everything now. The multi-billionaire owners now not only want the billion dollar stadiums to be built by taxpayers, now they want the bars, hotels, restaurants, retail, etc etc, they want all THAT built for them too.

 

The flip side to that is local governments in conservative areas like Texas will give tax break after tax break to companies in general (not just sports teams) to relocate to their area.

 

Pretty sure the die was cast on the A's by the time she was elected, but Oakland's mayor is a 38-year-old Hmong woman, who rents and was elected by ranked choice voting. I love ranked choice voting, but it also seems to leave you with a candidate who a lot of people "like" but maybe wasn't their first choice, which diminishes their "mandate."
You don't have a powerful mayor who can call a few business leaders and state legislators and make something happen there anymore.

Throw in the fact that a majority of the fan base comes from outside city limits - and you lack political leverage.

Also worth noting - how uncompetitive the Giants have become since Fisher began packing his bags. Their stadium is bought and paid for, scads of money coming in and they can't develop talent or recruit FAs - sixth highest grossing team in MLB.

 

Well, I guess Oakland will be a case study on professional sports.

Grab the city budgets while you can from 2010-2015 and compare them to 2025-2030. It will all be in the numbers.

 

And, are providing a sports team an amenity a government should provide for its residents?

How important is it to be able to take your kids or group to a game?

I’ll give Richmond, VA as an example. It does not have a major venue to host concerts ( a surrounding county is building a 18,000 seat arena) and is very close to losing its AA baseball team to a surrounding county. It has VCU and an aging NASCAR track.

Oakland is different because, I guess, San Francisco will gobble up the future generation’s sports fans.

But, as in Richmond’s case, people will be spending their dollars elsewhere and be taxed elsewhere.

 

One thing for sure, as we saw this week in Kansas City and in recent weeks in Virginia's attempt to lure the Caps and Wizards out of DC, taxpayers are fed up with financing team playpens with increasing bells and whistles.

 

Richmond's biggest issue when it comes to concerts is its proximity to D.C., Norfolk, and Charlottesville, which all have superior venues and are all within 100 miles of RVA. Richmond is building a waterfront music venue near Brown's Island which should help attract better artists. But you're always going to sell more tickets in D.C., so we usually lose out on the best acts. We get a lot of mid touring acts, which is fine with me since I rarely go to stadium shows. Hell, my favorite band rarely plays venues larger than The National.

In Richmond, we're taxed like hell on eating out, meals tax is around 13 percent, which is absurd. You can go out in Henrico or Chesterfield and save a lot of money on just the meals tax alone.

 

I'm not familiar with Virginia taxes. Why are you taxed 13% on meals?