Oakland A's headed to Las Vegas

It appears that commercial SST service will probably arrive late in the decade, which will be the proverbial game-changer in this situation.

Like the Concorde, it will be very expensive, but it will cut transoceanic travel time to the extent that one-day turnarounds will be possible and schedule issues will become surmountable.

Of course US pro sports in Hawaii (or Europe) would by necessity have to be a largely teevee/broadcast revenue supported enterprise, but the COVID era proved that sports can function without 50,000 bodies in the stands.

You'd certainly think that pro franchises operating in Hawaii in an environment with free agency would be attractive to a good number of players. And a couple of NBA franchises in Europe would probably be magnets for Euro players.

It'll be a few years yet, but I can see it coming by the 2030s.

 

To me, the issue will be the jet lag across that many time zones. I know personally I'm useless the whole day after flying west to east and that's only three. I don't have any idea how pro athletes do it, particularly in the NBA and NHL.

 

Jet lag will be an issue for sure but most pro sports team planes are reconfigured into semi sleepers with fully reclining luxury seats so players get some sack time in the air. It will continue to be a factor but eventually adjustments will be made.

 

More than once, I wondered what this was like when the Wings were in the Western Conference.

 

They cried about it quite a bit at the time. It was cited as the "reasoning" why they had to buy (or lease) their own team plane (one of the first teams to do so). Like anybody cares anyway, dude, you're a billionaire, you wanna spend money on a plane for your hockey team, we don't care.

I dunno, for most of the last three decades while the Wings were in the Western Conference, they usually kicked ass, since they've been moved back to the East they've pretty much sucked.

 

Meanwhile the Bally Sports Networks are going down in flames.

 

Unrelated companies.

 

Could Fisher have screwed this up any worse?

 

Is the Bally’s site the same as the site the A’s have a “binding agreement” on?