Could the Oakland A's be on the move to Las Vegas?
The Oakland Athletics could be Las Vegas-bound as Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred threatened to move the team if the Oakland City Council doesn't drop its lawsuit against the ball club.
With the city of Oakland embroiled in a lawsuit over the ownership of the A's ballpark, Manfred stepped in and added a bit of weight to the situation. And if the A's make the move it would make it the second professional sports franchise from Oakland to flee to the desert of Nevada. The Oakland Raiders are leaving for Sin City for the 2020 season. The threat comes amid years of strife between the A's and the city as the ball club attempts to build a ballpark that can compete with other modern stadiums.
But David Samson, former president of the Miami Marlins, doesn’t think that the Athletics will be on the move anytime soon. The dialogue from Manfred about relocation is “part of baseball’s playbook” to pressure a city on the stadium front or what Samson calls “leverage-seeking,” Samson told FoxBusiness.com.
“This is exactly the playbook that the Marlins used and I used with the Marlins, including I took trip to Vegas after we got approval to seek relocation alternatives so when all that doesn’t work, that’s when relocation becomes possible,” Samson said. “In order to get a ballpark done these days, you have to get to the edge, like no net. Like ‘Free Solo,’ the Oscar-winning documentary. You have to be hanging on with chalk and fingers, waiting for a deal to get done. Oakland is not there yet but they are certainly putting chalk on their hands.”
Despite having made the playoffs last year, the A's only averaged 20,521 fans, which was one of the lower numbers in baseball. It does represent a 5.6% increase over last year’s number at the turnstile, however. Regardless, the attendance number is still painfully low, and that is due, in part, on the team's inability to bring in high-end corporate money to a decrepit stadium, the A’s had the lowest revenue in baseball last year. Moving the team sounds ideal to the baseball neutral, but isn’t likely at this juncture.
I think the commissioner would prefer, and I don’t like speaking for him, but what I think he’d prefer is that Oakland and Tampa would settle their issues to save every relocation market for expansion because the eventual goal of baseball is 32 [teams], so why waste an expansion city for relocation?
RingCentral Coliseum, home of the A’s, is outdated and not in the quaint way of Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. The multi-purpose stadium, which was also built for the Raiders, lacks the amenities of modern ballparks and the cash-cow sections such as luxury suites.
Even downsized, the stadium is too large for most baseball crowds. The Coliseum was built in 1968 and can be used for football and baseball. There is no high-end dining, no plush luxury seats and the league’s largest foul area means that fans in some of the most expensive seats are shockingly far away from the action. And the dugouts have been flooded with raw sewage on at least four occasions.
All this says nothing about dimensions, configurations and general upkeep that is among the poorest in all of professional sports in the country. The A’s need a stadium for revenue purposes, especially as they’ve consistently fielded successful teams in recent years.
The A’s, despite having made the playoffs last year, only averaged 20,521 fans, one of the lower numbers in baseball. It does represent an improvement, a 5.6 percent increase over last year’s number at the turnstile.
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But that A's don't own the Coliseum. The stadium is owned by Alameda County and Oakland. The city is attempting to prevent the county from selling its share of the Coliseum to the A's so that it can redevelop the 155-acre site to help finance a privately owned ballpark elsewhere in the city.
Samson said that strong candidates for expansion include Mexico City, Nashville and Portland, OR. He doesn’t think the buzz around Montreal “is serious” due to the lack of television money in the market and their own stadium issues.