The Reverse Boycott in Oakland Was a Rowdy Success
OAKLAND – The Coliseum was rocking for the first pitch of last night’s game. A crowd of 27,759 roared as Yandy Díaz grounded out to first. “Sell the team! Sell the team! Sell the team!” The coordinated chant broke down into roars and cheers as Ryan Noda gathered up the grounder and stepped on first, kicking off the wildest Tuesday night game you could ever imagine.
The fans – 23,000 more than attended Monday night’s fixture – came out to protest owner John Fisher’s attempt to move the A’s to Las Vegas. They came out to protest Fisher’s management of the team in general. More than either of those causes, however, they came out to cheer for the A’s. As much as the team’s recent trajectory makes them hard to root for, as much as ownership and the front office seem to be steering into the skid, Oakland fans remain some of the most passionate in baseball.
If you’ve never heard of a reverse boycott before, that’s not surprising: the fans more or less improvised the idea on the fly. Jeremy Goodrich, a college student and lifelong A’s fan, created a change.org petition calling for Fisher to sell the team instead of relocating. Stu Clary, a longtime fan, saw the petition and floated the idea of selling out a weeknight game as a signal that fan support for the A’s is merely dormant, not extinct. The concept caught on almost immediately.
The New York Times covered the organizing. The San Francisco Chronicle was all over it too. As the calendar ticked into June, and as team officials ushered a stadium funding bill through the Nevada legislature, momentum built. By Tuesday, it hit a crescendo.
The Coliseum hasn’t seen attendance like this since the 2019 Wild Card game, when 54,000 packed the old multi-purpose oval against these same Rays. The massive parking lots surrounding the stadium were crowded with tailgaters. Fans chuckled bemusedly as they waited in line to get in – there haven’t been a lot of lines here this year. The concourse was jammed 30 minutes before the game started, a mixture of food and beverage lines and small, organic parades of like-minded fanatics making noise and brandishing “Sell!” signs as they berated Fisher.
Not just signs, either – the Oakland 68s, a local fan group, raised money and printed 7,000 green “SELL” t-shirts to hand out to fans. Little kids wandered around in shirts twice their size. Old ladies tied the t-shirt around their bags as accessories. Fans who came to the game in iconic throwback jerseys unbuttoned them to show off their own homemade t-shirts. The Oakland community rallied around the reverse boycott, and you could feel that energy at the game.
There’s a lot of pent-up love for the team across Northern California. How else to explain the riot of witty signs and gorgeous A’s apparel everywhere you looked? “Vegas Ain’t Punk,” proclaimed a sign held by a fan who clearly was punk. “A(‘s) Fish(er) Rots From The Head Down,” read another carried by a fan so committed to the bit that he wore a fish mask.
Twenty-foot-long “SELL” banners came down from the outfield bleachers throughout the game, only to be removed by security. A painstakingly detailed cursive “Sell” cut out of poster board was my favorite, if only for the effort involved. Hal the Hot Dog Guy, an A’s superfan, marched through the stands leading cheers and handing out more t-shirts.
All that negative energy, all that disgust at Fisher and team president Dave Kaval and the opaque machinations driving the team to the Nevada desert, could have made for an angsty atmosphere. The only coordinated chants the fans planned for the night were “Sell the team!” at the top of every inning and “Stay in Oakland!” in the bottom half. The tension of showing up to a game to support the team and also protest the owner was strong; I’ve never seen a game where the video operators struggled more to find fans to show, what with all the signs and “SELL” shirts and whatnot.
One thing about A’s fans, though: they really do love the A’s. The sell chants wasn’t the loudest the stadium got all night. That’d be the bottom of the eighth, when Carlos Pérez drove in Ramón Laureano with a groundout to take a 2-1 lead. The stadium was already deafening; it erupted after that play, a playoff atmosphere for an 18-50 ballclub in June.
More than anything, the fans who came out last night were there to root for their team. Any pretense at coordination disappeared whenever the A’s did something good; the stadium merely dissolved into cheers instead. The boos when Rays pitchers threw over to first base shook my seat. From the fifth inning on, I spent more time standing than sitting, as the crowd rose and roared for every two-strike count and A’s baserunner. Hogan Harris, the 26-year-old rookie who got the win for a seven-inning, four-hit gem, thought his PitchCom went out because the stadium got so loud that he couldn’t hear it.
The fans behind me exemplified the feeling I got from everyone I talked to. They wore paper bags emblazoned with “Sell the team” on their heads when they sat down, though they quickly took them off – bags, it turns out, aren’t particularly comfortable. They’d been to other games this year – without the bags, naturally – and wouldn’t have missed last night for anything.
They wanted me to know that they were here to support the team and to shame Fisher – but they were also there to have a good time and watch some ball. They questioned Tampa Bay’s pitching strategy, shouted encouragement to Brent Rooker, and lost their collective minds when Trevor May came in to close things out in the ninth. There have been precious few cherished memories created at A’s games this year; last night, the entire crowd seemed to will one more into existence.
When I spoke to Goodrich, the creator of the petition that set this chain of events in motion, before the game, he gave me that same vibe. He wasn’t so much mad as he was hopeful. “I want [Fisher] to work with the city to build a new stadium here,” he told me. “The mayor said she’ll work with him. Failing that, I want him to sell the team to keep it rooted in Oakland.” He’d been avoiding the news from Nevada all day; he wanted to enjoy the night instead of worrying about what came next.
Goodrich has been an A’s fan as long as he can remember, inheriting his dad’s fandom. His father, Scott, was at the game too, both to support Jeremy and to catch a game. He told me he’d picked up the team at age 10 and stuck with them ever since, through championship years and droughts. He positively beamed as I talked to him. “I’m really proud of [Jeremy’s] passion and organization,” he told me.
Those positive vibes have been all too rare in the East Bay in recent years. The stadium is near-empty most nights, and the team, weakened by a continual deluge of sell-offs and rebuilds, feels like a manifestation of the stadium it plays in. Even the right field drums, an Oakland fixture, have been quiet this season; they went silent in April when the team announced a land purchase in Las Vegas.
An empty stadium isn’t what I think about when I picture Oakland sports, though. I picture rabid fans and manic energy, drums beating into the night and delirious revelers decked out in kelly green. Not so long ago, this was just what the Coliseum felt like. In 2002, the Moneyball season, the A’s averaged 27,000 fans per game. They were a low-budget operation already; that’s what the book was about, after all. But that was before Fisher, before the game on the field felt like it mattered less to the people running the team than where they could find the most subsidies, before the contract between team and community went sour.
I don’t know what this reverse boycott will accomplish. The Nevada Assembly is voting on a bill, already passed by the state Senate, that would give the team $380 million in public funding. Governor Joe Lombardo is a staunch supporter of bringing a major league team to Las Vegas. Commissioner Rob Manfred has indicated that he’ll waive the relocation fee that the league normally charges teams to move. The wheels are in motion, in other words.
Whatever the outcome, though, Tuesday night was a rollicking success. For one more night at least, Oakland fans got together and celebrated the team that they have a love/hate relationship with. The cheers resonated long after the players left the field. “Sell the team!”, sure. But also “Let’s Go Oakland!” every bit as loud. This was a party, not a memorial service.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Given their historical behavior, I expect the messages ownership will take are: 1) see? the fans could come if they wanted to; and 2) we won! Obviously, we would be better if the fans came more often.
These are obviously the wrong messages to receive, but money has a way of warping the mind.
You give ownership far more credit for caring about the fans than they deserve.
MLB owners must be the worst owners in sports. The stagnant franchise values prove it
A few of the state owned, human rights abusing owners in the English Premiership may have a think or two to say about that….
Let’s not try to limit who is the worst to any league. They all suck.
Jerry Reinsdorf has said frequently over the years that he would not spend more on the White Sox unless more people come to the games. This always struck me like a restaurant promising better food in the future if you pay for the crap on the menu now.
That’s not how it works. But ownership sees fans as wallets with legs and even if those wallets are opening willingly, none of them have as much money as the giant novelty checks that are city and state governments.
And the White Sox are now worth less than the Milwaukee Bucks. He’s not bright enough to care of course
Well, if Giannis ever wants to pick up a bat…
An entire piece weighing the decision-making of the ownership group of the White Sox, the face of which is Jerry Reinsdorf, would be interesting. Still not sure this is the right comp given all but 5 MLB franchises fall in this category according to Forbes 2023 valuations.
When Dolan took over in Cleveland he said what he spent on the team would depend on attendance. He’s kept his word.
Low spending brought low attendance which brought low spending until he found an investor willing to put money into the team.
This is not the ony time the team has been sold to somebody who lacked the pockets to support it properly.
If you want to hear a Cleveland baseball fan, mention how Nick Mileti outbid Steinbrenner before he bought the Yankees and then ran the franchise into the ground for lack of money. He spent all he had to buy it. And devalued it to where nobody would pay what he bid.
In another Universe The Boss built his sports empire just off Lake Erie.
F*** John Fisher
I don’t believe there’s any way that the A’s stay in Oakland, as much as I hate it, given the way things seem to be moving with the Nevada legislature. What I hope happens is what kind of happened with the Charlotte Hornets, wherein they got moved out but shortly afterwards the team sprung up as the Bobcats, and then they later got their name and history back when New Orleans rebranded as the Pelicans. I’m hoping that as soon as the next expansion happens, Oakland gets the top shot. They deserve it.
Also, John Fisher can choke on a caviar roll.
This is correct. There is a zero-percent chance they stay in Oakland. The A’s lose their small-market status in the revenue sharing system if they don’t have a new stadium deal very, very soon. With this being a stadium deal in hand (at least enough to satisfy that requirement) they’re going to take it.
I agree that they’re definitely going to Vegas. I’m not sure I’d support an expansion team in Oakland.
Mlb won’t.
First because they’d want a baseball palace stadium. They’re never getting one in Oakland.
Second because once Oakland is out the Giants inherit the regional rights. And the way the city of SF is…evolving…they’ll need the extra territory to keep living in the style they’re acustomed to. (I.e., loge leases are getting harder to sell.)
The way things are headed, the entire bay area will be a single team market.
Hint: remember the bank called SVG? It’s the canary in the SiliValley mine.
And finally, MLB won’t be expanding this decade.
As is, the A’s are getting out at the very last second. Without Vegas they’d have nowhere to go.
4 or 5 of the richest counties in the entire United States are in the Bay Area. It’s the 5th or 6th largest media market in the country. It could support 2 teams just fine.
Past tense.
Check the San Francisco Chronicle over the past year.
For starters: of the 25 top metro areas SF ranks 24th in recovering from the pandemic lockdown. Only Baltimore lags them.
They lead the country in vacant office space (30%).
The goto bank for silivalley went belly up, the main down mall operator defaulted on it, and even whole paycheck closed down.
The Giants will be *happy* to be the only baseball team in town. It’ll help make up for the deckine elsewhere.
Downtown SF depended on commuters and their taxes and they’re not commuting anymore.
San Francisco is going to be just fine.
One hopes.
But present tense, the underpinings of their “wealth” are under stress. I believe the locals over “received wisdom”.
In spite of things. I love California and the bay area, but it should look like New York given its economic might.
I know I’m blowing up this comment section with this, but please, if you live in SFO, stop voting against denser housing. You’re really great, but you should be one of the greatest cities in the history of mankind.
The Chronicle pointed out exactly that, how NYC saved the Manhattan by converting office space into residential high rises.
I remember Loma Prieta, and there’s no way I would want to live in high-density housing in San Francisco.
NIMBYism is a he’ll of a drug.
Except there’s sprawl because of NIMBYs so not enough of that wealth lives near the ballpark.
Given the exceptional economic growth over the last 30 years, it should look like New York. Instead it has built fewer buildings over 500 feet built (7) since 1990 than Austin (8).
Ownership there has been horrendous. But let’s not let the jackass “Let’s preserve this ugly building from 1960” and “I don’t want any multiplexes or buildings over 3 stories” mindset off the hook that is also causing this (and homelessness…and cost of living…).
4 or 5 of the richest counties in the entire United States are in the Bay Area. It’s the 5th or 6th largest media market in the country. It could support 2 teams just fine.
It could support two teams, but the current setup is wrong. There should be a team in SF, drawing from SF, Marin, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties. Then there should be a second team in San Jose, drawing from Santa Clara and its surrounding counties (Santa Cruz, Merced, San Benito, etc). San Mateo (the peninsula) would end up split between the two teams.
Instead we have one team in a big sexy international city with the rights to ALL the wealthy counties, and second that is stuck with more of less half of the least valuable county (Alameda County, which the A’s play in – Contra Costa county is technically part of the A’s territorial rights, but in reality has been almost entirely taken over by the Giants).
The moment MLB gave San Jose to the Giants, they sealed Oakland’s fate. Between the county’s economics and politics, the A’s couldn’t get a park that made economic sense for the team. Not within that region.
(Not saying they couldn’t afford to build one. Just that the ROI wouldn’t make sense to *them*.)
Running a baseball team is about maximizing profits not about pleasing fans. Demonize owners or praise them, *they don’t care*.
There is no chance that Oakland gets another Major League team. The reality is that since arriving in 1968, the Athletics have finished dead last in attendance eight times (1977-1979, 1996-1997, 2009, 2011, and 2022) and have only been above the Major League average for attendance seven times (1981-1982 and 1988-1992).
Yeah this is the thing. I’m a lifelong A’s fan, grew up going to games in the old Coliseum. I’ll still be an A’s fan, even after they leave. Nobody wants them to stay in Oakland, or failing that somewhere in the Bay, more than me.
But the reality is that the A’s have never drawn well, except the brief shining sun years of 88-92. It’s always been a struggle. There’s an (in)famous Sports Illustrated story from the mid-70s, as the A’s were in the middle of the first glory run, asking why this amazing team plays in an empty stadium. This isn’t new. It’s always been like this. There just isn’t enough of a baseball market in the Bay, and once the Giants moved to downtown SF (i.e. they became accessible to the East Bay market via BART and such) it was the stake in the heart. The Giants used to own all the “good” counties in the core Bay (SF, Santa Clara, Marin), but at least the A’s had Alameda and Contra Costa – not great, but something. But once the Giants moved into a sick stadium a 10-min train ride from downtown Oakland, while the A’s were still playing in a 1960s-era punchbowl, it was over. Contra Costa is almost all Giants now, and half of Alameda County is too.
Fisher is a jerk, but the reality is that the A’s should move. Oakland is not economically viable for an MLB team.
No city deserves to keep the history in its previous team after it moves away! That’s completely disrepectful to the new host city of the franchise. What Charlotte (and Cleveland in the NFL) did were travesties that will hopefully never happen again!
Oakland may have a chance at an expansion team sometime down the line, but it should only be treated as the brand new expansion team it would be.
There is not a better or worse place to watch a game than the O. Highly passionate fans and far too few exits. I lived out that way from 2005-2009 and caught my fair share of them. Those were good teams, too.
Candlestick used to be worse. But it was also fun.
It’s really funny to think about how MLB, which now effectively doubles as a media company, is handling this. I just watched the highlights that mlb puts together, and they clearly went wayyyyy out of their way to not address that anything was happening at the Colosseum . They don’t show the crowd once, they cut out any references to the crowd by the commentators, only the fact that it’s an extremely loud crowd cues in the fact that anything is going on.
Love imagining the chain of command there, someone very high up (probably manfred himself) has made it very clear: although this is the main storyline for this team, do not give it a moment of attention all season long. It’s like the goofiest kind of state sponsored media. Actually the state sponsored media comparison is unfair – to state sponsored media. This is like fox covering (or not covering) their recent lawsuits and tuckers texts.
I’ve watched most games this season and last night was the first time the TV announcers really addressed the crowds. There have been signs and “SELL” t-shirts and chants for most of the season, but last night was really the first time they even commented on attendance in a meaningful way. Hard to ignore really, and I imagine they’ve received mandates all season.
That’s really interesting, I figured they would have. It’s gotta be a very hard situation to manufacture consent in
To what end? Are all these Oakland employees from the security tearing down signs, to the cameramen ordered to not show any Sell signs, to the TV announcers, and everyone in between, planning to relocate to Vegas with the team? Surely they know they’re in dead-end jobs, so why kowtow to their employer who voluntarily made their jobs redundant?
It wasn’t the full broadcast censoring the crowd, just the MLB Highlights of the game censoring it.
I’m super bummed that this team seems to have remembered how to win; now they’re on pace to win about 44 games, which is super bad but it’s not historically bad, not like if they had won less than the 2003 Tigers (43 wins). But I suppose it had to happen sometime.
The pitching staff is still historically bad by a big margin, but they have been making up ground even there. They were about -4.2 WAR about a week ago and now are -3.4. No MLB team has ever put up negative fWAR in a full season, so there is still a chance.
On the positive side they have no one worth selling at the deadline. They won’t get worse!
If the guys helping them do less poorly improve enough, they might be tradeable.
I heard they went reverse “Major League” – they started with a naked cut-out of Fisher and are adding clothes with each successive win.
I feel we need to start talking about how the Royals actually have an even worse record, playing in an even worse division
They blew up the front office and things are somehow worse than ever. That franchise is currently lost at sea without a paddle or a boat
They’re channelling the KC Athletics
That’s an interesting story — would the “kansas city athletics” transmogrophied roster be any good? Given where they are in the standings, same question for the “philadelphia athletics”!
Well the 1967 KC A’s had Jackson, Hunter, Bando, Campaneris, Monday, Rudi… As long as Finley owned them they’d have young talent that would be shipped out as soon as it became expensive. Philadelphia Athletics would have been terrible as long as the Macks owned the team. I’m not sure whether that was the question.
If you look at run differential it’s not even close. Royals and A’s both have 251 runs scored. The A’s have given up 443 runs versus the Royals’ 355 runs. The A’s pitching is so dreadful they have given up 67 more runs than the Rockies. This is even more astounding when considering that the Rockies play half their games at the park with the highest run-scoring environment and the A’s in the 26th (according to Statcast)
Great writing Ben – I wish this story filled me with hope instead of sadness, because these fans absolutely deserve to have a team in Oakland that they can root for without hesitation. Yet as a long-suffering Sonics fan, I know how this story ends, and it sucks.
As A’s fans, we made our statement (and had a blast doing do) but it is doubtful that Manfred, Fisher or any of the other MLB executives will change. They don’t seem to like baseball. Just money.
But they’re not making money. The NFL and NBA are blowing them out of the water. The Indian Premier League is passing them by. The Mumbai Indians are already worth as much as the A’s
Making over $60 million with a team like this last year is “not making money”?
Not very much money, when the Mumbai Indians added $1 billion to franchise value in the past couple of years and are on a rocket upward path. Not when the A’s are worth 1/3 the Giants when they were equally valuable in 1995. Not when the A’s are worth less than most NBA franchises, and all NFL franchises. If Fisher were a CEO with a board to answer to, he’d have been fired long ago.
I don’t think comparison to the Mumbai Indians are very helpful.
Mumbai Indians play in the most popular sports league by far in the most populous country in the world (~3x the population of US, Mexico, and Canada combined) with high economic growth.
The USA is a small market! IPL should offer revenue sharing!
As an Expos fan, I greatly sympathize with A’s fans. The fans didn’t fail the team, the team failed them. But that doesn’t matter, because MLB doesn’t really care about the fans, they just care about money, and about keeping the owners happy. There is absolutely nothing the fans of the A’s can do to change the outcome of the fate of the franchise.
Sadly true. I actually would have stayed an A’s fan had they moved to Montreal
I would love to see baseball return to Montreal, but don’t expect it to happen in my lifetime. And I wouldn’t support a relocated franchise in Montreal – if it isn’t an expansion team, then it’s not for me.
I find our reactions to the same situation interesting. I’m not sure what “ironic” means but this seems to fit.
It’s OK, neither did Alanis and she wrote a whole damned song about it
I was thinking of the Expos last night. All these years later the narrative persists that lack of fan support forced a move to D.C. when that misses the real reasons. I hope history is kinder (ie. more accurate) to A’s fans after the inevitable move to Vegas.
The Expos consistently drew well between 1977 and 1997. The 1994 were a great team that had a good shot at a WS title, and they could have been an equalish rival to the Braves in the 1990s. There’s no argument that the city didn’t support the Expos, nor that the team wasn’t successful. Raines, Carter, Dawson, Walker, Pedro…
The Expos had a nice little run of good attendance between 1979-1983 but it’s incorrect to say they drew well for 20 straight years. They ranked 3rd or 4th in the NL per BBref during that time period but from 1984-1997 they never finished higher than 8th out of 12 and spent most of the time in 10th or worse. Even the 1994 team ranked 11th in the NL. It’s just not a good baseball market.
Neither attendance nor regional population by itself defines a “good market” for baseball. Not with 82 local games and 9 figure payrolls.
For a lot (most?) of the teams, media rights, merchandising and above all local corporate environment (loges!) provides most of the team income.
That is why StL and Mil can, in most years, keep up with bigger markets. Neither Montreal, Portland, or Oakland have all those streams. In another decade, if things go on as they are, Columbus might qualify. And maybe Birmingham.
US economy and demigraphics are in flux and won’t settle down until next decade.
While you’re correct that the media rights, etc. overall provide more revenue, it’s the attendance in St. Louis that allows them to keep up despite playing in a relatively small media market.
Who knows if anything else will come of this, but it should work a little to thwart claims that Oakland gave up on the A’s or the like. It wasn’t too long ago that another team did it’s home dirty and many passive onlookers just assumed Montreal wasn’t a good baseball town. That was complete BS, but MLB subtly if not openly spread that lie.
I often enjoy the business side of baseball and I also long ago lost any illusions that these weren’t just 30 greedy bastards, but there is something about this happening again in this way that just cheapens baseball. It makes MLB no better than a traveling circus (okay, that was hyperbolic). If it doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth, you’re either not a good person or you live in southern Nevada.
It will be a long time before Oakland sees a new MLB franchise after the A’s leave. Manfred and whomever his successor may be will see to that. The fact that MLB is waiving their move fee says volumes. They prefer to abandon Oakland rather than press ownership to put on a credible product. BTW, with this owner, the folks in Vegas and the State Legislature may see the same. Fisher will take the cash, make little effort to compete. Their only hope is that the farm system delivers cheap players.
I’m surprised Manfred didn’t see the obvious….but maybe he did and just didn’t care. Cities out to take that into account the next time private business comes with their hands out, palm turned upwards.
I think the only real effect this might have is that in a decade, when Oakland is phenomenally wealthy just like San Francisco is now, it might make MLB decisionmakers think about letting the Bay Area get another expansion team.
It probably doesn’t make a ton of sense without a negotiation happens where, say, the Giants get the rights to Oakland and the new team gets the rights to San Jose. And the Giants probably have no interest in that right now–after all, if they dig their heels in, they can potentially prevent anyone from ever moving there.
But I still think at some point, the sheer difficulty of getting around that place when combined with the sheer wealth that place is going to have is going to eventually make it look silly that it only has one team. That wouldn’t be enough by itself but maybe enough other small things could push it over the edge someday.
I wouldn’t underestimate the possibility that the anti-trust exemption is used to pressure the Giants. Schott didn’t do it but Al Davis definitely would have. There’s already a bill put forward by Lee and DeSaulnier. Basically every owner makes money from a second team in the richest market. They just need an excuse to force the issue. It may or may not work but I’d be surprised if it never gets traction. Wait till the Guardians, Pirates, Royals, Reds, and Rays try to leave for greener pastures.
I think your last sentence is interesting: “Wait till the Guardians, Pirates, Royals, Reds, and Rays try to leave for greener pastures.” If team ownership sees those greener pastures, and MLB/Manfred see them as well, they will likely try to leverage a new city into more money from the old one, and likely get it. The problem, long term, is that you want baseball in every geographic area of the lower 48. Concentrating about a handful of cities doesn’t do that, so you have to ask yourself are you creating more fans at a greater rate than losing old ones. Baseball is a national product, but a lot of it is local-centric. Football, by contrast, manages to do both–loyal loyalty and fans who will spend a weekend watching whatever teams are one. And media revenues will confirm that
I don’t see how they keep doing that without a challenge to the antitrust exemption.
The heart of the issue is that MLB is not concerned enough about market share of the sport as a whole. I think they are perfectly happy leaving money on the table in the Bay Area because they figure the Giants are already there and making money. From their perspective, why put a second team in the Bay Area when one team is soaking up 75% of the money? The idea that they could actually broaden interest in the game and make more overall money by having another functional team there just doesn’t enter into it.
In the same way, I don’t think they *really* care whether Vegas or Cleveland or Portland or Pittsburgh or Miami has a team. I wouldn’t be surprised if they would entertain contracting so that they can split the revenue sharing money fewer ways. They haven’t shown any interest in it in the past but maybe they will going forward.
I think what might change about this is that Oakland might become so absurdly wealthy—and it might be so hard for people in San Jose to get anywhere—that at some point there will be agitating to get back in. But it’s not there yet. It might never get there. And ideally you would want baseball teams in 40 different metro areas but I don’t think that is on the agenda either.
They actually did threaten contraction in 1994. I think you want baseball teams on every street corner like English soccer, and like baseball had until rampant suburbanization in the 1950s.
The Twins were also under consideration, though I don’t remember what year it was. Feels like the mid-2000’s, just before Target Field.
Ya I vaguely remember that. Rays and A’s were the other candidates I think
It was in 2002. Montreal and Minnesota were the candidates.
Are you posting from 2019? 😉
(Sorry! Couldn’t resist.)
Look at the economic news about downtown SF.
SVG folded.
Westview gave up on the downtowm mall.
Nordstrom closed up.
A dozen major corps pulled out stakes.
Baseball news are fun to follow but other news matter, too:
https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-westfield-mall-goes-bust-2023-6
Not to be a doom-and-gloom-er, but the San Francisco Chronicle has been reporting stuff the national media is “too busy” to notice. Things are changing.
Every metro area is experiencing the same thing. That is just a story about how we aren’t adjusting to work from home fast enough and how big retail stores are going under. It’s the same everywhere.
San Francisco remains a desirable place for other reasons, and so I don’t doubt it will bounce back. But note that I didn’t really talk about San Francisco—I was talking about Oakland. The power of San Francisco is likely capped at what we saw in 2019, but Oakland has a pretty good shot of turning into a similar sort of place as San Francisco rebounds.
Based on what, exactly?
Just curious.
SF has long overshadowed Oakland on the strength of silivalley and the tech corps. What is Oakland’s economy built on?
The reports coming out of the bay area emphasize that a lot of the challenges SF are due to statewide regulations, not just the aftermath of the pandemic. And those impact Oakland just as strongly.
When it comes to baseball, I would expect Sacramento to be more of a target for a team, albeit circa 2040, for the reasons as Columbus and Birmingham. Their economies are being rebuilt around post-globalization rules and they got started early. SF and Oakland are still working off late 20th rules. First they need to stem the decline before they can dream of growth.
Lots of cities have similar problems but most cities don’t have to cater to baseball team owners.
Oakland and San Francisco are not the same place. One of the reasons that SF isn’t doing well is people with well paying jobs now see Oakland as a potential option, where they didnt 10-15 years ago. Oakland, hopefully, will continue to grow, expand downtown, draw in companies and new residents, while San Francisco tries to placate VC bros who don’t understand why they have to see homeless people in Soma.
This is like seeing an article about how there are vacancies in Times Square and saying “see, Brooklyn is f***ed”
San Francisco has built fewer buildings over 500 feet (7) since 1990 than Austin (8).
The bay area succeeds in spite of its NIMBYs. If you had all that economic wealth more densely populated it would more easily support 2 or even 3 teams.
This is twice this skyscraper stat has been cited. It’s my candidate for “most bizarre stat cited in further of a point” for 2023.
Like – why compare to just Austin? What’s happening in Miami, or San Antonio, or San Jose, or Minneapolis, or Portland? Why 500 feet – what’s the story with 400-foot buildings, or 750? Why since 1990 – why not 1980, or 2000? How closely is skyscraper construction (over a 33-year period?!) correlated with the current overall health of a city? SO MANY QUESTIONS
Austin is another fast growing tech hub. None of those others are.
500 instead of others – lazy. I could do 200, 300, 400, etc. Just trying to find a proxy for real estate added.
1990 since the tech boom. It probably goes back further than that.
How about this: GDP has doubled since 2000 but population is only up 10%. No matter how you slice it, the SGO-OAK metro isn’t remotely as densely as it should be for the economic output. It succeeds in spite of this fact.
The economic output vs population disparity is because the kind of tech that is based in silivalley has ridiculous margins (in the 40% range) and their staff falls into two buckets: those that can absurd housing costs and add to the area population and those that can’t and have long commutes and don’t count as bay residents. And when working remote, they only contribute to the bay economy via taxes.
The manhattan financial district used to be overcrowded during the day and vacant at night because everybody that worked there lived elsewhere. After 9/11 they zoned for multiuse high rises to keep housing costs high but affordable to enough workers to give the area a 24 hour economy.
Austin is much the same: housing costs are exploding but people still live near where they work.
Brooklyn came to a similar balance from the opposite direction: the upscale housing came first and busineses followed. People screamed gentrification but their economy is reasonably balanced. For now.
Remote work is a challenge for all high housing cost areas but SF is particularly exposed to it because of its lack of high density housing.
This is why I think that SF is probably capped out—everyone is much too invested in not building anything. This is also sort of true in Oakland, but the difference is that ( as someone else mentioned ) Oakland is now a viable option for people with money. So while there’s not a lot of opportunity for growth up in San Francisco there is a chance for more wealth coming into the Bay Area via Oakland.
So you expect Oakland to prosper as a bedroom community?
That hinges on silivalley remaining a high growth area.
That is no longer a certainty.
You have heard of the massive tech layoffs in the past year, right? 150,000 nationally in 2022.
Seattle has been hurt a lot, Austin barely, but silivalley is looking to lose nearly 8000 high paying tech jobs a month in 2023 according to the San Jose Mercury news. The first five months already outpace 2022.
It isn’t just the downtown SF economy under stress.
It is the entire region.
Oakland was actually wise not to accept the A’s last ballpark plan. They’ll have better uses for the money.
Ben, thanks for the great article.
By the way, Nevada Legislature — if you think the owner is going to spend $1.2 billion of his own money to supplement the $380 gift of public funds that you just voted for, I have a bridge to sell you.
Do we know what the subsidy is for? When in the past I’ve bothered to check, stadium “subsidies” are not simply a payment to the owner or money for construction, they have been money spent on infrastructure near the stadium, highway access, added utilities, additional roads, ext….
If this deal is similar, then that money does nothing for Fisher until he spends money on someplace for people to go to take advantage of those roads and utilities.
This is still probably a horrible deal for Nevada, there are better things to do with 380 million in public money than draw in a baseball team that probably won’t bring in much additional tourism, but a lot of the discussion treats the subsidy as a direct payment to the owner, and in my experience, it isn’t. It is a payment by the government for publically owned roads and infrastructure.
It’s basically a tax break:
“The contentious funding package includes up to $380 million in public assistance, with $180 million in transferable tax credits and $120 million in county bonds, which are tax-payer backed loans. The A’s would not owe property taxes and a special tax district around the stadium would be carved out. The true cost would be well north of $380 million, as Field of Schemes explains.”
OK, thanks. According to the linked article, they didn’t have solid information but thought that the A’s might be getting rebatted 100% of property taxes and possibly also sales taxes on the stadium and an area around the stadium.
I don’t see how they got an estimated value without knowing either the area covered or complete info on the taxes covered and amount, but I’ll assume that the Nevada state senate leaks like a sieve and that this is the number they were working with.
Based on that, this sounds like a truly amazingly bad deal for the city/state. A break equal to the taxes on the increased value for the first few years could (concievably) be a good deal, but if it’s 100% then the Nevada taxpayers are in fact being robbed.
Ya it’s tying up very prime strip property that should by all rights be valuable to the taxing jurisdiction. Prime strip sounds like a steak but I don’t think it is one.
I don’t think anyone in the Nevada Senate is dumb enough to think that. The Doñate’s of that state just want another campaign contributor.
I can actually see a universe where the A’s become a draw for foreign tourists and fans of visiting teams. I doubt Fisher is bright enough to make them a global brand but maybe the next owner will
I’m curious how MLB can think this move to Vegas is going to be anything but a disaster. The lease with Oakland ends after next season and then they don’t have anywhere to play until the new stadium in Vegas is finished. They are claiming 2028, but I would be shocked if it opens before 2030 given no large construction project has ever finished on time and it is relying on John Fisher coming up with $1.2B to pay for it.
Are they really planning on playing in the Aviators’ 10,000 seat stadium for 5 seasons?
How is it going to go over when (if) they move into the new stadium coming off 8 last place seasons with a <$50M payroll. Thinking Fisher will spend more than a fraction of the revenue sharing money on payroll while he is paying for a new stadium is just willful ignorance. Outside of the first year in Vegas with the new team excitement are they really going to draw more than ~8,000 a night with a last place team and a capacity of 10,000. Without the bigger attendance numbers from stuff like opening day or the Yankees/Dodgers coming to town pulling up the averages, they could realistically see attendance actually drop from the last couple years in Oakland.
As far as Fisher is concerned the scenario you describe isn’t a disaster. He keeps getting revenue sharing and costs stay low.
This largely tracks with my predictions as well. There are so many things that could go wrong here. It’s not at all clear that the plans for the new stadium are finished; they seem to change pretty frequently. These projects never run on time or on budget. The team is going to be bad for a while, and they could easily burn through any goodwill Las Vegas would have for them. While the A’s situation is embarrassing for MLB in various ways they have absolutely not hit rock bottom yet.
I don’t know that there are any good solutions here. If I were Oakland I would probably not be thrilled about the A’s signing a lease to stay in Oakland, and a lame duck team for 6 years sounds terrible. The best thing for them to do is to find a place like Vancouver, Portland, or Salt Lake that wants an MLB team and is willing to host them for a little while. That way the local community gets to demonstrate how great they would support a team while the A’s don’t burn out their goodwill with a bad team. But I can only imagine the firestorm that will happen if those places support the A’s better than Las Vegas does.
Vegas is as good a place as any to host a team short term. The team won’t necessarily be terrible. They were perfectly competitive up until 2020. They’ll get some high draft picks. Forst isn’t Beane but he’s not an idiot.
I struggle to see how they pull out of this tailspin. They have little to no talent at the major league level and they have a consensus bottom 10 farm system. Those good A’s teams were running payrolls significantly higher than this team. Maybe the next Matt Chapman/Matt Olson/Marcus Semien are coming, but is Fisher will to hold on to them past Arb1? If he won’t spend on the team when he isn’t paying for a stadium, will he start once he has to start paying for the stadium?
The near-term is going to be bad. Not necessarily “losing 115 games” bad like this year so far, but it’s hard to see where big improvements are coming from.
But if you lose for six years and don’t trade anyone away, eventually you will be good again unless you are pretty bad at this.
I suspect they will trade most quality players away when they reach arb because Fisher has to fund the new stadium and will run the smallest payrolls he can to save costs especially because there is no attendance upside to winning while they are in the minor league stadium.
In order to be the Rays and win with that small of a payroll (and I worry they might not even reach Rays level of spending) they need to have a real edge in player dev and FO acumen and I just don’t think the A’s have that anymore. The rest of the league has long since caught up to them.
Maybe I’m wrong and Fisher will be the tiger that does change his stripes, but I don’t see a path where they get past 75 wins before they tear it down again. Following the Astros or Cubs tanking model they doubled their payrolls the year they finally got back to winning records. I think the only path to success for the A’s in the next 6-7 years would be the 2022 Orioles and that is a really difficult model to follow.
The problem is that they wouldn’t be hosting the team short-term, they’d be hosting the team long-term.
You mean because A’s would perpetually get revenue sharing?
Salt Lake is an interesting option, their Triple-A team is opening a new stadium in the next year or so, which leaves the current 12,000-seat stadium open. It won’t be confused for MLB-caliber by any stretch, especially compared to the new Aviators stadium that opened in 2019, but it would be a relatively straightforward transition.
FWIW, 10,000 seats would accomodate the A’s attendance in ’22.
But you can be sure the Giants will share the stadium for a share of attendance.
That way when the A’s leave, the fans will know the way. 🙂
Other teams have shared stadiums for a year or so. The Yankees played at Shea and the Chisox 10 games in Milwaukee.
This is both fun and a bummer in that it’s getting Fisher’s dumbass more cash at the gate and concessions.
It’s OK. He’ll blow it in Vegas
He hasn’t been the league leader in any category since 2019. Running game has been completely over since 2019 (and there was barely any running game for him in 2019, either- 11 SB). Played at a 5-6 WAR pace in 2020. Posted 2 WAR in 2021, 6 WAR in 2022, and on pace for around 5 WAR this year- and will end up with 3-4 WAR this year because of the mid-late season slowdown and/or IL time. BA/OBP were already at an all-time low last year, and they are much worse this year. Power (his 1 skill that was as good as ever all the way through 2022) has fallen off a cliff- .475 slugging %. K rate was back up to an all-time high last year and it’s the same this season. Body is a wreck, including a permanent back injury. Etc. He’s a shell of the player he used to be. His prime was 2012-2016. It could reasonably be argued that he was in his prime through 2019 (despite all the missed games 2017-2019 and despite his ceasing to be a complete player with the 2018 season- that was his last season as a complete player), but it definitely ended with the 2019 season at the latest. Just call a spade a spade.
I’m sorry mikejason, are you talking about A’s owner John Fisher or didn’t you bother to check what tab you’re on?
It’s never not a good time to talk about Mike Trout, it seems
Hmm, he’s pretty clearly talking about Mike Trout. Maybe that is the ace in the hole Fisher has been saving, he is going to trade for Trout decline phase to boost attendence!
I want for you to acknowledge it!
It’d been awhile since I was this engaged and invested in an A’s game. The Oakland fans were tremendous in their support for the team and coordinated chants (some NSFW!) throughout the game, especially when they remained silent and then burst into roars loud enough to prevent Hogan Harris from hearing PitchCom. But… some fans really undermined the efforts of the entire evening — show that the Oakland A’s have a loyal and energetic fanbase — by throwing trash onto the field after the game. They may think it was part of the protest and a final middle finger, but Fisher and Kaval aren’t cleaning up the field. Those fans just created more unnecessary work for the A’s excellent grounds crew. Kind of a shame in the end.
Hogan Harris had the game of his life. If he never does anything else this will be something to remember.
He hasn’t lead the league in anything since 2019. Just call a spade a spade.
What the hell are you on about
Can we learn any lessons from this debacle? Even minor lessons?
A team that has played in three cities in 50 years is perfectly happy to play in a fourth.
They should embraced their history and rebrand as THE VAGABONDS.
Actually, Las Vegas Vagabonds has a nice alliterative ring to it.
And the team mascot could be a cartoon depression era hobo, which is how many Vegas visitors feel after emptying their pockets there.
Because what “…stays in Vegas” is their money. 😀
Thank you for this.
The bay area has a GDP the size of Mississippi and Alabama combined. It should be able to support 2 teams. Unfortunately, Bay Area NIMBYs have screwed the housing market up so much and caused so much sprawl that it’s not as densely populated as it should, meaning lots of people aren’t remotely close to the ballpark. GDP has doubled since 2000 but population has only increased 10%
TL;DR that part, not enough people live close to ballparks because of NIMBYs.
Yes, management has royally screwed the team. But if you were to start over and place 30 teams based on economic viability, Oakland is not one of those places.
Most of the $380 million in public funding isn’t taxes. It’s basically a tax break. Nevada wouldn’t be getting any taxes from the A’s if they weren’t moving to Nevada.
$180 million is technically a tax increase–but it will only impact tourists. Clark County is creating a new special tax district around the stadium that will impact the casino that will be build around the stadium.
If Orange County were to create a tax on entry to Disneyland, you might say they were raising taxes. On the other hand, the tax will be paid by everyone but the voters in Orange County. That’s what’s going on here. Other counties can’t tax like that because they don’t have 40 million tourists coming to their county in a special tax district. Clark County does have that, so the locals aren’t paying for the stadium–even though it’s being financed with public bonds.
Tax money that would be paid to the public will no longer be paid. Label it what you want, but that’s public funding. Nevada would be getting tax revenue from the property and whatever business occupied that property if not for the give away.
Actually, if the A’s weren’t moving to Nevada, no tax revenue would be generated by the A’s for the state of Nevada. Whatever tax revenue the state receives from the A’s being in Nevada after that $180 million in state tax credits is exhausted is revenue the state wouldn’t have received without the A’s moving there. The alternative to the A’s moving to Nevada isn’t the A’s paying taxes in Nevada.
I screwed up with the numbers above. It’s actually $120 million in bonds that are being put up by Clark County for the stadium–with the principal and interest being paid by the county creating a special tax zone that surrounds the new stadium. This will tax the casino they’re putting up around the stadium. Other counties can’t tax 40 million tourists like that–and they don’t generate revenue from casinos.
Bottom line: tax credits and taxing tourists from out of state may technically qualify as “public funding”, but it isn’t the taxpayers of Nevada or Clark County that will be paying the tax or paying for the stadium. If Chicago could finance a new stadium with a tax on 40 million gamblers from outside Cook County and outside the state of Illinois, that would be a good deal for the people of Chicago.
There should be a rule that after a team has been in a city for a certain period of time, the owner needs to leave that team name with the city–rather than take it with the team somewhere else.
But then I grew up in horseracing country in Maryland, and I still can’t understand what connection Indianapolis has to “Colts”. Wouldn’t they have been just as happy if Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl for the Indianapolis Motorheads or something?
P.S. What is the connection between the people of Los Angeles and people who live on a lake?
The owners don’t give a shit. MLB doesn’t give a shit. Everybody here has their minds made up about the situation (like 99% in favor of the fans, I think).
How on earth was giving Fisher a few more bucks a Rowdy Success?
Not sure.
So they can muster a decent crowd for one game. The team needed them in 2021 and 2022 when they were still competitive.
Back in the old, pre Jacobs days, Cleveland would fill the mistake by lake with 70,000 for opening day and the 4th of July. And averaged 7000 the other 79 days.
When Jacobs got the new park, they sized it to less than half, loaded up on expensives loges, and got a decent team that sold out several seasons. Then Dolan took over, budgets were cut, pricescwent up, and sellouts ended.
Baseball team economics are complex.
And community support is hard to keep but easy to lose.