Vegas currently has a minor league baseball team - the Las Vegas Aviators - a minor league team for the Oakland A's. Wonder if/where they'll relocate to?
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Oakland A's and the teams future
- Thread starter Y2kTheNewOldies
- Start date
Hartford only had the Whalers. Oakland will have lost 3.
The Raiders actually left twice. The brief sojourn in LA and then back to Oakland and then Vegas.
The Quebec Nordiques left for Denver and won the Stanley Cup in their first year as the Avalanche. That was salt in the wound for Quebecers...
Oakland A's say team is moving to Las Vegas after signing deal to purchase land for new stadium
For the third time in five years, Oakland sports fans woke up with broken hearts as their last remaining major sports franchise announced they were leaving the city.
www.cbsnews.com
For some reason, Oakland city officials have spent years dickering with the A's when it was clear to anyone with even just a few functioning neurons that the A's were hot for Las Vegas. Why they dealt for so long with a spoiled brat who inherited his money and ran his team into the ground - when Oakland has so many other problems it needs to deal with - is just another manifestation of the general incompetence of Oakland city officials. As is often the case in Oakland, a lot of strings came attached to any potential deal due to the need to ensure that each of the unions and the many advocacy groups that latch onto city government got their piece of the action. So I don't entirely blame Fisher, but it does appear that he and his team president weren't straightforward and that they played the city. I'm not a fan of our mayor, Sheng Thao, but she called this one right - basically saying "don't let the door hit you on the way" and promising to turn attention to Oakland's actual problems. Loss of a sports franchise is not one of those problems, despite what you might hear on sports-squawk radio. As it is, we Alameda County taxpayers will be paying down the costs of accommodating fickle sports teams for years to come.
That's what you get with a public-private partnership. Same thing with radio. Government wonders why radio is reticent to program local city council meetings or other things the government would want. The answer is it would be bad for business. The challenge is to come up with something that works for both sides of the partnership. A place like Oakland has a tough time competing with Las Vegas.
I can't go along with this comparison, because it doesn't account for the general ineptitude coming out of Frank Ogawa Plaza.
There are some who would say the same thing coming from Audacy.
A place like Oakland is not its own metropolitan area, any more than Newark NJ, Worcester MA, Ft Lauderdale FL, or Mesa AZ are. They are large cities within a greater metro area/media market.
There are still four major sports franchises that serve Oakland: The Giants, 49ers, Warriors, and Sharks. Those are all the Bay Area can support. The Oakland teams had their moments, but were the 2nd team in each of their respective sports for most of their times there.
(EDIT: Worcester is a better example than across-the-border Windsor.)
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And notably, the As were among the least watched teams on television in the last 10 years. I think they were grouped at the bottom with the Marlins, White Sox and Rays.
You do know who broadcasts the A's games....
And yet Newark is home to the NJ Devils, and for a time, the NJ Nets. The Jets and Giants play 15 minutes up the turnpike in the meadowlands. Somehow the success of those teams is not related to their location. What killed the As ultimately was the stadium, not the location.
When was the last time they won?
Last I heard it was iHeart's KNEW.
1989 was the A's last World Series win. They have had several playoff appearances in the last 20 years. Yes, the lack of a new stadium doomed them, not the market size. A's greats Reggie Jackson and Dave Stewart are not happy about the team leaving...
I am told that a huge portion of the major league sports tickets sold in Las Vegas are comps that casinos buy for their best clients. That pretty much insures a break-even on ticket sales because the casinos depend on perks like shows, tours, meals, rooms and events to keep bringing gamers back even they have local casinos in their own city and state.
That's definitely the case with the hockey team. It's helped by the fact that the arena is on the strip. Proximity will be an issue for baseball, since the stadium will be on the other side of the interstate.
The A's would certainly need a domed stadium in Vegas. Playing in 111 degrees would not be pleasant for players or tourists...
I believe it will have a retractable roof.
Good thing I checked - I thought it was still KGMZ - I guess even Audacy gave up on them. In Spanish, it's KIQI (1010).
At least for now, that's an ideal situation. Casinos buying suites and season tickets in bulk mean the teams don't need to spend as much time or sales staff on a yearly basis hustling for corporate or individual season ticket sales. The downside will be; during an economic downturn, history shows those same sugar daddy's will bail en-mass.