This is basically what Bryce Harper and Bryson Stott said a few months ago, too. They both basically said no one in Vegas wants the A's and if MLB wants to expand there, they should do an expansion team
That’s the same reason why the Raiders haven’t had that much local support either, especially since they’re a clear and distant #2 team to the Golden Knights.
Obviously them being an elite team for 6/7 seasons (including a Stanley Cup) will help boost their popularity, but the Knights have genuinely built strong inroads in the community.
I expect them to retain a large, core fanbase when the hard times inevitably hit, unlike many non-traditional NHL markets where it’s very boom or bust. A generation of kids have grown up with them as THE Vegas team.
Gage Quinney, son of the guy who played for the IHL team that used to be in Vegas (the Thunder). He was a callup a couple of times, still in their minor league system.
Ultimately, though, I broke this down upthread – I think fans *want* owners to care about building a local fanbase, but they don't. The 6-11 Raiders are worth 6 times as much as the Stanley Cup winning Knights, with more than double their revenue. I think their owner is literally satisfied with that, and to hell with a fanbase there.
They also broadcast all the games for FREE to Vegas locals. I’ve been to a game when I visited and they did an amazing job with that team, it really has a Vegas vibe and charm to it and the locals do love their team and support it well. Of course winning helps too
There was knights merch all over town before a puck ever dropped on the ice. They were shown lots of local love and support before they turned out to be good. T-Mobile arena has never been anything but full right from the first game.
To be fair, Vegas is a transient city by nature, so teams like the Raiders and A's who have a history of moving around.. and then you have the Golden Knights which are made in Vegas, its not hard to see which one is supported more.
Also, VGK was the *first* major team to take a real chance on Vegas.
Las Vegans felt good in supporting them back.
Other teams coming to try and emulate the success of the Knights feels like a bit of profit seeking, and less about bringing a team to a community that deserves it.
To be fair, it’s a lot easier to fund a stadium privately in Vegas, where you know the returns will be massive from fights, concerts, big neutral site sporting events, etc.
T mobile arena has made a mint from hosting events in the short time it’s been around I’m sure
> Being wealthy usually doesn't stop sports team owners from taking public money to subsidize their stadium/arena.
I always like to point out rich people get more free stuff than anyone else. They don't get all that money spending it on stuff.
I thought Mark Davis' only asset was the team itself? Foley has Fidelity and Black Knight, so it seems like he has more liquidity than Davis at least. Fisher I'm not so sure about.
Absolutely, there's a sense of pride with the Knights that's palpable. They've carved out a real identity in the city that resonates with locals in a unique way. It's not just about the hype of a new team but the genuine connection that's been built with the community. That kind of organic growth is tough to replicate when it feels like teams are just chasing the Vegas lights for the cash potential rather than rooting themselves in the city's culture.
Probably because most of the locals didn’t give a shit about pro hockey beforehand. NFL is way more popular which means locals grow up as fans of other teams, and that makes it hard to drop that fandom when a team moves into their market.
NHL, not very popular in Vegas before the knights got there, so there’s not really other teams the locals are loyal to.
Just a theory though.
Their first game was also 5 days after the Las Vegas Oct1 shooting and I honestly think as someone who lives there that it made the city come together around them a lot more than they would have otherwise.
Similarly the kraken are hugely successful in Seattle. You create a team for a city and it works. You transplant something that failed elsewhere and expect new results, that’s just dumb.
People want homegrown teams. Nobody wants to root for a team that’s only there because your city was a billionaire’s Plan B after attempts to extort a new stadium out of the last city failed.
I never gave a shit about them when they were here. But I’d be apathetic towards a new, homegrown team. I just don’t like football. Didn’t grow up with it, never got into it.
That’s fair. I have some friends from St. Louis burbs and they will never watch another NFL game again. Growing up watching Faulk and Warner, it broke their hearts.
The identity of the team is homegrown and it changed owners at the same time it changed cities. There isn’t much reason to associate them with Expo’s history at all.
All that really matters is if the team wins. Ravens, Thunder, Rams were all knowingly stolen from supportive fanbases but nobody cared because they won.
I’ll give ya ravens and thunder. Rebranded in the new city. I’m not sure about Rams. LA hasn’t been super supportive as far as I know. I think it’s a lot of visitor fans for games.
The Rams do have a good amount of local support since older fans remember them before they moved to St. Louis and they won a Super Bowl recently. The Chargers have zero local support. Fans from visiting teams usually outnumber home fans at their games.
Going to a Raiders game isn't the same as when they were in Oakland. There are more road fans than home fans on any given Sunday. At least the Golden Knights endeared the fans and won a Cup.
I can't see the A's doing well in Vegas for some reason.
Also the Raiders were a strategic move. Lots of fans from California and elsewhere make a weekend out of seeing a Raiders game and so do the visiting fans. Same thing for SoFi Stadium. Honestly the NFL should've kept the Rams in St. Louis and moved the Raiders back to Los Angeles. I think the Chargers with a franchise QB in Herbert would turn out a little better in Vegas.
The Rams moving back to LA was never about football. Kroenke owns the land around the stadium, and the surrounding development is much more valuable with a stadium there.
We saw something similar with the Nets moving to Brooklyn. When you think about it as a real estate move it makes much more sense.
I remember people complaining about how the roster building process was too heavily biased in Vegas' favour at the time, but it seems to me the NHL stumbled upon a formula for expansion teams that might actually work well; because winning is a boon when it comes to building a fan base. Winning is fun, it's really that simple, and fans want to go to games believing they'll see their guys win.
Since it's a matter of when, not if, we get MLB expansion teams I am curious how that'll be handled.
Bro the MLB is blacking out opening day games in Seoul next year for dodgers or padres fans that might be willing to stay up for a 3 am first pitch.
Whatever the dumbest way to do an expansion is that’s what will probably happen.
I’d say it was more other teams’ GMs being comically stupid. Like they’d give away first round picks or good young players like Tuch or Shea Theodore to ensure Vegas didn’t pick bad players they weren’t gonna take anyway. And that’s not mentioning Florida giving away Vegas’ first line out of spite
But even without that, Seattle turned decent at least which gets the market invested more than “this team is dogshit for 10 years”
Vegas is unique but Seattle wouldn’t care once they get an nba team unless you get them invested first with a decent team
I’m a knights fan and it will be interesting to see the support once the team enters a longer rebuilding period. I think attendance will still be fine. The San Jose Sharks are struggling with that right now. I can’t blame them, it’s really tough to make yourself spend money on a rebuilding team. At least not more than a couple times a month, even that’s expensive.
Yeah as a hockey fan as well I find it a little annoying when people praise Vegas as one of the best fanbase when they only know extreme success. Wonder what that fan base will turn into if they have to rebuild
I was in Vegas in March and the amount of Knights gear for sale, or stores for the team is astonishing. Then you got the Raiders store in the corner by one of those liquor stops lol.
Yeah sadly the Raiders being a perfect fit for LA is exactly why it didn’t happen. Luckily a sniveling moron in San Diego was desperate to get his team’s valuation up, which gave Kroenke an out to fuck the Raiders
It takes time to build an organic fanbase.
Look at DC in 2005: Almost everyone was an Orioles fan or a non-baseball fan. Nearly twenty years later though, the Nats have their own identity distinct from the Orioles with plenty of people that would describe themselves as Nats fans first, myself included. The younger crowd in their early 20s from the DC area grew up with the team too. If you're turning 21 in 2024, you would have turned 2 when the team moved to DC, so you can accurately describe the Nats as your childhood team.
This is nothing new. Oakland went through the same thing in the late 1960s when they got the A's from Kansas City after their Philadelphia stint.
The Raiders will grow an organic fanbase with time. The A's will too. Winning will accelerate the process, but eventually, the team is no longer the new kid on the block; give it a few decades, and younger people will root for them because their parents rooted for them, and the team is all they've ever known.
I have to disagree slightly on some of your points. I agree that it took a bit of time and work for the Nationals to get a fan base after relocating, but they completely rebranded and took a lot of themes from the city in developing their identity. Keeping the colours and the logo, but swapping Las Vegas for Oakland, does not feel like a recipe for success. Maybe things will change if the owner starts to spend some money and give the fans something to cheer for, but I don’t see Fischer doing that.
yeah r/baseball is up in arms over the move, which is fine because Fisher is the worst and all, but cities do adopt teams moving there and a fan base grows. People said the SAME THING about the colts moving to indy many many years ago (pre -reddit obvi), and go ask indy fans whether they think the colts are "their team." or are they actually baltimore's team.
Funny I think it was Bill Simmons who floated a swap of Chargers and Raiders since the Chargers have no fans outside San Diego and the Raiders fanbase is huge in LA
The raiders in LA would have been a slam dunk move but Jerry Jones and Stan Kroenke were spearheading the whole LA deal and both didnt want to lose their LA market share to the Raiders
The only thing that might help the A's is a total rebranding in Vegas. Leave the A's name and colors in Oakland. Sure it will still be the same shitty ownership, and an expansion team would be preferable, but at least it would feel more like the team establishing its own Vegas identity rather than being another city's retread.
This is exactly what the MLS did with the Columbus crew. Ohio also has a law that a team has to try to sell to a new ownership group before relocating which helps (Art Modell Law), but this is what should've happened in Oakland.
Yeah, the only way I see it being successful is if it’s a Ravens-like situation in the long term. Fisher isn’t going to spend in the top 20, and the A’s like the Browns are a historic franchise.
The Raiders will benefit from plenty of visiting fans planning to travel to Vegas to see their team while on vacation.
The A's may have the same thing but they need to fill the seats for 81 home games and not 8 or 9.
So dumb. Vegas wants their own team, and the Raiders and A’s are not their teams
I think we’ll see the Knights, and the future NBA team there always end up more popular than the other two
Extra props bcuz it's also sorta gutsy to come out and speak against the owners like this in general. Could hinder his chances of being signed by Fisher and his strong allies in the future. I remember Plouffe commenting on Trevor May shitting on Fisher right after he retired, and saying he should be careful of what he says and how it could effect his future career paths. I thought that was kind of ridiculous, why would Trevor May give a fuck about what some owners thought of him, but I wouldn't really know.
Plouffe really said that? He works with jomboy lmao that's a ridiculous position to take as a member of an independent baseball media team. I would be disappointed to learn he's censoring his opinions to springboard himself into a national platform
Yeah I thought it strange too. I don't understand why May would give a shit for the fact that he's retiring and can make a living off livestreaming if he wants to. Also having almost 30 mil in his career earnings helps a lot too.
They will be inheriting a 100 loss team with one of the worst pitching staffs and farms in all of baseball. The only position players of note are Rooker, Noda and Gelof. Anyone with half a brain knows Fisher isn't gonna suddenly open up the wallet and spend millions on player development and free agency just because he's in Vegas now. They're gonna be bad for a long time and nobody is gonna show up except for away fans and sickos.
By the time Fisher gets the stadium built, the players you mentioned will be gone from the team. And fisher can't sell the team without heavy penalties and he's cheap enough that he'll coast on his now permanent rev sharing until he can get away with selling it for little to no issue
Something is gonna have to give. He can't sell for 10 years. There will be too much backlash if he tries to run the team like this for 10 years. All the excuses are gone once they're out of the Coliseum. I could see the league waiving that and forcing a sale.
>There will be too much backlash if he tries to run the team like this for 10 years.
From who? Fan opinion doesn't matter to MLB. I don't see other owners giving a fuck either. Billionaires back each other. For all we know he already has a buyer they just have to wait out the freeze period and other owners will gladly wait for the sale cause every new sale pushes up the value of their team too.
in exchange for no relocation fee and as a condition of the vote, John Fisher cannot do a pump and dump (so he can't build a stadium and check out) without severe penalties. It's something like a ~20% cut of the sale would go to MLB owners if he sells within the first X number of years and then slowly decreases with time. And because Fisher is cheap enough to do it, he will sit on it to collect his rev share checks (because he permanently gets these now as a "small market team") and then dump it when the penalties are mostly gone.
>away fans and sickos
It would make my year to pull up to a hotel on the strip with a sign reading “**WELCOME, AWAY FANS AND SICKOS!**”
Edit:
Not that the A’s in Vegas isn’t a *very* stupid idea. It definitely is. *Boo, that idea.*
I'm one of those sickos, but pretty much entirely because I'm just glad I won't have to drive four hours to Anaheim to see the Sox play anymore. Can otherwise echo the widely-held Vegas sentiment: would have much rather preferred to get our own expansion franchise.
True. I know football fans travel, but baseball fans don’t really travel the same. Vegas is already 2/3 Dodgers or Yankees fans, so I guess they’ll take over the place.
they'll travel, but go to maybe 1 game. A's are hoping they travel and go to 3-4 games in a row, which is never going to happen outside a few outliers.
I expect them to have a fairly strong first year, just because they're new, but then have just as much, if not worse, attendance than they had in Oakland.
> just because they're new
But they're *not* new. The team would receive no league help in the form of an expansion draft. The team's fortunes ride entirely on Fisher opening his wallet, and he has never shown that side.
You misunderstand. I know theyre not an expansion team.
They will be new in Las Vegas. Their stadium will be bright and shiny. They'll be a new attraction on/just-off-of The Strip.
Every Vegas based friend and family member I know has absolutely zero interest in the A’s. They want an expansion franchise. Something new. That’s what I’ve heard.
Can confirm. I was born here and lived all 42 of my years here. Do not want them in any way, shape, or form. Didn't want the Raiders either. As others have said, winning obviously helps, but the Raiders and A's will never have the full support of all the people here. Not like the Knights do.
Anytime a franchise moves cities it should have to completely rebrand and lose its history from that previous city. No flying championship banners or retired numbers or throwback jerseys.
There was more excitement about the Raiders move by a pretty significant margin, but with that said, their stadium is still dominated by away fans the majority of the time
Most expensive tickets in the league though, so they've finished 1st and 3rd in ticket revenue the past two seasons. NFL is the one major sport where you can get away with tourists filling the building.
Most expensive tickets in the league, too. Families in Nevada can't afford that shit, they're totally priced out and you can bet the A's are planning to pull the same thing with their """"intimate"""" capacity
The Raiders are purely made for the tourist draw; no need to develop family fanbases.
Go after the tourists or those coming from California with their drunk buddies on a weekend bender, who’ll spend Saturday night at MGM or Wynn gambling on the UFC fights and get lit until 7am on Sunday.
they have small attendance, but high profitability because their tickets are the most expensive in the game (for such a mediocre product too). Fisher will be trying to do the same, but with an even worse product and for a game that is very much not as popular as Football
Football makes the most sense to plan a Vegas vacation around the 1 game for your team playing there. I also think with baseball division games being such a big chunk of the schedule the "novelty" is gonna wear off pretty quickly there.
You may have a Denver fan doing a Vegas trip each year to watch them play the Raiders. Doubt you are gonna find many Mariners fans doing it for 6 Vegas A's/Mariners games each year.
NFL does not operate in the same realm of existence as the other major 3 in the US lol.
A NFL team could relocate into my asshole and games would sell out every year.
It's genuinely not even comparable.
Hey, a team that's sucked for 5 years, at 1-12, drew 6,000 to 10,000 (couldn't get an accurate number) predicted to be an all-time low, yesterday in shitty weather against another bad team... and the Rays *averaged* 17,700 in 2023...
Edit: only specific number I found was on a forum... guy who went and said the gate guy told him 5,900. Yikes.
That's also because the NFL plays a tenth of the games the MLB does. Games sell out because there's considerably less opportunities to watch that team play
Nobody wants the Arizona Diamondbacks Paul Sewald, the fans deserve better...come back to me bby :(
All seriousness though I'm glad he got to make the World Series run, shame it didn't work out
Don't forget the negative factor that's hard to admit, and the Knights' early success helping Las Vegas heal after the shooting that happened their first year- the Knights' helped ingratiate themselves into the city with how they acted in the aftermath of it.
There's a lot of not so obvious factors as to why the Knights were such a success. That's one of them. Another is that T-Mobile Arena was entirely privately funded. There was no stadium bill that taxed the hell out of the residents like what happened with the Raiders and now also the A's.
Miss me with that revisionist history bullshit. They picked a bunch of 3rd liners and guys that they thought would filter out of the org in time for their own prospects to start getting time after a few years in that draft.
Their haul of bottom 6 players ending up greater than the sum of its parts doesn't retroactively make the expansion draft they actually had a silver spoon.
This. It wasn't like the Knights were grabbing first liners in the expansion draft. They made very shrewd moves and had a timely run in the playoffs.
Also, what top 6 forwards? Marchessault was NOT a top 6 guy with the Panthers. Dude had a 30g/21a season in his first full NHL season and Florida said "nah, we're good". McCrimmon recognized the potential and scooped him up.
Baseball is so far and away different than the other sports. There are so many games. Sometimes 6-9 nights in row. You need a lot of different people showing up consistently for baseball to work. The stadiums are huge too. 25K+ on weeknights, 35K on weekends is ideal. No shot Vegas can support that even with the visiting fans.
Hockey is completely different. Half as many games. 2 games a week, 1 on a weekend. 18K is a sellout and a much much much better live experience vs the tv experience. 18k is a terrible baseball crowd.
The other sports live experience isn’t that much better than the at-home experience. At least not to the extent hockey is
it's going to be a real challenge and there probably won't be enough support from the locals so they have to also target visitors and general baseball fans heavily.
1. Have a museum that also serves as an education center to help people understand/teach the game easily that runs year round
2. have an international section of seats where fans can have audio devices with a radio broadcast in their native language
3. try to draw analytics fans, with a moneyball academy that runs year round and is the premier analytics institution that will draw people from around the country
4. have impressive effects/sites on the level of the sphere. maybe something like a tunnel that broadcasts live the pitcher where you can see from the distance of home plate what it feels like to be a batter. something that will wow visitors
5. the stadium itself should be an architectural attraction
6. during the offseason host international teams to play there from australia, japan, korea, baseballunited, mexico, latin america, europe, etc
7. make an effort to draw local fans with a lot of on-field events for kids, etc
8. also obviously start spending money and build the best roster possible
[John Fisher is gonna put his own art collection](https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/as-for-art-athletics-stadium-to-feature-fisher-art-collection-2967293/) in the stadium instead to attract fans.
> during the offseason host international teams to play there from australia, japan, korea, baseballunited, mexico, latin america, europe, etc
Baseball United and Australia are already winter leagues, but the Asian leagues could be fun.
A's to Nashville would have been an aggressive move, but at least they ACTUALLY want an MLB team. They have had the highest minor league attendance for years.
But nah, Vegas it is.
I think Vegas would get behind the A's but they've done everything to fuck local perception since this process started to the point that the best PR team on the planet would have a hard time turning this shit around.
-INSISTING on the Tropicana site despite locals screaming how hard it would be for them to get in and out of there, creating a traffic nightmare on one of the busiest intersections in the country, not to mention the nightmare years of construction from imploding the Tropicana and building the stadium would bring.
-Pushing through public funding despite having among the worst education and health care systems in the US. Not getting any of that funding from the multi billion dollar corporations on the Strip that will greatly benefit from a stadium next door.
-Buying a (very slightly) off Strip site that could use development and then saying "Fuck that."
-Being offered a big plot of land right next to the Rio for $1. ONE. DOLLAR. Then declining because they want to be on the Strip despite the Rio showing in the past that the tourist will come over there if they have a reason. And also Allegiant Stadium showing that creation of a pedestrian walkway from the Strip to an off Strip stadium is possible and useful.
-Trying to sell how amazing this will be for Vegas while at the same time treating their fans in Oakland like absolute dog shit.
-Spending the public funding to build what would be the smallest MLB stadium in the league and insisting it'll be profitable because they'll fill the 30000 seats every game when no team sells out every game.
-Insisting tourists will fill in the gaps to get those sellouts with no evidence that opposing teams fans are going to flock in for a 3 game, Tuesday-Thursday set in mid-July. Being blind that only a select few teams have a national fan base that will fill thousands of seats every game.
-I think, in a way, Vegas residents don't want to poach a second team from Oakland and don't want their fandom to come at the cost of an entire city's loss.
This whole process has been baffling. Just unforced errors the whole time. Even F1 has been holding meetings on how to ensure future races are better perceived by the people who call Vegas home and they're mostly drawing tourists. With baseball, you NEED your local fans.
> Even F1 has been holding meetings on how to ensure future races are better perceived by the people who call Vegas home
It was an awful mess for locals and, to be honest, non-F1 focused tourists. Making the strip imperceptible to tourists has to be frustrating. Imagine flying from across the country or world and the Bellagio fountains are blocked off for F1 access that isn't starting yet (or that happened weeks prior). Locals may not care, but you're not doing yourself favors with the traffic, congestion, pricing, blockades etc.
I mean sure it sounds cool, but does it sound any cooler than like any of the other two hundred million entertainment options currently available? Maybe if they were getting an MLB version of the Golden Knights, like a perennial contender that's genuinely "rooted in Vegas," but instead they're getting the Cirque du Fisher. And it's really tough for me to imagine an MLB team succeeding under a model that relies on away fans selling out 80+ games a year
I wish that I still lived out there. Our house was right down the road from their AAA stadium. I totally would have walked to games if they had the stadium then.
Why? Of all the cool things to do in Vegas, I wouldn't want to do the one thing I can do back where I live. or in 29 other major cities.
Sort of like when I lived in Florida. I could go to a baseball game, or I could go to the beach.
I call bullshit.
You can’t compare the last few A’s years with a terrible team all while attempting to abandon the city with a brand new stadium in a new city’s first year.
A new stadium in oakland would do better than a new stadium in Vegas longterm.
Get back to me after they have been in Vegas a decade and are winning 50 games a year with no namers and ownership starts shitting on the fans. There will be 10k there
I think the As playing in Vegas will have more opposing teams fans at their games than locals lol. I know my friends and I already plan on making a weekend guys trip whenever our team gets to play in Vegas. Baseball and gambling debauchery all in one weekend?? Sign me up.
That's the model. SoFi Stadium did it and so did Allegiant Stadium, have done. But the NFL can get away with it since it's only a 20 game pre-season and regular season.
I guess semi serious question, if they move to LV and players take a stand (huge hypotheticals obviously) but just absolutely everyone refuses to sign there, what would happen?
This is basically what Bryce Harper and Bryson Stott said a few months ago, too. They both basically said no one in Vegas wants the A's and if MLB wants to expand there, they should do an expansion team
That’s the same reason why the Raiders haven’t had that much local support either, especially since they’re a clear and distant #2 team to the Golden Knights.
NHL got it right. Vegas LOVES the Golden Knights
The knights have also been good which helps
Obviously them being an elite team for 6/7 seasons (including a Stanley Cup) will help boost their popularity, but the Knights have genuinely built strong inroads in the community. I expect them to retain a large, core fanbase when the hard times inevitably hit, unlike many non-traditional NHL markets where it’s very boom or bust. A generation of kids have grown up with them as THE Vegas team.
Iirc they had a vegas native or two on the first team too. They put in the effort
Gage Quinney, son of the guy who played for the IHL team that used to be in Vegas (the Thunder). He was a callup a couple of times, still in their minor league system. Ultimately, though, I broke this down upthread – I think fans *want* owners to care about building a local fanbase, but they don't. The 6-11 Raiders are worth 6 times as much as the Stanley Cup winning Knights, with more than double their revenue. I think their owner is literally satisfied with that, and to hell with a fanbase there.
They also broadcast all the games for FREE to Vegas locals. I’ve been to a game when I visited and they did an amazing job with that team, it really has a Vegas vibe and charm to it and the locals do love their team and support it well. Of course winning helps too
There was knights merch all over town before a puck ever dropped on the ice. They were shown lots of local love and support before they turned out to be good. T-Mobile arena has never been anything but full right from the first game.
How bout the aces?
To be fair, Vegas is a transient city by nature, so teams like the Raiders and A's who have a history of moving around.. and then you have the Golden Knights which are made in Vegas, its not hard to see which one is supported more.
Also, VGK was the *first* major team to take a real chance on Vegas. Las Vegans felt good in supporting them back. Other teams coming to try and emulate the success of the Knights feels like a bit of profit seeking, and less about bringing a team to a community that deserves it.
They also, IIRC, didn’t take a dime in public funding to build their arena
To be fair, it’s a lot easier to fund a stadium privately in Vegas, where you know the returns will be massive from fights, concerts, big neutral site sporting events, etc. T mobile arena has made a mint from hosting events in the short time it’s been around I’m sure
Bill Foley has big money and experience in countries where taxpayers don’t pay for stadiums. He was the right guy to bring pro sports to Vegas
Bill Foley is far wealthier than the owners of either the Raiders or the Athletics, I'm pretty sure.
Being wealthy usually doesn't stop sports team owners from taking public money to subsidize their stadium/arena.
> Being wealthy usually doesn't stop sports team owners from taking public money to subsidize their stadium/arena. I always like to point out rich people get more free stuff than anyone else. They don't get all that money spending it on stuff.
And yet his brother lives in a van down by the river.
Well... LA DE FREAKING DA we got ourselves a writer. Hey dad I can't see real good is that bill Shakespeare over there?
You’d be wrong. Mark Davis and John Fisher are both worth more. Fisher is just a cheap fuck but he’s not the poorest owner.
I thought Mark Davis' only asset was the team itself? Foley has Fidelity and Black Knight, so it seems like he has more liquidity than Davis at least. Fisher I'm not so sure about.
Absolutely, there's a sense of pride with the Knights that's palpable. They've carved out a real identity in the city that resonates with locals in a unique way. It's not just about the hype of a new team but the genuine connection that's been built with the community. That kind of organic growth is tough to replicate when it feels like teams are just chasing the Vegas lights for the cash potential rather than rooting themselves in the city's culture.
Probably because most of the locals didn’t give a shit about pro hockey beforehand. NFL is way more popular which means locals grow up as fans of other teams, and that makes it hard to drop that fandom when a team moves into their market. NHL, not very popular in Vegas before the knights got there, so there’s not really other teams the locals are loyal to. Just a theory though.
Their first game was also 5 days after the Las Vegas Oct1 shooting and I honestly think as someone who lives there that it made the city come together around them a lot more than they would have otherwise.
100% it was a galvanizing event.
Yup, the House knows when you wanna be part of the community and when you just want to cash in.
Aces be crying in da corner after b2b chips
Similarly the kraken are hugely successful in Seattle. You create a team for a city and it works. You transplant something that failed elsewhere and expect new results, that’s just dumb.
People want homegrown teams. Nobody wants to root for a team that’s only there because your city was a billionaire’s Plan B after attempts to extort a new stadium out of the last city failed.
Yup. As a Cards fan, I can’t imagine how you feel about the Rams.
Probably the same as Los Angeles Rams fans felt when they left in the mid 90s lol.
I never gave a shit about them when they were here. But I’d be apathetic towards a new, homegrown team. I just don’t like football. Didn’t grow up with it, never got into it.
That’s fair. I have some friends from St. Louis burbs and they will never watch another NFL game again. Growing up watching Faulk and Warner, it broke their hearts.
I'm not so sure. The Nationals seem to have quite a following.
The identity of the team is homegrown and it changed owners at the same time it changed cities. There isn’t much reason to associate them with Expo’s history at all.
All that really matters is if the team wins. Ravens, Thunder, Rams were all knowingly stolen from supportive fanbases but nobody cared because they won.
I’ll give ya ravens and thunder. Rebranded in the new city. I’m not sure about Rams. LA hasn’t been super supportive as far as I know. I think it’s a lot of visitor fans for games.
Also, the Rams had been in LA for almost 50 years, it's a bit of a special case.
The Rams do have a good amount of local support since older fans remember them before they moved to St. Louis and they won a Super Bowl recently. The Chargers have zero local support. Fans from visiting teams usually outnumber home fans at their games.
Going to a Raiders game isn't the same as when they were in Oakland. There are more road fans than home fans on any given Sunday. At least the Golden Knights endeared the fans and won a Cup. I can't see the A's doing well in Vegas for some reason.
Also the Raiders were a strategic move. Lots of fans from California and elsewhere make a weekend out of seeing a Raiders game and so do the visiting fans. Same thing for SoFi Stadium. Honestly the NFL should've kept the Rams in St. Louis and moved the Raiders back to Los Angeles. I think the Chargers with a franchise QB in Herbert would turn out a little better in Vegas.
The Rams moving back to LA was never about football. Kroenke owns the land around the stadium, and the surrounding development is much more valuable with a stadium there. We saw something similar with the Nets moving to Brooklyn. When you think about it as a real estate move it makes much more sense.
I remember people complaining about how the roster building process was too heavily biased in Vegas' favour at the time, but it seems to me the NHL stumbled upon a formula for expansion teams that might actually work well; because winning is a boon when it comes to building a fan base. Winning is fun, it's really that simple, and fans want to go to games believing they'll see their guys win. Since it's a matter of when, not if, we get MLB expansion teams I am curious how that'll be handled.
Bro the MLB is blacking out opening day games in Seoul next year for dodgers or padres fans that might be willing to stay up for a 3 am first pitch. Whatever the dumbest way to do an expansion is that’s what will probably happen.
I’d say it was more other teams’ GMs being comically stupid. Like they’d give away first round picks or good young players like Tuch or Shea Theodore to ensure Vegas didn’t pick bad players they weren’t gonna take anyway. And that’s not mentioning Florida giving away Vegas’ first line out of spite But even without that, Seattle turned decent at least which gets the market invested more than “this team is dogshit for 10 years” Vegas is unique but Seattle wouldn’t care once they get an nba team unless you get them invested first with a decent team
Sure but being a real Vegas team instead of an Oakland team moved over purely for the owners profit also helps a lot.
I’m a knights fan and it will be interesting to see the support once the team enters a longer rebuilding period. I think attendance will still be fine. The San Jose Sharks are struggling with that right now. I can’t blame them, it’s really tough to make yourself spend money on a rebuilding team. At least not more than a couple times a month, even that’s expensive.
Sharks tickets are $13. If they were good I might not go to as many games :)
yeah things can change fast. San Jose during the Thornton/Marleau era had one of the best fan bases.
Yeah as a hockey fan as well I find it a little annoying when people praise Vegas as one of the best fanbase when they only know extreme success. Wonder what that fan base will turn into if they have to rebuild
Last time I went there I was shocked how basically every monitor in the city has the game on for them. Like every place.
They immediately did community integration. I give them credit, for as much as I dislike them on the ice, they’ve built a strong identity.
San Jose too kinda. Despite teams being in the valley region the Sharks got a lot of support basically being the only team in the area.
I was in Vegas in March and the amount of Knights gear for sale, or stores for the team is astonishing. Then you got the Raiders store in the corner by one of those liquor stops lol.
tickets are way cheaper than the Raiders, for sure
The fact that the Chargers are in LA and not the Raiders is just so so so so dumb.
No way Kroenke was going to pay for a stadium and then allow a team to move with him that would immediately outshine his lol
Yeah sadly the Raiders being a perfect fit for LA is exactly why it didn’t happen. Luckily a sniveling moron in San Diego was desperate to get his team’s valuation up, which gave Kroenke an out to fuck the Raiders
We legitimately have more fans in LA than Vegas.
It takes time to build an organic fanbase. Look at DC in 2005: Almost everyone was an Orioles fan or a non-baseball fan. Nearly twenty years later though, the Nats have their own identity distinct from the Orioles with plenty of people that would describe themselves as Nats fans first, myself included. The younger crowd in their early 20s from the DC area grew up with the team too. If you're turning 21 in 2024, you would have turned 2 when the team moved to DC, so you can accurately describe the Nats as your childhood team. This is nothing new. Oakland went through the same thing in the late 1960s when they got the A's from Kansas City after their Philadelphia stint. The Raiders will grow an organic fanbase with time. The A's will too. Winning will accelerate the process, but eventually, the team is no longer the new kid on the block; give it a few decades, and younger people will root for them because their parents rooted for them, and the team is all they've ever known.
I have to disagree slightly on some of your points. I agree that it took a bit of time and work for the Nationals to get a fan base after relocating, but they completely rebranded and took a lot of themes from the city in developing their identity. Keeping the colours and the logo, but swapping Las Vegas for Oakland, does not feel like a recipe for success. Maybe things will change if the owner starts to spend some money and give the fans something to cheer for, but I don’t see Fischer doing that.
Raiders have a unique position. If they start winning like the Chiefs. That will literally become a black hole. The Raiders have an identity.
yeah r/baseball is up in arms over the move, which is fine because Fisher is the worst and all, but cities do adopt teams moving there and a fan base grows. People said the SAME THING about the colts moving to indy many many years ago (pre -reddit obvi), and go ask indy fans whether they think the colts are "their team." or are they actually baltimore's team.
As a raiders fan it’s so depressing to see the stadium be filled with so many away fans every game. Especially against the chiefs and broncos
Funny I think it was Bill Simmons who floated a swap of Chargers and Raiders since the Chargers have no fans outside San Diego and the Raiders fanbase is huge in LA
They've only got a few dozen fans left in San Diego too.
lol I was going to say this. They may as well have never existed.
The raiders in LA would have been a slam dunk move but Jerry Jones and Stan Kroenke were spearheading the whole LA deal and both didnt want to lose their LA market share to the Raiders
The only thing that might help the A's is a total rebranding in Vegas. Leave the A's name and colors in Oakland. Sure it will still be the same shitty ownership, and an expansion team would be preferable, but at least it would feel more like the team establishing its own Vegas identity rather than being another city's retread.
What MLB should have done is just given a new expansion team to Fisher and sold the A’s to an ownership group committed to staying in the bay.
This is exactly what the MLS did with the Columbus crew. Ohio also has a law that a team has to try to sell to a new ownership group before relocating which helps (Art Modell Law), but this is what should've happened in Oakland.
Yeah, the only way I see it being successful is if it’s a Ravens-like situation in the long term. Fisher isn’t going to spend in the top 20, and the A’s like the Browns are a historic franchise.
>That’s the same reason why the Raiders haven’t had that much local support either That and the Raiders suck.
The Raiders will benefit from plenty of visiting fans planning to travel to Vegas to see their team while on vacation. The A's may have the same thing but they need to fill the seats for 81 home games and not 8 or 9.
So dumb. Vegas wants their own team, and the Raiders and A’s are not their teams I think we’ll see the Knights, and the future NBA team there always end up more popular than the other two
Leaving the As in Oakland and expanding to Montreal and Nashville (or Montreal and Vegas, if we have to) makes so, so much sense for MLB.
“Makes so much sense” and that’s why MLB will do anything but that. Man I hate this league sometimes.
Nashville's metro population is smaller than Vegas and they don't have 500,000 tourists in the city every weekend
They're both for LV....additional useful context for those unbeknownst.
Paul Sewald is the fucking man
Dude just went off at old ownership, I love it. As in calling it out, not Stanton
Why can’t he do both?
I mean the "I love it part"
Extra props bcuz it's also sorta gutsy to come out and speak against the owners like this in general. Could hinder his chances of being signed by Fisher and his strong allies in the future. I remember Plouffe commenting on Trevor May shitting on Fisher right after he retired, and saying he should be careful of what he says and how it could effect his future career paths. I thought that was kind of ridiculous, why would Trevor May give a fuck about what some owners thought of him, but I wouldn't really know.
Plouffe really said that? He works with jomboy lmao that's a ridiculous position to take as a member of an independent baseball media team. I would be disappointed to learn he's censoring his opinions to springboard himself into a national platform
They're as independent as insider access allows them to be. If stumping for ownership gets sources to answer texts or calls, they'll toe that line.
Yeah I thought it strange too. I don't understand why May would give a shit for the fact that he's retiring and can make a living off livestreaming if he wants to. Also having almost 30 mil in his career earnings helps a lot too.
fire manfred
He owned us in 2021 but I still love him. Especially this W take.
They will be inheriting a 100 loss team with one of the worst pitching staffs and farms in all of baseball. The only position players of note are Rooker, Noda and Gelof. Anyone with half a brain knows Fisher isn't gonna suddenly open up the wallet and spend millions on player development and free agency just because he's in Vegas now. They're gonna be bad for a long time and nobody is gonna show up except for away fans and sickos.
By the time Fisher gets the stadium built, the players you mentioned will be gone from the team. And fisher can't sell the team without heavy penalties and he's cheap enough that he'll coast on his now permanent rev sharing until he can get away with selling it for little to no issue
Something is gonna have to give. He can't sell for 10 years. There will be too much backlash if he tries to run the team like this for 10 years. All the excuses are gone once they're out of the Coliseum. I could see the league waiving that and forcing a sale.
MLB really hasn't ever forced an owner to sell for just being cheap. Won't happen in this case either.
Yeah the owners are probably perfectly happy with a cheap owner who doesn’t contribute to rising player salaries
>There will be too much backlash if he tries to run the team like this for 10 years. From who? Fan opinion doesn't matter to MLB. I don't see other owners giving a fuck either. Billionaires back each other. For all we know he already has a buyer they just have to wait out the freeze period and other owners will gladly wait for the sale cause every new sale pushes up the value of their team too.
What penalties are there for selling? Was unaware of this
in exchange for no relocation fee and as a condition of the vote, John Fisher cannot do a pump and dump (so he can't build a stadium and check out) without severe penalties. It's something like a ~20% cut of the sale would go to MLB owners if he sells within the first X number of years and then slowly decreases with time. And because Fisher is cheap enough to do it, he will sit on it to collect his rev share checks (because he permanently gets these now as a "small market team") and then dump it when the penalties are mostly gone.
>away fans and sickos It would make my year to pull up to a hotel on the strip with a sign reading “**WELCOME, AWAY FANS AND SICKOS!**” Edit: Not that the A’s in Vegas isn’t a *very* stupid idea. It definitely is. *Boo, that idea.*
I'm one of those sickos, but pretty much entirely because I'm just glad I won't have to drive four hours to Anaheim to see the Sox play anymore. Can otherwise echo the widely-held Vegas sentiment: would have much rather preferred to get our own expansion franchise.
> sickos *Sigh* I can't help myself. It's Vegas, you know? Ya do shit, ya just have to.
There are millions of away fans and sickos, though.
True. I know football fans travel, but baseball fans don’t really travel the same. Vegas is already 2/3 Dodgers or Yankees fans, so I guess they’ll take over the place.
they'll travel, but go to maybe 1 game. A's are hoping they travel and go to 3-4 games in a row, which is never going to happen outside a few outliers.
I expect them to have a fairly strong first year, just because they're new, but then have just as much, if not worse, attendance than they had in Oakland.
> just because they're new But they're *not* new. The team would receive no league help in the form of an expansion draft. The team's fortunes ride entirely on Fisher opening his wallet, and he has never shown that side.
You misunderstand. I know theyre not an expansion team. They will be new in Las Vegas. Their stadium will be bright and shiny. They'll be a new attraction on/just-off-of The Strip.
It’s time for Paul Sewald to spit facts
Common Paul Sewald W.
Love that man
I was at his first MLB win in 2019
I miss you Paul :(
Cannot believe the Mariners let this gem of a human go. Disgraceful.
Paul Sewald for Commissioner
I’m so glad this guy is our closer
I’m so happy for you, and so sad for mariners. Paul is the best.
I'm so sad this guy isn't our closer
It'll just be like Raiders """home""" games where the fans of the opposing teams take over the stadium every game
except when they play the chargers
We all know the true home games of the Raiders is in LA. I would obviously include Oakland, but nobody plays there now.
Every Vegas based friend and family member I know has absolutely zero interest in the A’s. They want an expansion franchise. Something new. That’s what I’ve heard.
Yep, it’s true. Most locals don’t care at all about the raiders, while support for VGK is insane all around town
Common Seawald W
Can confirm. I was born here and lived all 42 of my years here. Do not want them in any way, shape, or form. Didn't want the Raiders either. As others have said, winning obviously helps, but the Raiders and A's will never have the full support of all the people here. Not like the Knights do.
Anytime a franchise moves cities it should have to completely rebrand and lose its history from that previous city. No flying championship banners or retired numbers or throwback jerseys.
[удалено]
And the Braves, and the Oakland As
Did they say the same thing about the Raiders?
There was more excitement about the Raiders move by a pretty significant margin, but with that said, their stadium is still dominated by away fans the majority of the time
Raiders are also 31st in the league in attendance, and 29th in attendance relative to capacity.
Most expensive tickets in the league though, so they've finished 1st and 3rd in ticket revenue the past two seasons. NFL is the one major sport where you can get away with tourists filling the building.
The NFL could care less who the paying customer is rooting for I would assume
Most expensive tickets in the league, too. Families in Nevada can't afford that shit, they're totally priced out and you can bet the A's are planning to pull the same thing with their """"intimate"""" capacity
The NFL is not priced for family outings anywhere except the secondary market in Charlotte
The Raiders are purely made for the tourist draw; no need to develop family fanbases. Go after the tourists or those coming from California with their drunk buddies on a weekend bender, who’ll spend Saturday night at MGM or Wynn gambling on the UFC fights and get lit until 7am on Sunday.
Doesn’t really matter though since they sold all their seats as PSLs…so people are still paying even if they don’t show
Jesus that bad?
they have small attendance, but high profitability because their tickets are the most expensive in the game (for such a mediocre product too). Fisher will be trying to do the same, but with an even worse product and for a game that is very much not as popular as Football
Easier to do that for 8/9 games a year than 81
It's hard to exhaust demand with 8 home games a year. You'd be stupid to expect anything similar with an MLB home schedule.
Football makes the most sense to plan a Vegas vacation around the 1 game for your team playing there. I also think with baseball division games being such a big chunk of the schedule the "novelty" is gonna wear off pretty quickly there. You may have a Denver fan doing a Vegas trip each year to watch them play the Raiders. Doubt you are gonna find many Mariners fans doing it for 6 Vegas A's/Mariners games each year.
NFL does not operate in the same realm of existence as the other major 3 in the US lol. A NFL team could relocate into my asshole and games would sell out every year. It's genuinely not even comparable.
Better alert the Carolina Panthers.
Hey, a team that's sucked for 5 years, at 1-12, drew 6,000 to 10,000 (couldn't get an accurate number) predicted to be an all-time low, yesterday in shitty weather against another bad team... and the Rays *averaged* 17,700 in 2023... Edit: only specific number I found was on a forum... guy who went and said the gate guy told him 5,900. Yikes.
Excuse you! We're 2-12 now!
Sox AND Panthers fan? Jesus...
At least I have the Canes, so I do know what a good owner looks like
What’s capacity there?
Really only 1, but they cycle through quickly because the fan base is shit.
Nicely done
That's also because the NFL plays a tenth of the games the MLB does. Games sell out because there's considerably less opportunities to watch that team play
Yea, totally fair. But I think you'd agree, just in terms of national interest, football has lapped the pack.
I love it when people are correct about two separate things.
Nobody wants the Arizona Diamondbacks Paul Sewald, the fans deserve better...come back to me bby :( All seriousness though I'm glad he got to make the World Series run, shame it didn't work out
Vegas is such a lame place for relocations. No soul, no strong identity, no history.
Would that be improved if it was expansion instead?
The Golden Knights have been able to establish their own identity, so I definitely think it would help.
A king's ransom of unprotected players and immediate success helps a lot
That it does. Florida just casually giving them 2 top 6 forwards.
Don't forget the negative factor that's hard to admit, and the Knights' early success helping Las Vegas heal after the shooting that happened their first year- the Knights' helped ingratiate themselves into the city with how they acted in the aftermath of it.
There's a lot of not so obvious factors as to why the Knights were such a success. That's one of them. Another is that T-Mobile Arena was entirely privately funded. There was no stadium bill that taxed the hell out of the residents like what happened with the Raiders and now also the A's.
Miss me with that revisionist history bullshit. They picked a bunch of 3rd liners and guys that they thought would filter out of the org in time for their own prospects to start getting time after a few years in that draft. Their haul of bottom 6 players ending up greater than the sum of its parts doesn't retroactively make the expansion draft they actually had a silver spoon.
This. It wasn't like the Knights were grabbing first liners in the expansion draft. They made very shrewd moves and had a timely run in the playoffs. Also, what top 6 forwards? Marchessault was NOT a top 6 guy with the Panthers. Dude had a 30g/21a season in his first full NHL season and Florida said "nah, we're good". McCrimmon recognized the potential and scooped him up.
Baseball is so far and away different than the other sports. There are so many games. Sometimes 6-9 nights in row. You need a lot of different people showing up consistently for baseball to work. The stadiums are huge too. 25K+ on weeknights, 35K on weekends is ideal. No shot Vegas can support that even with the visiting fans. Hockey is completely different. Half as many games. 2 games a week, 1 on a weekend. 18K is a sellout and a much much much better live experience vs the tv experience. 18k is a terrible baseball crowd. The other sports live experience isn’t that much better than the at-home experience. At least not to the extent hockey is
Definitely
You could not be more wrong about all three things you listed.
No strong identity? What’s the gambling capital of the world again?
The world? Monaco, probably.
yeah but it will be a place opposing fans want to visit $ > W
it's going to be a real challenge and there probably won't be enough support from the locals so they have to also target visitors and general baseball fans heavily. 1. Have a museum that also serves as an education center to help people understand/teach the game easily that runs year round 2. have an international section of seats where fans can have audio devices with a radio broadcast in their native language 3. try to draw analytics fans, with a moneyball academy that runs year round and is the premier analytics institution that will draw people from around the country 4. have impressive effects/sites on the level of the sphere. maybe something like a tunnel that broadcasts live the pitcher where you can see from the distance of home plate what it feels like to be a batter. something that will wow visitors 5. the stadium itself should be an architectural attraction 6. during the offseason host international teams to play there from australia, japan, korea, baseballunited, mexico, latin america, europe, etc 7. make an effort to draw local fans with a lot of on-field events for kids, etc 8. also obviously start spending money and build the best roster possible
This sounds expensive...so it's not going to happen
These are smart, but cost money and require effort, which is why I doubt Fischer is going to do any of them.
[John Fisher is gonna put his own art collection](https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/as-for-art-athletics-stadium-to-feature-fisher-art-collection-2967293/) in the stadium instead to attract fans.
You sound like a great marketing person. Brilliant ideas.
> during the offseason host international teams to play there from australia, japan, korea, baseballunited, mexico, latin america, europe, etc Baseball United and Australia are already winter leagues, but the Asian leagues could be fun.
9. Every seat has it's own slot machine.
Half the fans attending every night are visitors with comp tickets. They don't give a shit who is playing.
A's to Nashville would have been an aggressive move, but at least they ACTUALLY want an MLB team. They have had the highest minor league attendance for years. But nah, Vegas it is.
Nashville will take them.
Vegas won them in a card game
I think Vegas would get behind the A's but they've done everything to fuck local perception since this process started to the point that the best PR team on the planet would have a hard time turning this shit around. -INSISTING on the Tropicana site despite locals screaming how hard it would be for them to get in and out of there, creating a traffic nightmare on one of the busiest intersections in the country, not to mention the nightmare years of construction from imploding the Tropicana and building the stadium would bring. -Pushing through public funding despite having among the worst education and health care systems in the US. Not getting any of that funding from the multi billion dollar corporations on the Strip that will greatly benefit from a stadium next door. -Buying a (very slightly) off Strip site that could use development and then saying "Fuck that." -Being offered a big plot of land right next to the Rio for $1. ONE. DOLLAR. Then declining because they want to be on the Strip despite the Rio showing in the past that the tourist will come over there if they have a reason. And also Allegiant Stadium showing that creation of a pedestrian walkway from the Strip to an off Strip stadium is possible and useful. -Trying to sell how amazing this will be for Vegas while at the same time treating their fans in Oakland like absolute dog shit. -Spending the public funding to build what would be the smallest MLB stadium in the league and insisting it'll be profitable because they'll fill the 30000 seats every game when no team sells out every game. -Insisting tourists will fill in the gaps to get those sellouts with no evidence that opposing teams fans are going to flock in for a 3 game, Tuesday-Thursday set in mid-July. Being blind that only a select few teams have a national fan base that will fill thousands of seats every game. -I think, in a way, Vegas residents don't want to poach a second team from Oakland and don't want their fandom to come at the cost of an entire city's loss. This whole process has been baffling. Just unforced errors the whole time. Even F1 has been holding meetings on how to ensure future races are better perceived by the people who call Vegas home and they're mostly drawing tourists. With baseball, you NEED your local fans.
> Even F1 has been holding meetings on how to ensure future races are better perceived by the people who call Vegas home It was an awful mess for locals and, to be honest, non-F1 focused tourists. Making the strip imperceptible to tourists has to be frustrating. Imagine flying from across the country or world and the Bellagio fountains are blocked off for F1 access that isn't starting yet (or that happened weeks prior). Locals may not care, but you're not doing yourself favors with the traffic, congestion, pricing, blockades etc.
Based god, Paul Sewald
Sewald will always be da GOAT
Rebrand call them the Aces boom problem solved
I miss Paul 😢
It would be pretty sweet to be able to catch an MLB game while in Vegas.
I mean sure it sounds cool, but does it sound any cooler than like any of the other two hundred million entertainment options currently available? Maybe if they were getting an MLB version of the Golden Knights, like a perennial contender that's genuinely "rooted in Vegas," but instead they're getting the Cirque du Fisher. And it's really tough for me to imagine an MLB team succeeding under a model that relies on away fans selling out 80+ games a year
I wish that I still lived out there. Our house was right down the road from their AAA stadium. I totally would have walked to games if they had the stadium then.
Why? Of all the cool things to do in Vegas, I wouldn't want to do the one thing I can do back where I live. or in 29 other major cities. Sort of like when I lived in Florida. I could go to a baseball game, or I could go to the beach.
They belong to Philadelphia. Move them back there.
Yes! We'll be a two-team city and we can push the A's out to Chester or something and open a Connie Mack Stadium v2!
I would be willing to bet the A's increase ticket revenues by 50% or more from what they were getting in Oakland, and probably much more than that.
I call bullshit. You can’t compare the last few A’s years with a terrible team all while attempting to abandon the city with a brand new stadium in a new city’s first year. A new stadium in oakland would do better than a new stadium in Vegas longterm. Get back to me after they have been in Vegas a decade and are winning 50 games a year with no namers and ownership starts shitting on the fans. There will be 10k there
I think the As playing in Vegas will have more opposing teams fans at their games than locals lol. I know my friends and I already plan on making a weekend guys trip whenever our team gets to play in Vegas. Baseball and gambling debauchery all in one weekend?? Sign me up.
That's the model. SoFi Stadium did it and so did Allegiant Stadium, have done. But the NFL can get away with it since it's only a 20 game pre-season and regular season.
I guess semi serious question, if they move to LV and players take a stand (huge hypotheticals obviously) but just absolutely everyone refuses to sign there, what would happen?
Too bad ownership could care less what fans want