[Travis Sawchik] We’ve all seen how difficult it is to build organic MLB fanbases in Tampa and Miami, so to throw 57 years of fandom away and start over in a transient place like Las Vegas is certainly a choice
September 27, 2024
[Travis Sawchik] We’ve all seen how difficult it is to build organic MLB fanbases in Tampa and Miami, so to throw 57 years of fandom away and start over in a transient place like Las Vegas is certainly a choice
40 comments
I feel like this should have been blatantly obvious with the whole, “we’ll play 3 years in a minor league park” fiasco, but Fisher isn’t thinking long term. He wants to artificially increase the team’s value and cash out ASAP.
It’s about luxury boxes.
All the points have been beaten like a dead horse, but the most important thing about this to me has always been *Las Vegas residents DO NOT WANT the Oakland A’s to move there*. They *DO NOT WANT John Fisher as the owner of their MLB team*.
Many locals do want a franchise, but even those that do want an expansion team who *wants to invest in the team’s success* and would rather not have to pay tax money for the worst owner in all of baseball.
Is it just me or were all these media voices who are upset about the move now not nearly as vocal for the past several years as this clearly took shape? It would have been nice to have this kind of focus on the failure of Fisher and MLB much earlier in the process when it might have had a sliver of a chance to change anything
Believing they care about locals buying tickets is certainly a choice.
I think we can say that the team should’ve stayed in Oakland without resorting to pre-2017 ideas of what Las Vegas is like. Saying Las Vegas has a hard time supporting a sports team is demonstrably untrue.
[This was the scene outside the hockey arena when the NHL team won the Stanley Cup in 2023.](https://youtu.be/fbnNvH5V9mo?si=Y5ALSGNCiv4Vwu24) This wasn’t the parade, this was just the crowd to watch the game outside the arena. No one in Vegas knew anything about ice hockey six years before this
That doesn’t mean the A’s will succeed. The Golden Knights are one of the most ruthlessly effective organizations in sports, which has helped them tremendously. If the A’s are as poorly run as they were in Oakland, and they probably will be, then they’ll have trouble anywhere. But we can have this discussion without lying about Vegas
I live in Vegas and I can guarantee that nobody will switch allegiances to support the A’s. The only team the city had embraced are the Golden Knights. Ask the Raiders if they’ve developed more fans? The same will happen to the A’s. Home games will often feel like away games. Especially against popular teams with big fan bases. Not to mention that there’s a ton of LA transplants like myself that will take over the stadium when the dodgers come to town.
This there a scenario where this handled even worse than it has been?
If they were actually going to play in Vegas that would be one thing. There is actually a pretty big baseball community there, a lot of good HS players come from that area. But they might not ever even play in Vegas. Fisher decided to move there with no plan, and Vegas noped out of their tax money going to this
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to:
The A’s couldn’t find a suitable spot to build a stadium locally, so their plan is to move to a minor league shed for a few years and hopefully build a nice new barn in a new area. Putting aside the absurdity of leaving a major league stadium (and yes, I use that term loosely when speaking of the coliseum) to purposely move to a minor league facility….seriously forget that for a moment.
THE NHL LITERALLY DECIDED THE EXACT SAME SITUATION WAS COMPLETELY UNTENABLE THREE MONTHS AGO AND A COUPLE HUNDRED MILES AWAY!
Is no one in Major League Baseball paying attention to the NHL? Their offices are around the corner from each other. When Gary Bettman is a step ahead of you, it might be time to look in the mirror and realize Manfred is the problem.
I mean Vegas can behind sports team no problem. The question is will they get behind this one given the circumstances.
D backs have seemed to do fine and they started with the rays
The Raiders work because they have 16 games a year in the fall and winter. People aren’t coming to Vegas in July to watch a 3 game series against a dogshit franchise. This is going to be an epic failure.
We have also seen that in Oakland. 50 out of 57 seasons they finished outside the Top 5 in AL attendance. And that is even while winning multiple WS and making the playoffs over 25 times.
Would the idea of moving to Vegas be about more than ticket sales and building a fan following? You get a plot of land, develop it into an “entertainment center” with your stadium, restaurants, Vegas-y things. Continue to pinch Pennies on payroll and allow revenue sharing to coast you along while the value of your team inflates, which now sits in a state with no income tax and in a region that has gained 1 million + people in the last 15 years. Sell and pat yourself on the back for being a savvy business man
Idk I’m just talking out of my ass, but there has to be a reason why he’s trying to rush to Vegas. Obviously right now he’s in the “steal from local taxpayer” part of his grift. Which might be harder to sell to city officials with no shortage of entertainment in their city to keep their economy churning
Mild take: the Rays would have a much larger attendance if they moved from downtown St Pete to Tampa. They might not have the titles like the Lightning do, but they’ve seen success in the regular season like the Lightning, and the Lightning do great attendance wise.
Having lived in the Tampa Bay Area for the last two years, I can attest that, while I love St Pete, I don’t feel like driving an hour or more to go to a game on a Tuesday night.
While I agree moving the team is stupid, it’s not like the other teams that have moved to Vegas have had attendance issues.
In 1969 someone probably made the same point about Oakland. I mean it’s California, full of transplants, who knows if local sports teams will ever catch on.
I’d prefer to live in a world where sports teams don’t relocate, but some of the arguments brought up here seem like outright pandering.
I still can’t figure out how the state of Florida has 2 baseball teams when neither of them draws. They’re always bottom 2 in attendance and cant sell out playoff games.
Nobody was going to A’s games for the past 57 years.
They never really took off. The giants were the bay area team
RemindMe! 42 months
I love all the dodgers fans in here being like a team moving is so upsetting to me
[deleted]
Jeez Las Vegas catching strays 😆
I want to a Monday night game in Tampa against the white Sox. They announced the attendance at 14000 and people laughed. There were maybe 5 thousand. Maybe.
A foul ball got hit on the first base side and I WALKED over and picked it up. One other lady was after it but she said she would just get the next one. lol.
Fast forward to the following year and o caught a Tampa home run and gave it to a fan from Tampa. Kid.
Something that doesn’t seem to get mentioned by Travis here is how both the Rays and Marlins have both been run by penny-pinchers for their entire existence now, which has included tear-downs of perfectly competitive teams just to line their own pockets (looking at *you*, Marlins). It wouldn’t be so difficult to grow a fanbase around these teams if you…I dunno…at least *try* to keep your stars and invest in your team’s success?
I take issue with the framing of Vegas as a “transient market.” VGK have shown that a fanbase can be built, and I know plenty of people that’re lifelong residents.
That said, it very obviously should’ve been an expansion team, which is what most LV residents wanted anyways. Nobody wants a stolen team run on a shoestring budget by a greedy owner.
I feel for Oakland fans but I can’t wait for a 30 for 30 type documentary.
Look, I’d like them to stay in Oakland… but I don’t think it’s controversial to say there will definitely be a market for sports teams in Vegas. The Raiders and the Knights have done fine.
Also Oakland has to take some of the blame here. Ive lived in the surrounding area, and it’s just not a place I would recommend anyone to go. I basically wouldn’t go unless I am using Bart for transportation. Even if ownership investing in improving the shit coliseum, it’s still stuck smack dab in the middle of one of the worst cities in CA.
As a Vegas local, I have seen this scenario work twice for the Golden Knights and also the Raiders. Locals here had no affiliation with hockey and didn’t care much about it but now, it is massive. Sure there was hype to get a hockey team but this town is in love with the team. Also when the Raiders were announced, so many people I know complained about how it is going to bring the negative fans here. However now, locals have embraced the team like you wouldn’t believe. We can all assume it won’t work here but I have seen this scenario play out already.
Yeah why give up on those 57 years of fandom that has brought more years dead last in attendance than top half. You can’t buy that level of dedication from a fanbase.
If you look at the Raiders and Golden Knights, I really don’t think its a stretch to bet on LV fans
“Fandom”?, is that what we’re calling 11K avg attendance, 30th of 30 in MLB? In an untenable stadium where every other sports team left at first chance.
They better start recruiting absolute saints if they don’t want repeated CJ Abrams situations.
I mean the franchise moved from Philly to kc after 53 years
Oakland and rays aren’t too different when it comes to actual fan support.
Rays would be an average fanbase if the stadium was in Tampa. It took me an 2 hours to get to and from the game last time I went and its just too much to ask of a fanbase to go watch their local baseball game.
Tampa has fantastic sports fans that fill stadiums.
St. Petersburg however, is a different story.
I can’t imagine what Las Vegas would be like lol
Where was this reporter outrage when something could have been done lmao
Did baseball social media just wake up from a coma? Pro sports owners care about one thing and one thing only. The A’s were never staying in Oakland, and anybody that believes otherwise hasn’t been paying attention for the past 40 years or so
So we’re just pretending then that Oakland hasn’t been right down there with the Rays and Marlins in attendance for over 20 years now? Fisher is a bad owner, I understand the frustration of someone putting out a bad product and then just picking up and leaving, but this whole charade about how great a baseball town Oakland is just not true. 2006 the A’s made the ALCS they were 26th in attendance, 2012-2014 they made the playoffs 3 straight years and we on average 24th in attendance. Exact same story in 2018 and 2019 too.
40 comments
I feel like this should have been blatantly obvious with the whole, “we’ll play 3 years in a minor league park” fiasco, but Fisher isn’t thinking long term. He wants to artificially increase the team’s value and cash out ASAP.
It’s about luxury boxes.
All the points have been beaten like a dead horse, but the most important thing about this to me has always been *Las Vegas residents DO NOT WANT the Oakland A’s to move there*. They *DO NOT WANT John Fisher as the owner of their MLB team*.
Many locals do want a franchise, but even those that do want an expansion team who *wants to invest in the team’s success* and would rather not have to pay tax money for the worst owner in all of baseball.
Is it just me or were all these media voices who are upset about the move now not nearly as vocal for the past several years as this clearly took shape? It would have been nice to have this kind of focus on the failure of Fisher and MLB much earlier in the process when it might have had a sliver of a chance to change anything
Believing they care about locals buying tickets is certainly a choice.
I think we can say that the team should’ve stayed in Oakland without resorting to pre-2017 ideas of what Las Vegas is like. Saying Las Vegas has a hard time supporting a sports team is demonstrably untrue.
[This was the scene outside the hockey arena when the NHL team won the Stanley Cup in 2023.](https://youtu.be/fbnNvH5V9mo?si=Y5ALSGNCiv4Vwu24) This wasn’t the parade, this was just the crowd to watch the game outside the arena. No one in Vegas knew anything about ice hockey six years before this
That doesn’t mean the A’s will succeed. The Golden Knights are one of the most ruthlessly effective organizations in sports, which has helped them tremendously. If the A’s are as poorly run as they were in Oakland, and they probably will be, then they’ll have trouble anywhere. But we can have this discussion without lying about Vegas
I live in Vegas and I can guarantee that nobody will switch allegiances to support the A’s. The only team the city had embraced are the Golden Knights. Ask the Raiders if they’ve developed more fans? The same will happen to the A’s. Home games will often feel like away games. Especially against popular teams with big fan bases. Not to mention that there’s a ton of LA transplants like myself that will take over the stadium when the dodgers come to town.
This there a scenario where this handled even worse than it has been?
If they were actually going to play in Vegas that would be one thing. There is actually a pretty big baseball community there, a lot of good HS players come from that area. But they might not ever even play in Vegas. Fisher decided to move there with no plan, and Vegas noped out of their tax money going to this
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to:
The A’s couldn’t find a suitable spot to build a stadium locally, so their plan is to move to a minor league shed for a few years and hopefully build a nice new barn in a new area. Putting aside the absurdity of leaving a major league stadium (and yes, I use that term loosely when speaking of the coliseum) to purposely move to a minor league facility….seriously forget that for a moment.
THE NHL LITERALLY DECIDED THE EXACT SAME SITUATION WAS COMPLETELY UNTENABLE THREE MONTHS AGO AND A COUPLE HUNDRED MILES AWAY!
Is no one in Major League Baseball paying attention to the NHL? Their offices are around the corner from each other. When Gary Bettman is a step ahead of you, it might be time to look in the mirror and realize Manfred is the problem.
I mean Vegas can behind sports team no problem. The question is will they get behind this one given the circumstances.
D backs have seemed to do fine and they started with the rays
The Raiders work because they have 16 games a year in the fall and winter. People aren’t coming to Vegas in July to watch a 3 game series against a dogshit franchise. This is going to be an epic failure.
We have also seen that in Oakland. 50 out of 57 seasons they finished outside the Top 5 in AL attendance. And that is even while winning multiple WS and making the playoffs over 25 times.
Would the idea of moving to Vegas be about more than ticket sales and building a fan following? You get a plot of land, develop it into an “entertainment center” with your stadium, restaurants, Vegas-y things. Continue to pinch Pennies on payroll and allow revenue sharing to coast you along while the value of your team inflates, which now sits in a state with no income tax and in a region that has gained 1 million + people in the last 15 years. Sell and pat yourself on the back for being a savvy business man
Idk I’m just talking out of my ass, but there has to be a reason why he’s trying to rush to Vegas. Obviously right now he’s in the “steal from local taxpayer” part of his grift. Which might be harder to sell to city officials with no shortage of entertainment in their city to keep their economy churning
Mild take: the Rays would have a much larger attendance if they moved from downtown St Pete to Tampa. They might not have the titles like the Lightning do, but they’ve seen success in the regular season like the Lightning, and the Lightning do great attendance wise.
Having lived in the Tampa Bay Area for the last two years, I can attest that, while I love St Pete, I don’t feel like driving an hour or more to go to a game on a Tuesday night.
While I agree moving the team is stupid, it’s not like the other teams that have moved to Vegas have had attendance issues.
In 1969 someone probably made the same point about Oakland. I mean it’s California, full of transplants, who knows if local sports teams will ever catch on.
I’d prefer to live in a world where sports teams don’t relocate, but some of the arguments brought up here seem like outright pandering.
I still can’t figure out how the state of Florida has 2 baseball teams when neither of them draws. They’re always bottom 2 in attendance and cant sell out playoff games.
Nobody was going to A’s games for the past 57 years.
They never really took off. The giants were the bay area team
RemindMe! 42 months
I love all the dodgers fans in here being like a team moving is so upsetting to me
[deleted]
Jeez Las Vegas catching strays 😆
I want to a Monday night game in Tampa against the white Sox. They announced the attendance at 14000 and people laughed. There were maybe 5 thousand. Maybe.
A foul ball got hit on the first base side and I WALKED over and picked it up. One other lady was after it but she said she would just get the next one. lol.
Fast forward to the following year and o caught a Tampa home run and gave it to a fan from Tampa. Kid.
Something that doesn’t seem to get mentioned by Travis here is how both the Rays and Marlins have both been run by penny-pinchers for their entire existence now, which has included tear-downs of perfectly competitive teams just to line their own pockets (looking at *you*, Marlins). It wouldn’t be so difficult to grow a fanbase around these teams if you…I dunno…at least *try* to keep your stars and invest in your team’s success?
I take issue with the framing of Vegas as a “transient market.” VGK have shown that a fanbase can be built, and I know plenty of people that’re lifelong residents.
That said, it very obviously should’ve been an expansion team, which is what most LV residents wanted anyways. Nobody wants a stolen team run on a shoestring budget by a greedy owner.
I feel for Oakland fans but I can’t wait for a 30 for 30 type documentary.
Look, I’d like them to stay in Oakland… but I don’t think it’s controversial to say there will definitely be a market for sports teams in Vegas. The Raiders and the Knights have done fine.
Also Oakland has to take some of the blame here. Ive lived in the surrounding area, and it’s just not a place I would recommend anyone to go. I basically wouldn’t go unless I am using Bart for transportation. Even if ownership investing in improving the shit coliseum, it’s still stuck smack dab in the middle of one of the worst cities in CA.
As a Vegas local, I have seen this scenario work twice for the Golden Knights and also the Raiders. Locals here had no affiliation with hockey and didn’t care much about it but now, it is massive. Sure there was hype to get a hockey team but this town is in love with the team. Also when the Raiders were announced, so many people I know complained about how it is going to bring the negative fans here. However now, locals have embraced the team like you wouldn’t believe. We can all assume it won’t work here but I have seen this scenario play out already.
Yeah why give up on those 57 years of fandom that has brought more years dead last in attendance than top half. You can’t buy that level of dedication from a fanbase.
If you look at the Raiders and Golden Knights, I really don’t think its a stretch to bet on LV fans
“Fandom”?, is that what we’re calling 11K avg attendance, 30th of 30 in MLB? In an untenable stadium where every other sports team left at first chance.
They better start recruiting absolute saints if they don’t want repeated CJ Abrams situations.
I mean the franchise moved from Philly to kc after 53 years
Oakland and rays aren’t too different when it comes to actual fan support.
Rays would be an average fanbase if the stadium was in Tampa. It took me an 2 hours to get to and from the game last time I went and its just too much to ask of a fanbase to go watch their local baseball game.
Tampa has fantastic sports fans that fill stadiums.
St. Petersburg however, is a different story.
I can’t imagine what Las Vegas would be like lol
Where was this reporter outrage when something could have been done lmao
Did baseball social media just wake up from a coma? Pro sports owners care about one thing and one thing only. The A’s were never staying in Oakland, and anybody that believes otherwise hasn’t been paying attention for the past 40 years or so
So we’re just pretending then that Oakland hasn’t been right down there with the Rays and Marlins in attendance for over 20 years now? Fisher is a bad owner, I understand the frustration of someone putting out a bad product and then just picking up and leaving, but this whole charade about how great a baseball town Oakland is just not true. 2006 the A’s made the ALCS they were 26th in attendance, 2012-2014 they made the playoffs 3 straight years and we on average 24th in attendance. Exact same story in 2018 and 2019 too.