Should the taxpayers have any involvement in funding sports stadiums, or no? Been reading so many articles and Reddit threads about the whole thing with the A’s, and there’s multiple things, but three things stick out to me especially.
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John Fisher never truly planned on keeping the team in Oakland to begin with, and used Oakland to negotiate with Vegas in order to get the public funding for the stadium that he needs.
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Oakland, or at least the area around the Oakland Alameda Colisseum is a shithole that needed renovating, and sports teams don’t actually bring in the economic benefits they advertise (mainly because the cost of the tax breaks and other tax benefits to build the stadiums is generally more than the tourist dollars needed to break even)
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Sports fandom is a lot more localized than I thought, at least in the US. LA doesn’t care about the Chargers, Vegas doesn’t care about the Raiders, but care about the Golden Knights because it’s a team original to Vegas that is a men’s team (the Aces are the Vegas WNBA team, but of course, WNBA).
Just stuff I’ve been thinking about all day today.
I'm assuming Las Vegas will require an indoor, air conditioned stadium.
Las Vegas has a longstanding AAA team, but they have historically been considered the least desirable affiliate by the big league clubs because of local conditions. Teams would play musical chairs trading affiliates every 4 years and when the music stopped, whoever was left empty handed had to take Vegas.
Teams hated Vegas as a site to train their prospects because the dry air and elevation meant every hitter suddenly became Babe Ruth while pitchers got destroyed and lost confidence.
The sun-baked infield dirt also became as hard as concrete, turning routine groundballs into rockets and causing tons of fielding errors.
The A's actually are the current owners of said AAA team at the moment. Allegedly the plan is to relocate the AAA team and play home games strictly at night at that stadium until the indoor stadium gets built, because the people of Oakland absolutely fucking hate the ownership already due to fielding shit teams constantly and don't attend out of protest, but definitely will barely go to Oakland games with this news.
Thanks, didn't know. Last time I remember it was the Mets.
I think the AAA got a new outdoor stadium sometime in the last 10 years or so, but it would still be insane to play there even temporarily.
But I guess the Jays playing in Dunedin and Buffalo or the Expos playing in San Juan means there's a precedent for this sort of bush league thing to happen.