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.
-
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.
-
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)
-
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.
If the A's are moving to Vegas that would put a major and a Triple-A in the same city (the Aviators; who are affiliated with the A's). That's an arrangement that generally doesn't last, especially in a market as small as Vegas .
I'd love to see the Aviators move east. There's a couple underserved markets that could take them.