One by one they left Auckland.
First, the Warriors moved back across the bay to San Francisco in 2019, a return to a basketball franchise whose recent championship reign has been defined more by glitz than guts. And a year later, it’s the Raiders cruising to Las Vegas, their gridded bandit-logo eye patches clearly hiding their wandering eyes.
On Thursday, his final departure became almost official. Major League Baseball’s owners unanimously approved the Athletics’ move to Las Vegas, but the Athletics until recently used the marketing tagline “rooted in Oakland.”
There are still many things the baseball club needs to resolve. The Athletics have one year left on their contract in Oakland, and their new stadium, a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat ballpark with a retractable roof for which the Nevada Legislature approved public funding, is not expected to be completed until 2028. is. is an open question. The Nevada State Teachers Union aims to put the subsidies on voters’ ballots.
But the A’s impending move, seemingly inevitable, landed in Oakland like a fastball to the ribs.
“I don’t want to sound like I’m exaggerating, but to me this isn’t just the death of athletics or professional sports in the East Bay,” said Jim Zelinsky, co-founder of Save Oakland Sports more than a decade ago. Told. He’s one of several groups that have sprung up over the years to keep teams from leaving the East Bay. “What this vote symbolizes to me is that this is really the death of the ordinary, everyday fan.”
A working man, he has long been a central figure in American sports, drawn to the game as a distraction from the rigors of a 9-to-5 life, preferring it to other social arenas, including the workplace. We see it as a level playing field.
When professional sports began to expand westward in the late 1950s, Oakland, with its focus on shipbuilding, automobile manufacturing, and ports, was an obvious landing spot.
In a little over a decade, Oakland was home to the Raiders, Athletics, and Warriors of the upstart American Football League, and briefly the California Golden Seals of the National Hockey League, who were once out of fashion. He played wearing white skates.
All teams played in a complex centered on a large asphalt lot adjacent to major highways and railroad lines.
It will soon be a vacant lot. This isn’t because Auckland has changed. Despite the California rents, much of the working-class ethos remains. Rather, the team’s business calculus is evolving.
Franchise revenue is currently supported by television deals and sponsorships rather than ticket sales, but those prices are rising. The transformation of sports into a media product has relegated cities to the background and fans to props. This point was driven home during the coronavirus pandemic when matches were played in empty or nearly empty stadiums.
If it’s puzzling why the Athletics would leave the Bay Area, their 10th largest market, according to Nielsen, and move to Las Vegas, their 40th largest market, according to Roger Knoll, there’s another factor. It is said that it is related. Emeritus sports economist at Stanford University.
sports gambling.
Noll said sports betting through streaming broadcasts is the “next golden goose” for sports franchises as regional sports networks, the cash cow for sports teams, begin to wobble and in some cases collapse.
Nevada predictably welcomes Internet gambling, but California does not. Last year, two of the nation’s most expensive ballot initiatives (one sponsored by MLB) failed, raising more than $450 million between them.
“If this is the next big thing, California sports teams will be at a disadvantage,” Noll said. “If a major source of new revenue is no longer available for teams in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, the old large-market/small-market dynamic will no longer be favorable.”
The Athletics have been searching for a new stadium for decades under at least three different owners. They are looking to build a new ballpark at the current location, as well as south of Fremont and San Jose, downtown at Laney College or on the waterfront at Howard Terminal.
Construction of new stadiums in California is uniquely a contact sport in California, given its high labor costs, strict environmental standards, and taxpayer aversion to subsidizing sports franchises. But it’s not impossible. The Clippers’ new arena, scheduled to open in Inglewood next year, is the latest example of that.
This may have been Oakland’s toughest time yet, thanks to a record $360 million budget deficit. And there were long memories of when the city lured Raiders owner Al Davis back from Los Angeles in 1995 with a girlfriend loan deal that turned into profiteering. For the city. A towering suite of suites, named Mount Davis, was also built in the outfield, opening up a source of income for the Raiders but closing off the spectacular views of the Oakland Hills.
As the years passed, the old Colosseum showed its age.
It had the tangible charm of a Soviet-era apartment complex, with regularly backed up plumbing, which inspired the Raiders to fine-tune their slogan, “Tackling excreta.” And the arrival of food trucks has become a culinary life raft for fans who no longer eat food. Had to settle for a concession item that clearly tasted like cardboard.
Still, athletics remained competitive and reinvented itself by shrewdly using data to assess undervalued skills, becoming known as “Moneyball” after the best-selling book. It’s a process. The Athletics haven’t made it to the World Series since 1990, but since 2000 he has made it to the playoffs 11 times. That’s more than the Mets or San Francisco Giants, and about as many times as the Boston Red Sox.
The crowd remained in the bottom third, but the fans playing drums in the right field seats created a nightly commotion, adding to the atmosphere. But fans finally got tired of owner John Fisher when the team began its latest dismantling of trading promising players for prospects rather than paying accelerating salaries. He had raised ticket prices before last season in what many felt was a ploy. To suppress attendance as an excuse to travel.
The Athletics averaged 10,276 fans last season, the lowest number in baseball. They finished with 50 wins and 112 losses, briefly threatening the record of futility set by the expansion team the Mets in 1962.
Fans who showed up at the Coliseum often wore T-shirts or held banners urging Fisher to sell the team.
Perhaps the people I miss the most about the Athletics are people like Matthias Haas.
He grew up a few miles from the Coliseum and was immersed in the city’s rich baseball history, from Frank Robinson to Rickey Henderson to Dave Stewart to Jimmy Rollins. All of them came from downtown Oakland and rose to major league stardom. He learned the finer points of the game at the 66th place league and the International League diamond, which the Athletics helped fund. He has fond memories of sitting in the stands during the 2012 playoffs as the old mausoleum was shaking.
“There’s a certain pride in being an Oakland Athletics fan,” said Haas, who plays baseball at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and describes his tribe as “gritty” and “tough.” He spoke using the adjective. “People from Oakland say they’re from Oakland, not the Bay Area. That’s what it felt like to be an A’s fan.”