DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER! MASS HYSTERIA!
The Oakland Athletics will meet with officials from the City of Oakland and County of Alameda on Thursday to discuss a lease extension at the Coliseum, the Chronicle has learned.
Industry sources told the Chronicle that Thursday’s meeting will involve Oakland chief of staff Leigh Hanson, City Council member Rebecca Kaplan, county supervisor David Haubert and A’s President Dave Kaval.
So, a couple of things before we take this news, passed along by the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Shea, as an inevitable sign of the apocalypse. (There are very much inevitable signs of the apocalypse, they’re just different ones.)
First off, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao will not be attending, instead sending Hanson, her chief of staff, who has been at the forefront of presenting laundry lists of what A’s owner John Fisher would have to do (leave the A’s name behind, get MLB to guarantee Oakland an expansion team) to make it worth the city’s while to grant a short-term lease extension while Fisher waits to get a Las Vegas stadium built. More significantly, she could also demand that Fisher give up his share of development rights to the Coliseum property in exchange for a lease extension, which should be reasonable ask given that Fisher can’t do much with the rights when the city owns the other half.
The bigger piece of leverage that Oakland has, though, is Fisher’s $70 million a year cable deal, which would vanish if the A’s played next year in Sacramento or Kuala Lumpur or even Las Vegas. That is a sizable chunk of change, and while Fisher could make some of it up through bonus revenue-sharing payments if he had to spend several seasons wandering the desert, for Oakland to ask for a large cut of that seems like a no-brainer.
More after tomorrow’s meeting, hopefully. For now, let’s just take it as a sign that in the sports business world, no bridges are ever too burned not to revisit, if the alternatives look too bleak. This doesn’t necessarily boost the A’s-stay-in-Oakland long-term odds, but it doesn’t not boost them, either.
Will the TV revenue/contract become the albatross around the Athletics’ neck?
Certainly appears so.
I think the collapse of the RSNs is also the albatross around potential expansion’s neck.
Agreed Al, it will hurt both a potential replacement franchise and the Vegas AAs.
But if I were charged with selling RSN rights in the current (and future) market, I would be much more optimistic about selling Oakland mlb RSN rights than Vegas mlb RSN rights.
I think (?) what NMG is suggesting is that even in the best case scenario when he gets to his new home, the rights fee in Vegas is going to be substantially lower than the one Fisher already has in Oakland. Both may drop going forward, but the market he has is better than the one he wants to move to.
And the most unbelievable thing about this is that he doesn’t seem to have considered this fact when having sugar plum visions about $60m or so in guaranteed MLB welfare payments.
Las Vegas doesn’t have an RSN. The Golden Knights are being broadcast on an over the air UHF channel
A 44M temper tantrum that potentially loses you 70M seems to fall squarely into
the “Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work?” camp.
Bravo!
Yup. I had it in my head that the HT funding gap was $30 million, but it’s costing him $210 million over three years, and that’s if this Vegas stadium comes in on time.
Nobody told us there would be math, when punching down on Fabric Fauntleroy !
Amen, Michael.
Lots of water to run under/over the bridge yet, but at least for now this is a very enjoyable development.
The Insane Clown Posse are demonstrably vastly more capable of getting audiences into public entertainment venues than John Fisher.
Oak government leaders frequently complain about lack of resources… well *Here* comes a massive cash infusion.
get the popcorn and beers ready, shows about to start!
Hmmmn. Let’s see…
1. Turn over the development rights to the County share of the coliseum site (after you’ve finished paying for them…)
2. Pay any outstanding amount due on the stadium maintenance fund. Following this:
3. Make a good faith payment of $15m for future stadium maintenance/portion of demolition up front.
4. An annual rent payment of $10m/yr in 2025, escalating at $2.5m per year thereafter. In exchange A’s get to play maximum of 12 home games per season somewhere else during the term of the lease extension.
5. A’s name, colours, history and likeness remains in Oakland.
6. MLB agrees both an expansion price and a date by which a franchise will be granted if stadium funding and ownership is in place for a replacement franchise.
7. Provide the city with 1000 pieces of gold, 500 rifles & the severed head of Dave Kaval arranged pleasingly in a basket of melons.
The list is pretty much endless isn’t it? The A’s will probably say no and start whining and/or crying. That’s when you push back from the table and leave the room so the children can have their time out.
At this point no-one really believes that MLB would consider Oakland as an MLB site again (despite it being one of the more viable sites that will be available post relocation of Fisher’s gang of AA players), so why not play hardball?
Doesn’t seem like there is any reason not drive the very hardest of hard bargains here. After all, at a minimum it will cost the A’s $70m + to “not” be in this territory.
I would imagine that being Ms. Thao or Ms. Hanson doesn’t provide all that many “good” days in the office.
This has to be one of them.
“My offer is this: nothing.”
“The A’s will probably say no and start whining and/or crying. That’s when you push back from the table and leave the room so the children can have their time out”
We call that Juice, ‘Box in the Corner’
Kidding aside, and to points 2 & 3: 5.7 Licensor Maintenance and Repairs
A 75K squabble could be your path to #7’s gold mine, as a 3rd party.
Schadenfreude your way riches!
https://newballpark.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/coliseum_lease-062714.pdf
When the A’s are publicly considering an as-yet unconstructed 9k seat stadium in the dry, legitimately unsettling, Mormon Stepford “New Urbanist” planned community (and former contaminated copper mine site) of Daybreak, Utah, you know the team is out of legitimate options. We’ll see if Oakland can extract meaningful concessions from Fisher and MLB. Otherwise, I might be a short drive away from being able to heckle Fisher mercilessly as Governor Cox drags him to a photo-op before first pitch. Any other A’s fans and devoted John Fisher haters would be welcome to stay at my place and revel in the disaster.
You may need a bigger place than you expect, Ian!
City and County should insist on A’s relinquishing their joint ownership of the Coliseum to the City in exchange for the lease extension. Three years of cable revenue ($210M) to the A’s should be enough motivation. A’s only paid $85M for their share.
Am I missing anything, the lease runs out after 2024. The tv deal in Oakland runs through 2034. The owner has torched any equity the A’s had with the community as long as he is in charge. Vegas is at most lukewarm on the idea of bringing them in. Umm… what is more likely, the A’s rent out Oracle park in 2025 or ask for a meeting with Cal Berkeley about the availability of Stu Gordon Stadium?
I am not going to lie, the idea of the A’s having a Charger like run at a soccer field would be a delightful ending.
It sure would be.
If it came to that, the A’s could build a temp stadium and play there for three-five years for less than half of one year’s tv revenue.
But where?
We keep hearing they “own” half the coliseum site. Well, they certainly negotiated an option to purchase half of it… but the last info I was able to find from the County Board suggested they had “made certain payments” but had not completed the purchase.
If they have completed the purchase, I would wonder about the ability of the city to prevent them from using some portion of the site (but not necessarily the stadium, absent a suitable lease)… if you own a portion or percentage of a sports park, it would seem to me difficult for the city to successfully claim usage of it for professional sports is neither a specified or discretionary use.
This just gets weirder and weirder.
And fortunately, with each passing day it makes A’s ownership look more clueless than the day before.
Which should be harder than it apparently is.
Could MLB force the Giants to host the A’s for a season or two?