(05-01-2018 07:11 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  

(05-01-2018 12:52 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(05-01-2018 08:55 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  To me, it’s a little weird that Oakland let the Warriors get away to San Francisco

The Warriors were purchased by owners who bought the team specifically to be the anchor tenant of an arena that they wanted to build (and are now building) in San Francisco. They're complying with the terms of their lease in Oakland; the lease ran out and they negotiated additional option years so that they can stay in Oakland until the SF arena is open. It's not as if the city could have blocked the sale of the team.

And this quote about the Warriors' SF arena, and the high ticket prices there, also applies to the new LA football stadium:

Quote:“Especially in California, forget about (government) subsidies,” said Andy Dolich, a Bay Area sports marketing expert who has worked for the 49ers and A’s and teaches at Stanford. Citing heavy government assistance in building sports venues in states like Pennsylvania, Dolich said, “Those days have long since disappeared in California. If you want to build anything, you build it yourself, meaning, you borrow the money (from banks) and you get it back from your fans.”

The Bay Area is large enough too that you can recoup your costs with an arena that hosts 42 NBA games, some college games, a bunch of concerts, etc. given that there's a bit of an arena desert in San Francisco city limits today if I'm not mistaken.

The A's problem mostly comes down to location imo, yeah Mt. Davis sucks but even when it wasn't there they had a lot of attendance problems. Even if they tore it down, gutted the whole place to make it nice, moved seats closer to the field, etc. that doesn't change that it's basically in the middle of an industrial park. It's interesting how even though the A's have been one of the most storied franchises in baseball history in some respects, their periods of success have been sandwiched by stretches of misery on and off the field.

What I don't get is why Atlanta and DFW decided to get on their knees and replace baseball stadiums that aren't even twenty years old. Yeah I get that the teams wanna be closer to their fan base and have a retractable roof respectively, but it's not like the Braves or Rangers would've actually moved if their cities said no. Neither would leave top ten metro areas for Montreal or Portland.

In Atlanta’s case the city proper essentially dared the Braves to move. But the team was never leaving the metro area. They found a suburban county that has been trying to prove for 30 years that it is a legit city. The Braves reason for leaving is they were salty at the tepid response the city provided regarding Turner Field improvements when compared to how they bent over backwards to build the Falcons a new dome.