Why not? If you want to be a Sharks season ticket holder bad enough you can still go to most games, especially since many are on weekends or Friday nights. And you can expand your fanbase by moving north.

(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.

(04-30-2018 01:00 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  The A's have no future in Oakland, especially if the South Bay is considered the Giants' territory. Because of market inequality, any team playing in Oakland is in a small market, except the soon to be San Francisco Warriors, who are the only NBA team in the immediate region.

To expand on that, the A's are averaging just under 10k fans a game this year. Part of that is fans not liking the out-dated stadium but it's mostly that even though the Bay Area can technically support two franchises in any sport, it skews so much toward the West Bay that there's not really any room for two except the Raiders because of their popularity. And naturally, the Raiders were too prideful to move in with Niners and stay close to their primary fanbase, so they moved to Vegas.

(05-09-2018 01:10 AM)_C2_ Wrote:  

(04-30-2018 01:00 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  The A's have no future in Oakland, especially if the South Bay is considered the Giants' territory. Because of market inequality, any team playing in Oakland is in a small market, except the soon to be San Francisco Warriors, who are the only NBA team in the immediate region.

To expand on that, the A's are averaging just under 10k fans a game this year. Part of that is fans not liking the out-dated stadium but it's mostly that even though the Bay Area can technically support two franchises in any sport, it skews so much toward the West Bay that there's not really any room for two except the Raiders because of their popularity. And naturally, the Raiders were too prideful to move in with Niners and stay close to their primary fanbase, so they moved to Vegas.

No, the A's home average so far this season is 17,843, per the attendance count updated daily, here: http://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance

A's are 24th in attendance, ahead of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago White Sox, Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, and Miami.

Detroit, Kansas City, and Baltimore are slightly ahead but also all under 19,000 per game.

(05-09-2018 11:19 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(05-09-2018 01:10 AM)_C2_ Wrote:  

(04-30-2018 01:00 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  The A's have no future in Oakland, especially if the South Bay is considered the Giants' territory. Because of market inequality, any team playing in Oakland is in a small market, except the soon to be San Francisco Warriors, who are the only NBA team in the immediate region.

To expand on that, the A's are averaging just under 10k fans a game this year. Part of that is fans not liking the out-dated stadium but it's mostly that even though the Bay Area can technically support two franchises in any sport, it skews so much toward the West Bay that there's not really any room for two except the Raiders because of their popularity. And naturally, the Raiders were too prideful to move in with Niners and stay close to their primary fanbase, so they moved to Vegas.

No, the A's home average so far this season is 17,843, per the attendance count updated daily, here: http://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance

A's are 24th in attendance, ahead of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago White Sox, Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, and Miami.

Detroit, Kansas City, and Baltimore are slightly ahead but also all under 19,000 per game.

Code:

21    Detroit  18,925
22    Kansas City  18,652
23    Baltimore  17,937
24    Oakland  17,843
25    Cincinnati  16,972
26    Cleveland  16,505
27    Chicago White Sox  15,663
28    Tampa Bay  14,865
29    Pittsburgh  13,838
30    Miami  11,225

I don't doubt you, however, I got that number from ESPN.com.

Maybe it's the difference paid attendance versus actual attendance. Or maybe it was the attendance for one game.

Never-the-less, my overall point stands.

(05-09-2018 07:21 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  

(05-09-2018 11:19 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(05-09-2018 01:10 AM)_C2_ Wrote:  

(04-30-2018 01:00 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  The A's have no future in Oakland, especially if the South Bay is considered the Giants' territory. Because of market inequality, any team playing in Oakland is in a small market, except the soon to be San Francisco Warriors, who are the only NBA team in the immediate region.

To expand on that, the A's are averaging just under 10k fans a game this year. Part of that is fans not liking the out-dated stadium but it's mostly that even though the Bay Area can technically support two franchises in any sport, it skews so much toward the West Bay that there's not really any room for two except the Raiders because of their popularity. And naturally, the Raiders were too prideful to move in with Niners and stay close to their primary fanbase, so they moved to Vegas.

No, the A's home average so far this season is 17,843, per the attendance count updated daily, here: http://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance

A's are 24th in attendance, ahead of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago White Sox, Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, and Miami.

Detroit, Kansas City, and Baltimore are slightly ahead but also all under 19,000 per game.

Code:

21    Detroit  18,925
22    Kansas City  18,652
23    Baltimore  17,937
24    Oakland  17,843
25    Cincinnati  16,972
26    Cleveland  16,505
27    Chicago White Sox  15,663
28    Tampa Bay  14,865
29    Pittsburgh  13,838
30    Miami  11,225

I don't doubt you, however, I got that number from ESPN.com.

Maybe it's the difference paid attendance versus actual attendance. Or maybe it was the attendance for one game.

Never-the-less, my overall point stands.

Their attendance is no more problematic than the rest of those bottom 10 teams. You want a team whose attendance is really problematic? The Indians have won their division two years in a row, they absolutely shouldn't be bottom 10 in attendance, but they are, and were in 2016 and 2017 as well. In 2016 they were in the World Series and still averaged less than 20,000 per game.

Also, all of the official numbers are supposed to be tickets sold. The Marlins were busted last year for reporting free tickets plus sold tickets as "attendance", but that's not what they're supposed to do, and they say they don't do that any more.

The thing is that other teams in the bottom 10 are usually small market teams. An exception is the White Sox, who also should move. According to some Chicagoland people/sources I've come across, Sox/Cubs support is roughly equal in Chicagoland but I'm assuming richer people support the Cubs and thus they make up the higher percentage of the ticket buying public and cable/satellite audience. So with the exception of LA and New York because of their massive size, I suppose no other area can support more than one team in a sport except in very special cicumstances.

(05-09-2018 10:07 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  The thing is that other teams in the bottom 10 are usually small market teams. An exception is the White Sox, who also should move. According to some Chicagoland people/sources I've come across, Sox/Cubs support is roughly equal in Chicagoland but I'm assuming richer people support the Cubs and thus they make up the higher percentage of the ticket buying public and cable/satellite audience. So with the exception of LA and New York because of their massive size, I suppose no other area can support more than one team in a sport except in very special cicumstances.

Some White Sox fans might think it's 50-50, but c'mon. The attendance gap between the Cubs and White Sox is about the same as between the Giants and A's. And the Giants have only been top-10 in attendance in the last decade or so; their attendance started moving up out of the basement when they left Candlestick Park for what is now called AT&T Park, and really took off after they won the World Series 3 times in 5 years. The Cubs, on the other hand, were way ahead of the White Sox long before the Cubs won in 2016.

And the Giants were sold in 1992 to a group who was going to move the team to Florida, before MLB blocked the sale and forced the owner to sell to a local Bay Area group.

S.F. Giants Owner Agrees to Sell to Tampa Bay Group

Quote:Owner Robert Lurie of the San Francisco Giants, frustrated over the repeated failure of Bay Area voters to approve financing of a new stadium, said Friday he has agreed to sell the team to a Tampa Bay syndicate that will move it to the Suncoast Dome in St. Petersburg, Fla., for the 1993 season.

Lurie refused to go beyond a statement in which he confirmed that a memorandum of agreement had been reached during a meeting in San Francisco on Thursday and that he would not receive any other bids for the team while the offer goes through the process of approval.

A group of five investors will pay a reported $110 million for the Giants, who joined the Dodgers in pioneering major league baseball on the West Coast when the teams moved out of New York after the 1957 season.

Not just Sox fans but actual sources, like newspapers. They say in the area it's actually closer to 50/50. It makes sense that the Cubs attendance is higher, they're more popular and have more fans with more disposable income and a neighborhood and culture built around the ballpark. The White Sox play in a relative dump on the city's Southside, which has way fewer people with disposable income.

As a Sox STH’er, I wish it was 50/50. It was temporarily 50/50 when everyone hopped on the bandwagon in ‘05. But aside from that one-off it’s always been a Cubs town since they struck a deal with WGN and the Sox relegated themselves to a pay-for channel no one had called SportsVision. Because of SportsVision, traditional Sox territories like Will County, Kankakee County, parts of DuPage, & NWI regressed into a 50/50 split while the Cubs have always dominated their territories at about a 95% clip.

The Sox lack of support isn’t because Chicago can’t support 2 teams or the South Side can’t support one. It’s because of a round of miscues like dumping WGN for SportsVision, dumping proposed Armour Field (think Polo Grounds in a neighborhood setting facing the skyline) for the disastrous Comiskey II, etc.

That and the Sox have been an awful franchise for so long. Not that the Cubs obviously have been much better but since they both sucked, all of what you said made the difference.

Sox fans are badly outnumbered, but they do have a dormant fan base out there. Their problem is that they're pretty undifferentiated in overall experience against the Cubs, which is why they're marketing heavily to the south side Hispanic population who are often big baseball fans but often priced out of Wrigley.

Btw the A's should've stayed in Kansas City and then they wouldn't be in this mess.

They moved over 50 years ago, that's like saying the Clippers shouldn't have moved to LA. The Ahh's have done really well in Oakland, it's just that the dynamics have changed. The Bay Area proportionally, is not as big or rich as it used to be and worse yet, the Bay Area tends to lean toward San Francisco, making Oakland an incredibly small market in the modern era. Even if there was a greater crossover, Oakland would be a mid-market at best.

(05-11-2018 02:28 AM)_C2_ Wrote:  They moved over 50 years ago, that's like saying the Clippers shouldn't have moved to LA. The Ahh's have done really well in Oakland, it's just that the dynamics have changed. The Bay Area proportionally, is not as big or rich as it used to be and worse yet, the Bay Area tends to lean toward San Francisco, making Oakland an incredibly small market in the modern era. Even if there was a greater crossover, Oakland would be a mid-market at best.

Yeah that's true and hindsight is 20/20, but the implications of that move alone really affected baseball in a couple ways. The 1969 expansion should've been 1971 except they had to move it up as a way to stave off antitrust lawsuits due to the A's move - that really screwed the Seattle Pilots and then the Expos in the long run. Then maybe Dallas gets a team and Washington doesn't move, the possibilities are pretty interesting.

So what are everyone's thoughts on the future of small market baseball?

(05-11-2018 01:36 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  So what are everyone's thoughts on the future of small market baseball?

Even small market MLB franchises are valuable to the owner because of the national TV revenue stream. I suspect that many of them lose money on an annual basis but that's outweighed by the always-escalating value of the franchise that an owner can cash in on when he sells the team.

The ones that have coerced heavily-subsidized new ballparks out of gullible local politicians have another windfall, on top of the national TV money. They might always be bottom-10 in attendance but they've avoided paying a significant chunk of what should be their own expenses.

None of these franchises are going away, because "contraction" would require buying the team from its owner to disband it, and MLB isn't going to pay any owner $1 billion or more to do that. And no available open market has an MLB-quality ballpark, the cost of building a new ballpark is ridiculous, and the attractive markets that were available before the 1990s (Denver, Phoenix, DC) have been filled. What it would take to move a franchise is either an outrageously high government subsidy (like the $700 million Nevada is giving the Raiders) or an owner who is unbelievably wealthy and willing to pay for a new ballpark himself in a new market (like Stan Kroenke -- so if you find an MLB owner who is worth $20 billion, there's your relocation candidate).

Teams will try to get cities in their own market to compete with each other. The Braves did that to get a new ballpark in the suburbs. The Rangers used interest from Dallas to get themselves a new ballpark in Arlington near the current ballpark. The D-Backs have threatened to move to a new ballpark in Scottsdale or Tempe as part of their ongoing feud with Phoenix.

We already see it, there's really only 3-5 small market teams and except for arguably Tampa Bay, which is just a bad sports market, most of them have had a team for decades, if not over a century.

Baseball is a big corporate sport that requires a dedicated daily fanbase as well as people to sell out suites. It also doesn't hurt to have a sizable TV market. That's why we won't see many new markets that don't have the combination of a sizable local corporate presence and raw numbers, especially close to a proposed ballpark. Few such candidates exist today and many are arguably saturated with sports teams, such as Charlotte.

MLB markets with fewer than 1 million TV homes, according to Nielsen: Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cincinnati.

MLB markets with fewer than 1.2 million TV homes, but more than 1 million: Pittsburgh, Baltimore, San Diego.

The Nielsen market list shows that there are no strong available markets. The two largest unoccupied markets are Orlando and Sacramento, which are realistically options only for short moves by the Rays or A's. After that, it's Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, and Portland, which are all pretty close to the Baltimore/Pittsburgh/San Diego market size.

I think Vancouver could be strong. It's completely unoccupied (aside from arguably being in Seattle's market) and there's a huge void in all of Western Canada. They really got a raw deal from the NBA (and Steve Francis) and would probably still have a team today if they had gotten the chance to get good for the first time. Mexico City could do real well since it has lots a disposable income for a Mexican City and lots of people in general. So there are international options.

Something I do think we are going to see is that teams who want new stadiums are not going to have the same leverage they did 20 yrs ago. Civic leaders will be well aware that most of the marketers that can support baseball already have teams and the relocation threats are relatively empty.