One by one, they have left Oakland.
First, the Warriors returned to the Bay Area in San Francisco in 2019, a return for a basketball franchise whose recent championship dominance has been defined more by flash than grit. Then, a year later, it was the itinerant Raiders heading to Las Vegas, the eye on the gridiron bandit logo concealing a seemingly wandering eye.
On Thursday, the final departure became completely official: Major League Baseball owners unanimously approved a move to Las Vegas by the Athletics, who not long ago used the marketing phrase “rooted in Oakland.”
There is still a lot for the ball club to sort out. The Athletics have another year left on their lease in Oakland, and their new stadium — a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat stadium with a retractable roof for which the Nevada Legislature approved public funding — won’t be ready until 2028. Where they will play in the meantime is an open question. The Nevada teachers union is trying to put the subsidy on the ballot for voters.
But the A’s impending move, as inevitable as it seemed, landed in Oakland like a fastball in the ribs.
“I don’t want to sound too much, but to me it’s not just the death of the A’s and professional sports in the East Bay,” said Jim Zelinski, who more than a decade ago co-founded Save Oakland Sports. one of several groups that sprung up over the years to keep teams from leaving the East Bay. “What this vote symbolizes to me is that this really is the death of the common, everyday fan.”
The worker has long been a central figure in American sports, attracted to the games as a diversion from the 9-to-5 game and seeing them as a more level playing field than other social spaces, the workplace among them.
As professional sports began to expand westward in the late 1950s, Oakland—anchored by its shipbuilding, automotive and port industries—became an obvious landing spot.
In just over a decade, Oakland became the home of the Raiders of the upstart American Football Association, the Athletics, the Warriors and, briefly, the California Golden Seals of the National Hockey League, who for a time played in white skates that it was not fashionable.
All the teams played in a complex centered on a huge tarmac, flanked by a major highway and a railway line.
Soon, the lot will be empty. This is not because Oakland has changed. it has largely retained a working-class ethos, albeit with California rents. Rather, the business calculus for teams has evolved.
Franchise revenue is now driven more by television deals and sponsorships than by ticket sales, although those prices have skyrocketed. The transformation of sport into multimedia products has relegated cities to stages and fans to stages – a point driven home during the coronavirus pandemic when matches were played in empty or mostly empty stadiums.
If it’s any wonder why the Athletics are leaving the Bay Area, which is the 10th largest market, according to the Nielsen Company, for Las Vegas, which is the 40th largest market, there is another factor at play, according to Roger Noll. Stanford Sports Economist Emeritus.
Sports gambling.
As regional sports networks, a cash cow for sports teams, have begun to falter – and in some cases collapse – Mr Noll says streaming sports gambling is “the next golden goose” for sports franchises.
While Nevada predictably welcomed Internet gambling, California did not: Two measures, one of which was backed by MLB, were defeated last year in the nation’s most expensive ballot campaign, with more than $450 million raised by both two sides.
“If this is the next big thing, California sports teams are at a disadvantage,” Mr. Noll said. “The old big-market-small-market dynamic will no longer favor the Bay Area and Los Angeles teams if a major source of new revenue isn’t available to them.”
The Athletics have been looking for a new stadium for decades, under at least three different owners. They tried to build a new park to the south in Fremont and San Jose, downtown at Laney College, or by the water at Howard Terminal, as well as their current location.
Building new stadiums in California is its own contact sport, given high labor costs, strict environmental standards and taxpayer aversion to subsidizing sports franchises. But it’s not impossible, as the Clippers’ new arena, scheduled to open next year in Inglewood, is the last to show off.
In Oakland, now may have been the toughest time, thanks to a record $360 million budget deficit — and long memories of when the city lured Raiders owner Al Davis back from Los Angeles in 1995 in a deal loan that turned into mistakes for the city. Also, a towering bank of suites – dubbed Mount Davis – was built outside, opening up a revenue stream for the Raiders but closing off the magnificent view of the Oakland hills.
Over the years, the old Colosseum showed its age.
It had the concrete charm of a Soviet-era housing complex, its plumbing was regularly serviced — prompting an adaptation of the Raiders’ mantra of “Commitment to Excrement” — and the arrival of food trucks was a culinary life raft for fans that couldn’t be compromised with concession offers that clearly tasted like cardboard.
Yet the Athletics continued to be competitive, reinventing themselves by using smart data to evaluate undervalued skills, a process that became known as “Moneyball,” from the best-selling book. The A’s haven’t reached the World Series since 1990, but have been to the playoffs 11 times since 2000 — more than the Mets and San Francisco Giants, and just as often as the Boston Red Sox.
Attendance had remained in the bottom third, although fans drumming in right field to create a nightly noise added a degree of atmosphere. But when the team began its latest teardown, trading away its best players for prospects rather than paying their accelerated salaries, fans finally had enough of John Fisher, the owner, who before last season had raised ticket prices, which many thought was a trick. to suppress attendance as a pretext for moving.
The A’s averaged 10,276 fans last season, the fewest in baseball. They finished 50-112, briefly threatening the streak record set by the expansion Mets in 1962.
Fans who showed up at the Coliseum often wore T-shirts or carried signs urging Mr. Fisher to sell the team.
Those who miss Athletics the most may be people like Matthias Haas.
He grew up a few miles from the Coliseum, steeped in the city’s rich baseball history that follows Frank Robinson to Rickey Henderson and Dave Stewart to Jimmy Rollins, who signed up from the Oakland sandlots to the stars in the major leagues. He learned the finer points of the game on the diamonds in 66th place and at the International in championships that the Athletics helped fund. He has a lasting memory of sitting in the stands during the 2012 playoffs when the old mausoleum was rocking.
“There’s a certain pride in being an Oakland Athletics fan,” said Mr. Haas, who played baseball last season at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, dropping the adjectives “tough” and “tough” to define race. of. “People from Oakland say they’re from Oakland, not the Bay Area. That’s what it felt like to be an A fan.”
