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Post by mikecubs on Apr 11, 2014 2:02:44 GMT -6
Distance wise no difference BUT here is the big difference. San Jose is the richest area in the entire united states. Oakland is a ghetto. Best to hog San Jose and let the A's have the hood. It wasn't the teams that brought up Portland it was local publicity seekers who brought up Portland. It's not the TV rights that are the dispute in the Bay Area, The Giants are locked into their big TV deal until 2033. www.forbes.com/pictures/mlh45egkd/bruce-bochy-brandon-crawford-ron-wotus/What they are fighting over is rich fans who buy the club seats/luxury boxes and corporate sponsorships. San Jose is what privately funded AT&T Park in large part. If there was a MODERN park in San Jose rich people would buy those club seats/boxes cutting into the demand for Giants club seats/boxes plus the A's would receive more sponsorships since they would be in the heart of Silicon Valley taking away from the Giants. Right now the Giants like the set up because they receive most of the corporate support/rich guy type stuff support because the A's play in a dump. The San Jose high rollers are NOT going to run down to the ghetto(Oakland) to take in a game in an old crap filled dump that lacks modern amenities. The Giants want to keep it like this or even better force the A's out of the bay area. Right now the Bay area has 8.4M some people, if current growth trends continue it will be around 9.2M by 2020. If the A's left the Giants would be the biggest 1 team market in MLB. The Giants according to forbes are already the 5th most valuable team in MLB. They'd approach Red Sox type levels if the A's outright left. Your probably right about other leagues not putting up with this but remember this is the only shared market in any sport where another team signed away it's territory rights to a certain area. Walter Hass should have NEVER done that. Terrible mistake. MLB owners are like a country club. No one goes against anyone else and rocks the boat. The owners hire the commissioner who will do their bidding. To be a commissioner you can't do stuff like overturn territory rights or else the big markets will fire you.
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Post by wolfmannick on Apr 11, 2014 14:17:31 GMT -6
The only market that can actually take a team is Montreal, and that's only if they build a new stadium. There will likely be a lot of Pre-Season games in Montreal over the next few seasons and some stuggling teams might play some "Home" games in Montreal against the Jays because the League is deffinatly interested in the market. As for the Oakland San Jose senario, I have no idea how that is going to play out. But with the Rays and Athletics both desperatly needing new stadiums, it's likely that if one team can't. won't get one they will be moving North. If neither team manages to get one the League might start looking into Portland out of desperation but as mentioned they are too small and lack the corperate presence in the city. But who knows if the fans are there baseball might work in the city, but it will be a last resort if a team ever does go there.
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Post by mikecubs on Apr 11, 2014 19:52:21 GMT -6
I don't think the A's/Rays would play a home game in Montreal, if they did current attendance would drop to Expos 1.0 levels they had at the end. I do think the Jays will play a regular season series there within a couple years during a rebuilding year. For sure they will have yearly exhibition games.
MLB is very patient. In Minnesota and Miami they waited around 15 years to get new stadiums. MLB would wait forever until going to Portland unless somehow Portland started attracting businesses.
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Post by mikecubs on Apr 15, 2014 20:24:22 GMT -6
Rays to explore other locations (in the Tampa region) Six years after saying they wanted to explore alternative sites to downtown St. Petersburg for a new ballpark, the Tampa Bay Rays still are in search of a location. " Tampa is obviously very, very attractive on the list, and we expect to at some point, hopefully sooner, look there as well as some other parts of the region," Rays owner Stuart Sternberg said Tuesday during a panel at the MLB Diversity Business Summit. Sternberg took control of the team after the 2005 season, and in November 2007 the Rays proposed to replace Tropicana Field with a 34,000-seat, open-air stadium at the downtown site of Al Lang Field, a longtime spring training ballpark. They withdrew that plan the following June, and Sternberg said in June 2010 he wanted to explore potential sites throughout the Tampa Bay area. The Rays' lease at Tropicana Field runs through 2027. Tampa Bay hasn't drawn more than 2 million fans at home since its first season in 1998. Despite winning 90 or more games in each of the last four seasons, the Rays haven't topped 1.6 million in any of the last three years. " We haven't had the greatest success in attracting the what we call enough fans relative to the success we've had on-field, and we would like to explore other part of the region, specifically Tampa and parts of St. Petersburg," Sternberg said. He said the Rays need to undertake "a full-out exploration" of transportation and access issues. "Until we're able to do all the work that's necessary there, I won't really have an answer for it," he said. espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10787348/tampa-bay-rays-owner-stuart-sternberg-calls-tampa-very-very-attractive
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Post by Bruinsfan on Apr 16, 2014 8:35:54 GMT -6
so nothing has changed
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Post by mikecubs on Apr 16, 2014 19:29:15 GMT -6
Not much except the owner had a couple of meetings with the new St. Pete mayor about getting out of the lease and talks were characterized as "positive".
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Post by Bruinsfan on Apr 17, 2014 14:00:31 GMT -6
geting out of the lease could be bad though, if st pete sets a fee for getting out and no stipulations, team could bolt wherever
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Post by mikecubs on Apr 17, 2014 20:13:30 GMT -6
^^^ All the talks are if they get out of the lease it will have the stipulation they can only look in the Bay area not other cities.
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Post by Bruinsfan on Apr 17, 2014 21:12:03 GMT -6
stipulation means nothing, no penaltys then its all hot air
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Post by mikecubs on Apr 17, 2014 23:38:26 GMT -6
I screwed this up. What I mean is the lease would be in effect but there would be an out where they could only talk to Tampa and of course St. Pete area closer to Tampa. If they left for elsewhere it would be breaking the lease. The only way the buyout could take effect is if they moved to Tampa or St Pete closer to Tampa. The thing is the team and last mayor couldn't agree on a price of what that buyout would be. Realistically the Rays owner is NOT going to accept any St. Pete ballpark. This is just a curtsey for St. Pete agreeing to a buyout. He wants downtown Tampa. Tampa area is a shaky enough market(transplants, not many corporations)so they need a very good location to make this work at even a small market level.
The St. Pete mayor isn't going to be the "bad guy" who let's MLB slip away(anytime soon). The last thing any politician wants is to be the guy who lost the home team for no reason. If the Rays end up in Montreal it won't be soon.
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Post by mikecubs on Apr 17, 2014 23:42:56 GMT -6
A's making a pitch to remain in OaklandAfter years of futile attempts to relocate to the South Bay, the Oakland A's appear resigned to staying put at the Coliseum and are in negotiations for a 10-year lease extension.
"We hope to have (a deal) as soon as possible," A's co-owner and managing partner Lew Wolff told us Tuesday. "It's really up to Oakland now." The new lease could keep the A's at the Coliseum until at least 2024. It calls for the team to make nominal rent payments in return for the A's paying for $10 million to $12 million in stadium improvements.
Most notably, the improvements include a new electronic scoreboard and a ribbon scoreboard between the first and second decks. For the past five years, the A's have been pushing Major League Baseball for permission to move to San Jose, over the objection of the Giants, who consider the South Bay their territory. MLB has reacted by studying the issue to death. In the meantime, the A's have agreed to a series of short extensions at the Coliseum. On Tuesday, Wolff told us that "the best thing would be 10 years - we really don't want to keep revisiting this." Oakland City Councilman Larry Reid, who sits on the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority, said the deal could range anywhere from five to 10 years. Although Mayor Jean Quan is not directly involved in the talks, locking in the A's for 10 years would be a victory for her. She has been dangling a potential ballpark site at the port north of Jack London Square - a spot Wolff and A's co-owner John Fisher aren't keen on. Separately, the mayor has pushed a big redevelopment of the Coliseum complex that would include separate new stadiums for football and baseball. She has gone so far as to predict that the Raiders would sign a deal for a new stadium by late this summer. How a new A's lease would affect those plans is unclear. The mayor declined to comment Tuesday, and when asked recently about the Raiders deal, her spokesman Sean Maher steered clear of any specifics - including how much taxpayer money, if any, would be pledged toward a new football stadium. Coliseum Authority member Chris Dobbins said the board is expected to take up the issue of the A's lease - and its effect on the Raiders - at a meeting Friday. "We want to lock the Raiders in before we make a long-term deal with the A's," Dobbins said. Wolff, however, said he doesn't see the Raiders posing much of a problem. "There's a clause (in the proposed lease) that if the Raiders build a new facility, with some notice we will evacuate," Wolff said. Just where the team would play, however, isn't clear. As for the A's dream of moving to San Jose?
"We are not allowed to comment on any of that, so I am not going to," Wolff said.
For now, Wolff would say only, "I am taking steps incrementally ... and having an extension in Oakland is what our next step is." www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/A-s-making-a-pitch-to-remain-in-Oakland-5405253.php#src=fb
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Post by Bruinsfan on Apr 18, 2014 9:48:08 GMT -6
damn the A's and raiders really are jockeying to get the other out of town at this point. If the a's are guaranteeing 10 years the city may take it and the raiders are as good as gone
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Post by mikecubs on Apr 18, 2014 19:42:38 GMT -6
The A's have been offering this for a while. The reason the city hasn't take it is they favor the Raiders over the A's.
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Post by wolfmannick on Apr 18, 2014 22:15:59 GMT -6
^ so much for an MLB team in Montreal in the near future
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Post by mikecubs on Apr 18, 2014 23:41:28 GMT -6
If Montreal was ever going to get a team getting a stadium passed probably won't be easy and will involve a big long fight so I don't think it matters that much the Rays still have 13 years left on there lease and the A's want 10. This thing is going to be long and drawn out matter no which way things go.
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