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The A’s will play in Vegas, sort of
Construction of the new stadium in Las Vegas continues, in the sense mounds of dirt are being moved around and there is some basic infrastructure being constructed there, but as J.C. Bradbury pointed out on Bluesky this week:
“Perhaps this means the stadium is being erected according to plan. But then, why not provide the funding details? Release an MOU/construction agreement that shows the financing, and I’ll believe it’s happening. The refusal to provide this info if the funding is there is hard to understand.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that [Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority] is putting up some of the early money. Or perhaps MLB is doing so in hopes of building good will to go to the local government for more money.”
Personally, I’m waiting for the A’s to have spent $100 million before I acknowledge basically anything is going on — that number matters since it means that the Athletics have unlocked the public subsidies from Las Vegas, Clark County, and Nevada, and given how much the team pops champagne every time anything they can spin as progress occurs, I imagine we’ll hear about it the second they cross that threshold.
However, whether they actually will spend $100 million here is still unclear. As Bradbury said, why is none of the financing info being provided like it normally would be? Why is everything so secretive? My guess would be it’s because John Fisher still hasn’t secured the funding he needs to complete the project — which is more expensive now than it was when the A’s secured public subsidies — so as of now there is no intention to actually do the work that will eventually add up to $100 million. That’s a commitment that Fisher isn’t ready to make yet, not when he remains on the hook for… well, for way more money than his family is likely willing to fork over.
Don’t worry, though. The A’s will play a couple of series in Las Vegas next summer when it’s a million degrees out, give or take a few degrees. They’re spending some time in the minor-league park that currently exists there to, as an astute commenter at Field of Schemes pointed out, give Sutter Health’s field a break, a necessity for an all-grass surface with two teams playing on it basically every day otherwise. It will be fascinating to see how much of the new stadium is built by that point, and whether it shows up on the broadcast at all.
Remember: it’s August of 2025. The A’s purchased a small strip of land in Vegas for a new ballpark as part of their negotiations in April of 2023, with the expectation being that they would break ground in 2024 and move in by 2027. They’ve been behind schedule since this started, and nothing indicates that’s changed; if anything, they’re falling further and further behind.
MiLB attendance is dropping
First, some background from a report at Baseball America:
If MiLB continues to draw at the same rate for the remainder of the year, it will total 29.857 million fans in 2025. It is not a direct comparison, as there used to be more minor league teams until MLB reduced the minors to 120 full-season clubs beginning with the 2021 season, but this will be the first time the minors have drawn fewer than 30 million fans in a season since 1992, when 27,180,170 people came through the gates. MiLB drew more than 40 million fans in announced attendance in every season from 2005-2019.
And then a line I want to zoom in on here:
These numbers aren’t as bleak as they may look for MiLB operators. Teams have adjusted their ticket models, concessions and other aspects of operations to make more money per fan in many cases.
Minor league baseball is more expensive to attend than it used to be, thanks to this focus on pulling in more money per fan — it’s likely that this falls more into cause than effect territory when it comes to attendance.
This is anecdotal, yes, but even leaving aside increases in ticket prices in the last decade, the cost of a locally brewed beer used to be $5-6 at Double-A Portland — which was admittedly a steal — and has doubled since. There are deals in place to help families get in for less — kids tickets are free a few times per summer if you join a specific program, so you just have to get the tickets for adults for those games — but even with that load taken off, the cost of bringing a family of four is still massive due to the concession prices, never mind the pressure to go to the team store — don’t take them, sure, but see how enjoyable the game is for everyone when the kids are whining about wanting to go after you say no. Which will have plenty of families just deciding not to go to avoid the costs and the aggravation, and to find something else to do instead. Scott Hines knows what’s up.
The thing I wonder about is if there is any correlation between attendance dips and price increases specifically for the teams owned and operated by Diamond Baseball Holdings: they control over 40 teams across the minors now, which is over one-third of the total clubs post-disaffiliation. If all of those teams took an approach of squeezing out more money per fan — akin to MLB’s years-long focus which has resulted in higher-priced tickets and more luxury boxes and season ticket sales to make up for the lack of full houses — and saw a drop in attendance as a result… well, given how many teams they control, that would be enough to impact the league-wide attendance numbers. And would point to something concrete that a singular private equity group is doing that’s harming minor-league baseball even as it purportedly seeks to keep it and its traditions alive.
There’s a freebie for anyone who wants to research and report on it, is what I’m saying. Report back, yeah?
Clarity!
Yahoo Sports’ Kendall Baker reported that MLB tv was being sold to ESPN, but further reporting from the Athletic clarified that what was being sold were the exclusive broadcast rights to the service’s out-of-market games. That’s a very different scenario, but still one worth digging into, as I did for Baseball Prospectus earlier this week.
Basically, MLB has found another way to make up for some of the lost regional sports network deals, and is setting themselves up for a massive bidding war after 2028 that will not just include the traditional pieces of the MLB broadcasting schedule for sale, but also the rights to the out-of-market games. Whether this proves to be a positive remains to be seen: it could be short-term gains at the expense of long-term fans who tire of needing a series of post-it notes stuck around the house to remind them of which game is on what streaming service, or who are now blacked out even more often because even more of the calendar has become a national exclusive game somewhere.
There’s also no word on how much MLB tv’s rights are selling for yet, which is a vital last piece of the puzzle here, but word is that all of these deals will be wrapped sometime in September. So we don’t have to wait overly long.
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