Notes: Kansas City gives up on Royals stadium(?), A’s ballpark financing, trading picks

The Royals get cut out of the public subsidy game (for now), the best an A’s lobbyist can muster is that things are probably on schedule with financing, and my latest at BP.

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Back in April, a referendum was introduced to the voters of Jackson County, Missouri, letting them decide whether or not the public should fund a $500 million subsidy for new stadiums for both the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals. The public said no, resoundingly so with 58 percent against.

That story isn’t quite over yet, though, as now a second referendum is being prepared, but this time it will only involve the Chiefs. As Neil deMause put it at Field of Schemes:

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Notes: ‘Media disruption distribution’ fund, The Wilpon Zone, Billy Bean

A workaround for RSN troubles, answering a John Fisher-related question, and the passing of an MLB executive.

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Per the Athletic’s Evan Drellich, the collective bargaining agreement has been altered by MLB and the Players Association, as a reaction to the current issues in the regional broadcasting landscape. It’s not something that every team will have access to, since not every team is struggling with their RSN, but it’s meant to assist the clubs that are dealing with any of that fallout. As Drellich put it:

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MLB reportedly has ‘gag order’ on interested A’s buyers

It’s not that the Bay Area lacks people who want to buy the A’s, it’s that they’ve been ordered to be quiet about it until MLB says it’s fine to speak up.

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I had missed this originally when it ran in the San Francisco Chronicle back on July 17, but Noah Frank’s recent Baseball Prospectus column linked to and quoted it, bringing it to my attention. Apparently, MLB has a “gag order” out on anyone in the Bay Area interested in purchasing the Athletics from John Fisher.

Scott Ostler of the Chronicle wrote about how John Shea, another Chronicle journalist, had asked commission Rob Manfred if a potential mayoral change in Oakland could bring the city back into contention “if the Las Vegas deal falls apart,” or just as a potential expansion location in the future, and then, well, here you go:

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The A’s still don’t know where Las Vegas stadium funds are coming from

The Las Vegas Stadium Authority had a big meeting on Thursday, and you’ll never guess what happened next.

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Good news, everyone. The Las Vegas Stadium Authority held a meeting on Thursday to clear up all kinds of financial details about how the A’s stadium is going to be paid for. In typical A’s/Vegas fashion, the only thing that’s clearer after this is that no one knows what they’re doing or what’s happening.

As stated before, $380 million is coming from Nevada — though there was once again a claim that the A’s won’t use the full $380 million allotted them, as they’ll supposedly leave $30 million on the table, how generous of them — with the rest coming from personal seat license sales — PSLs — and the rest from financing. As Neil deMause noted on Thursday before the meeting when looking at the documentation released to the public beforehand, we didn’t get clarification on what John Fisher is actually paying for this stadium, or where he’s getting the money from:

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Notes: The Las Vegas A’s stadium is on track unless it isn’t, Yankees sustainability, MLB absorbs Negro League stats

The Las Vegas A’s remain more conceptual than anything, the Yankees utter a word that would have killed The Boss, and Negro League statistics are now MLB statistics.

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If you ask the people behind the Las Vegas A’s stadium push, everything is great! There’s no need to worry; everything is happening as it’s supposed to, we’re happy to take questions so long as they aren’t about where A’s owner John Fisher is going to get the additional financing needed to actually build the thing. If you ask people who know how these things work, though, who aren’t unregistered lobbyists, well. Neil deMause handled that at Field of Schemes already this week:

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Notes: Tax loophole, MLB realignment, Oakland sells Coliseum, NCAA settlement

More on the tax loophole, a couple of thoughts on realignment, Oakland’s stadium situation gets additional wrinkles, and the NCAA is primed for a major change.

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Lots to get through today, so let’s get to it.

I went in deeper on the billionaire sports owner tax loophole news for Baseball Prospectus earlier in the week, getting into the origins of the loophole, what it is, why it’s a problem, and why we should hope the IRS decided to remove or rewrite it. The shorter version of it is that it would keep, say, a team that costs $2 billion from pretending 80 percent of the team’s valuation is going to lose value instead of gaining it like what happens with sports franchises simply for existing, allowing them to avoid $650 million in taxes over the next 15 years that they really should have paid. The longer version, well, I wrote that for BP, and while you need a subscription for that, at the least, you could always read the ProPublica reporting from three years ago on the subject.

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Notes: Other teams unhappy with A’s, gambling, Scott Boras axed

Catching up on a week of news that wouldn’t stop.

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Last week, Buster Olney tweeted out something that made the whole internet groan. Not at Olney — not this time — but at pretty much all of MLB. You can probably figure out why just from reading what was said:

Within other organizations, there is a lot of disgust with how the A’s have handled the ballpark situation — especially when there’s no actual ballpark plan settled in Las Vegas. And there is an assumption the A’s will tank in the next few years, because their revenue stream will be down to a trickle. “This makes us all look bad,” said one person.

This was met with a chorus of “why did they approve the A’s move, then?!” which, understandable. A few things I’ve been thinking about, though, that should get a mention. For one, Olney doesn’t clarify whether this is from an owner, or an executive who happens to work for one, who had nothing to do with the move being allowed. It would be helpful if we knew: my guess is that it’s an executive who knows how bad of a look this is, and not one of the owners, who by and large are too removed from humanity to ever consider how something will make them “look” to people at large.

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Kansas City votes against the Royals, A’s and Oakland remain far apart on lease

The Johns are at it again.

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One of the first tests for whether Kansas City would hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to the Royals for a new stadium was given on Tuesday night. Good news, if you’re not an employee with the Royals: the voters rejected the proposal. Neil deMause has the details and some thoughts about what might happen next over at Field of Schemes.

All it took was a little bit of math by me — a non-math person — months ago to determine that the Royals are seeking what very well may be the largest publicly subsidy in history for a new stadium and surrounding development:

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Notes: Orioles sale gets initial approval, A’s renderings sure do exist

The Orioles move one step closer to their sale, the A’s revealed a stadium they can’t build or won’t do what they say it will, and a note on other people’s coverage.

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Per the Baltimore Sun, Major League Baseball’s ownership committee voted to approve the sale of the Baltimore Orioles to David Rubenstein, which is not the same thing as the sale of the team being approved. For that to happen, at least 23 of the owners would need to vote in favor, but it’s also difficult to imagine any reason why this particular deal would be shot down. Well, alright, maybe a bunch of small-market owners would be upset about another owner coming in to spend more than the current O’s owners do, but this same-ish group of men also let Steve Cohen buy the Mets, so they don’t get too worked up over that sort of thing. Outside of trying to keep Mark Cuban out of their club, anyway.

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Notes: A’s stadium renderings, crawl of free agency

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When last I checked in on the A’s and the Las Vegas stadium discussions, it was for a piece at Baseball Prospectus titled, “The A’s Move to Vegas is Approved, Not Assured.” It was basically a laundry list of all the things that could still, very realistically, go wrong with the A’s move out of Oakland and into Las Vegas, and concluded with this:

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