They are married to that green and yellow from what I've been told. What I heard their President say yesterday is they see what the Golden Knights are doing and want to bring back the Charlie Finley days. The Knights broke the mold for the NHL game experience. They want to have more fun and humor and be a bit outrageous at the event and promotions. I think Baseball could use a bit of Charlie Finley today. Its about getting value for dollar. The A's see 70% of fans being locals, 30% visitors. This would be one of the highest in MLB but it makes sense given the amount of visitors to LV. Like the Raiders, all the major hotels will have "luxury suites" for VIP's and will target marketing to out of town fans for each series. And they want to push for the All Star game and World baseball classic. The stadium will also be used for concerts and events like Allegiant but smaller. The biggest question now is what about next year. Where will the A's play when the lease in Oakland runs out. I would go see them at the Aviators stadium in Summerlin. Great stadium BTW that holds about 12K now. Interesting thing I heard -- the minor AND major league team could play in the same stadium in the same year. I guess the minor league team has to play in the sun or schedule them on alternative days. The field though would have to be converted to artificial turf because the grass couldn't take the abuse of 160 games a year.
Man, I sure miss the old California Golden Seals - THOSE were the days - green and gold, let me tell ya.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Golden_Seals They had one of the greatest Goaltenders of all time that nobody ever heard of. Nine seasons, the team never had a winning record, not one... Beyond that, listening to Dan Patrick this AM, 'supposedly' MLB may try putting the A's in different stadiums the next 3 seasons as a test to see which cities might do best with an actual (new) team, they mentioned Nashville, Charlotte, Salt Lake City as well as in LV where the minor league team plays - switch dates obviously don't play at the same time, and one other, Orlando? << that would be STUPID.
Not so. In the early '80s after they won their only championship and remained contenders, they attracted so many fans that they had to move the games to the Kingdome for a few years. The first Sonics game I ever saw was in the 'dome.
I got a survey by text yesterday asking a bunch of questions. Pretty sure it was from the County. Asking if I would go, if I thought it was a good idea, how much I heard about it, and if I would support taxes in some way to get the stadium built. So this is not a done deal.
Meanwhile, ESPN rated all the MLB teams based on their April performance, and they gave the A's a rating of F-minus-minus-minus-minus-minus! (Their starting pitchers went 0-15 for the month!)
There is some question if they can fill the as-yet-to-be-built stadium. They need to make a smaller stadium. Football is once a week, baseball is a couple days and you can burn out pretty fast. Hockey can do a couple a week but based on size, they can fill some seats.
The problem with baseball is they made changes to speed up the game - which is great - for TV - but folks at the game, quite a few are grumbling because now they go to take a piss or buy food/beer, and they miss an inning. And the food and beer sellers are grumbling because they don't have as much time to sell food/beer, and they don't sell AS MUCH as they used to...
After most of the players on the title team retired or left, attendance dropped off and they returned to their regular arena. When the city would not pay to upgrade the arena they decided to leave town. Ironically the city later did upgrade the arena to attract the Kraken NHL team. There is still hope in Seattle that they will eventually get a new NBA team, which would regain the Supersonics name.
I think the A's would count on a certain number of seats from the major hotels they give away as a base minimum. Then recruit people from the other markets to come see the games, especially mid-week. They are doing that with Formula 1. The biggies own huge amounts of tickets they are selling at big bucks or giving away to whale types. Vegas is a unique market. The A's would have to be more of an event "fun experience" like the VGK did with hockey. Traditionalists hate what Vegas did but the fans love it. The number of kids at Knights games is crazy as well as the number of Canadian tourists for any of their games. IMO, the stadium the Diamondbacks have sucks. Its ugly inside, its way too big, it has no personality at all, and its in a kinda crappy part of town on the south side. And Phoenix is much more spread out than Vegas. If the Diamondbacks can make it in Phoenix, so should the A's in Vegas. What the A's need is to have the casual baseball fan (the guy who goes with his family once a year) to say: "If we go to one game this year it has to be in Vegas". I also believe that as baseball has sped up the game this year this really helps the Vegas type attendee. See a game and get out earlier to party and gamble. No different than a Strip show in that respect. If the games end around 10 there's plenty of time to go out afterwards, particularly if they are near The Strip.
Yeah packages for kids and families as well as convention season visitors/comps would be fun. I want to be there for dollar beer night during AVN!!!!!! Bonus for a double-header It needs local fans though, like a Trader Joe's parking lot, it needs to be undersized, not mega-stadium they can't fill. It's not Hawaii, but it is remote enough with a small marketshare. Bucket-list fans will run out fast. A's owners/managers are snakes, I think everyone is getting railed in this deal.
Dan Patrick said today that the Las Vegas Aviators are outdrawing the Oakland Athletics. I cannot find attendance numbers for LV for this year, but Oakland at home is drawing 10,130 fans, and double that when on the road...
But then how do you explain the Raiders? Those are the highest-priced tickets in the NFL, and they come close to selling out every game. And the Golden Knights seem to draw as well, imagine if the NHL played May thru September... How is the racetrack? But yes, the difference may be playing 5-6 times a week would be the difference...? I LOVE our AAA stadium here, it was built in 2011, so open and 'airy', you can walk all the way around it, or sit in the grass, but it only holds 9,000 people... Image Unavailable, Please Login
Despite the talking heads from Oakland, it looks like its more and more going to happen. Governor Lombardo is apparently writing the bill to be submitted to the assembly. He wants it but with no new taxes. He will probably call a special session to get it passed after the bi-yearly session ends. He'll do that when he has all the votes he needs. In fact what they are going to do in this bill is to enlarge the special tax district beyond the A's stadium and get another $150 million in the bond beyond what the A's need. Then give the extra $150M to the education fund which is one of his priorities. Its politically a win-win-win-win: Vegas gets a major league stadium and MLB team. The stadium is owned by the public (the LV stadium authority which also owns Allegiant Stadium), the entire state gets more money for education from a vacant piece of land they do not own, Red Rock sells a piece of property they don't want BUT still holds the land next to it to build on, and the Strip hotels get more tourists who spend more money. The only question is where the A's will play after next year. IMO, its going to be the Aviators stadium in Summerlin.
I know you've heard the speculation that the A's would be a 'traveling team' and play in a whole bunch of cities that don't have a MLB team, but most, if not all, have AAA teams. I also read speculation the A's could play in SF when the Giants are on the road. I don't know what would be better - playing in SF, or a place like Phoenix...? The next question - is there enough of a market for both the A's AND the Aviators to play in Vegas? Or are the Aviators moving? And of course Lombardo wants it built with no new taxes - it's political suicide to invoke anything tax-wise.
They have to play some day games during the summer because of travel. The field would have to be converted to artificial turf to withstand 180 games a year if both played at LV Ball Park. Artificial grass and Vegas heat don't match. It seems to me they will look for alternative MLB parks to play for some series. As to the Aviators, its actually ideal from an operational perspective. The players already live in the area so if the need to be called up, its easy. I don't think they care much if the Aviators attendance suffers. And being in Summerlin with reduced prices will help. I think also a stronger relationship to the MLB team might also help. The Silver Knights in Henderson seems to be working for the Golden Knights. Caesars came out in favor of it predicting 400K additional tourists a year coming to see MLB. Difficult to ignore those kinds of numbers. With room occupancy currently running in the 90's, it just means more profits for them with higher room rates and more spenders. I think its a done deal. Its just a question of how much money and what they do with it. The rest they will figure out. It is being done rather quickly though. I think the A's danced around for a year but seemed to want to jump seriously after the MLB study showed the market potential. That and the delays in Oakland followed by a new administration taking power there. Oakland should have put this all to bed the middle of last year. They kept stalling and responding to lawsuits until the clock ran out.
The AAA team for the Twins plays 20 miles away in St Paul MN. That's what they were discussing, playing games in SLC, Nashville, Charlotte, Boise, Orlando, Portland, San Antonio.... I think all the travel - meaning different 'home' cities - would suck for the families of players and staff... Some guy wants a team in Orlando, which would be a big mistake, 3 teams in Florida?
The AAA team for the Braves plays 35 miles away in Gwinnett County. There seems to have been a trend recently in the Majors to have the AAA team fairly close to the big club. And as poorly as the Rays are drawing in St. Petersburg, maybe they should be the team to move to Orlando.
I found it amazing that even after the Dodgers moved to the west coast, they stayed in Vero for spring training. All the other western teams had moved spring training to Arizona long before the Dodgers finally joined them. It's ironic that now Angelenos can be "trolley-dodgers" like their Brooklyn ancestors.