Is Las Vegas Even Excited About the A's Coming to Town?
We are a week and a half removed from MLB's owners unanimously approving the A's relocation bid to Las Vegas, and yet there has been no fanfare. No celebrations. No renderings. No news.
Instead, we got a social media post from the A's themselves on the day of the vote of the Sphere in Las Vegas welcoming the team to town.
Here's a fun question: Who do you think paid for that? It's doubtful that the Sphere put that up out of the goodness of their hearts. Let's also point out that this post was seen by 2.4 million people and only received 13,600 likes. I ran the math. That's the equivalent of 153 people clapping in a crowd of 27,000.
It should also be noted that since the vote, which was a formality to remove one of the last roadblocks to relocation, the A's Twitter account has lost nearly 5,000 followers. Fans in Oakland are beginning to rid themselves of reminders of the team and the fans in Vegas don't seem to care about another new team with a ton of baggage. When you're moving to a new market, if you can't grab that new customer base at this point in the process, it's going to be even more difficult to persuade them when they see what John Fisher's A's are all about.
In his interview with The Athletic, team president Dave Kaval doesn't talk about how excited the team is to be a part of a new community, or do much work on public relations. Instead, when asked about the team's potential reliance on tourism, he talks about how the Raiders and Golden Knights (two teams Vegas actually wanted), and how they "have the highest ticket revenue in their respective sports."
Kaval also mentioned revenues that the Rangers ballpark in Texas brings in due to all of the luxury suites when talking to the Las Vegas Review Journal about what the A's ballpark could actually look like.
In an ESPN article over the summer, John Fisher said that the stadium for the San Jose Earthquakes is already outdated because there aren't enough suites.
If you're following the quotes they're giving out, it's rarely about the community, unless they're pushed on the topic. Instead, it's about how much money they think they'll be making.
Here's the thing though: Nobody cares how much money John Fisher does or doesn't make in this deal. What people around the country have seen is that he has been ruthless in ripping the A's out of Oakland and espousing his own misguided version of the truth along the way. The first time most people in the Bay Area heard him speak in his 18 years of owning the team was when he got in front of a microphone to say the team was leaving Oakland for Las Vegas.
These are the lasting memories that baseball fans have of this entire process.
John Fisher hasn't done a good job of ingratiating himself with the community in Nevada, and the hype, or lack thereof, surrounding the A's impending relocation is proof of that. Sure, there will be baseball fans from all over the country that will take in a game here and there on a trip to Vegas, but they won't be going every year. The A's need to sell 27,000 tickets per game, every game, for 30 years in order to meet projections and be deemed a success.
Those projections are lofty for a team that is actually wanted by its city, which leads to the big question: Does Las Vegas even want the A's?