Before moving to Las Vegas, the Oakland Athletics are working to negotiate the number of “home” games they will be allowed to play anywhere other than Las Vegas.
The team is asking the Las Vegas Stadium Authority in Nevada for the freedom to play up to seven games outside its planned stadium in Las Vegas, which the team hopes to open in 2028. Each MLB club’s schedule calls for 81 games in house per year.
It’s a peculiar discussion at first glance, but officials involved in the negotiation describe it as standard and intended to ensure the A’s can participate in rare events held abroad or in unique locations. This weekend, for example, the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies will play a pair of games in London.
“We need some accommodations to be able to play some of these international games that are very important to Major League Baseball,” A’s president Dave Kaval said in an interview. “It’s pretty common.”
But critics question whether the allocation could be used in ways not anticipated at this time, and whether those relocated games are properly accounted for in the revenue projections the A’s used to secure $380 million in public financing for their stadium.
The Nevada Independent first reported the terms, which are contained in a non-relocation agreement that the Stadium Authority is expected to vote on next month. Talks are still ongoing and an agreement could be reached on a different figure, said Steve Hill, president of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority.
In “most or many years,” Kaval added, the number of relocated home games the A’s expect is none or “much less” than seven.
The Baltimore Orioles and Seattle Mariners recently reached agreements that extend their stays at their current headquarters. Baltimore’s deal calls for a six-game assignment away from its stadium, while the Mariners must play 90 percent of games at their home park. Both, then, appear in line with what the A’s are looking for.
But Jeremy Koo, a lawyer and A’s fan in Sacramento, California, who does not want the team to move to Las Vegas, wrote a letter to the stadium’s board of directors pointing out that in situations where a new stadium has been built , the language has changed. It seemed different. Baltimore and Seattle were renewals. But in 2014, the Atlanta Braves agreed to a limit of six games in a consecutive three-year period in “an international or other location as requested by MLB.”
Ultimately, Koo maintains, the team “shouldn’t arrive in Las Vegas with one foot already out.”
A few years ago, the Tampa Bay Rays touted a plan that would have split them into two locations: Montreal and Tampa-St. St. Petersburg area of Florida. Kaval denied that the A’s were pursuing anything like the Rays’ Florida-Montreal gambit, on a much smaller scale.
“It’s not about that,” Kaval said.
However, as currently drafted, the assignment is not specifically drafted around international events or “jewel,” a term that broadly encompasses special MLB games.
Seven games is also much more than any team would normally play.
The sport’s collective bargaining agreement limits the number of “special events” MLB can schedule in a season to four series of one or two games each. This is for the entire league, not per team.
Hill, who in addition to his role on the stadium authority is also executive director of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and advocated for the A’s to receive public funding, signaled a sense of readiness for the future.
“We’re looking at a 30-year deal, so how things are today doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be like that in 25 years,” Hill said. “From a common sense point of view, it could get to the point where a team plays a series or two somewhere else, mainly internationally.”
Steve Hill promoting the Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix in 2023. (Ethan Miller//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
There’s also the possibility that baseball will someday try to hold a midseason tournament, a la the NBA.
Koo’s biggest concern, however, is that the financial projections the A’s used to secure public financing for their new Las Vegas stadium, scheduled to open in 2028, were based on playing 81 home games.
“The legislature was sold something different than what I think they are ultimately being sold through this deal,” he said.
Hill acknowledged that the number of games the A’s have outside of Las Vegas could affect their bond financing, which is determined by the amount of tax revenue they are expected to generate.
“The county ends up issuing the bonds, they have financial advisors advising them on how to look at it,” Hill said. “But if the A’s have the ability to play, say, the seven games they proposed in this round, I think the bond market will look at that and say, ‘Well, we’re not going to take any risks, we.’ “We’re going to assume that “They’re going to play those seven games somewhere else. And that’s why we’re going to reduce the amount of money we’re willing to lend them.”
Koo mentioned another possible scenario, also involving baseball in Montreal.
In 2003, the Montreal Expos played 22 home games in St. John’s. At the time the decision was made, the Expos’ eventual home, Washington DC, was considered a favorite for relocation, but no decision had been formally made, and some in Puerto Rico watched all 22 home games. like an audition.
Koo noted that the proposed no-relocation deal to Las Vegas gives the A’s a seven-year window in which they could begin flirting with other cities at the end of the 30-year deal.
Hill said he wasn’t concerned that the A’s would try to use the allocation to take advantage of the area toward the end of the lease.
“No, not really,” Hill said. “First, there are not enough games to have much influence. And if we’ve gotten to the point in that period of time where they feel like they need to use something like leverage, we have a relationship that’s headed toward real problems anyway.
“Major League Baseball and all the leagues…care about the relationship between all the teams in the cities they are in, and they strongly reject doing something like that. I don’t think there’s any way in the world the league would allow a team, while it’s still under lease, and there’s all kinds of time to figure something out, mess with the city they’re in. I mean, that just doesn’t happen.”
The A’s, Hill said, are an example of this.
“That’s why, frankly, you see a pretty long period of time where things weren’t going well from a relationship standpoint in Oakland, because there was real work and real pressure there to resolve that,” Hill said . “You start doing that and other cities start paying attention to things like that.”
(Top photo by Dave Kaval: Lachlan Cunningham//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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