The Oakland Athletics, whose Coliseum is the one MLB stadium that gets as much grief as Tropicana Field, are moving closer to a new home.
The team recently launched a website that provides some information about their process, and also includes a survey to help guide site selection and stadium design. (The Rays also have a similar site.) What caught our attention when perusing the Oakland website was this line:
Our new ballpark will be privately financed.
At a time when even the wealthiest franchises are turning to taxpayers for construction funds — $615 million of the $850 million for Citi Field and $1.2 billion of the $2.3 billion for new Yankee Stadium was publicly financed — are there teams that really pay their own way?
If anything, the Athletics should have had a strong negotiating position. Oakland is losing the Raiders to Las Vegas, and the Warriors are moving to San Francisco. The team ought to have some leverage with a city government seeking to hold on to its last major professional team. Instead, they claim to be taking no taxpayer dollars.
From an MLB perspective, this changes everything.
by Mister Lizzie @ElizabethStrom
Aug 11, 2017