Baseball is a bit different. It’ll have to be either a dome or retractable roof, which likely means a completely charmless ballpark similar to the Diamondbacks. I can see people visiting Las Vegas and taking in a Raiders game or even the Golden Knights. For some NHL teams, it’s cheaper for a fan to fly to Las Vegas and buy Knights tickets than it would be to buy home game tickets.
I can’t really see people visiting Las Vegas to take in a ballgame, especially with a stadium that is off the strip. And, you have a lot of locals that work non standard shifts, plus it’s a city of transplants. Somehow, I see a baseball team in Vegas looking a lot like the Florida Marlins, empty stadiums and the fans that are there rooting for the opposing team.
They are southern, but not as much as they were twenty years ago. Atlanta is a city of transplants, and Charlotte, as a financial center is catching up.
My oldest daughter lives in North Carolina. I visit Charlotte on a regular basis. As someone from the Seattle area, Charlotte doesn’t feel very “Southern” to me.
It’s true that Arizona is on Mountain time, however, Arizona does not go on Daylight Savings time and Colorado does so during all of baseball season, Arizona is on Mountain Standard Time which is the same as Pacific Daylight Time. So they coordinate better time-wise with the West Coast.
The biggest draws in minor league baseball are Charlotte, Indianapolis, Columbus, Round Rock/Austin and Sacramento. But Portland, Vancouver and Montreal don’t even have AAA teams, so that would need to be thrown into the consideration.
Teams in Vancouver and Portland would have to have domed stadiums.
It’s true that Arizona is on Mountain time, however, Arizona does not go on Daylight Savings time and Colorado does so during all of baseball season, Arizona is on Mountain Standard Time which is the same as Pacific Daylight Time. So they coordinate better time-wise with the West Coast.
I live on the outskirts of Charlotte (across the border in South Carolina). Charlotte is so not-southern these days it has its own, dedicated ice curling club.
Seriously, it’s fast losing its identity as a Southern city. You have to get out of the city into the surrounding smaller cites (e.g.: Lancaster, Gastonia, Monroe, etc.) before the South returns.
A little off topic here, but for several years I’ve wondered why the A’s (and/or the Raiders) don’t just move up I-80 to Sacramento. It’s not a huge market, but it’s growing quickly and I’d think many of the more rabid East Bay fans would be willing to drive up there. But I’ve never even heard it mentioned as a viable option/threat by either MLB or the NFL.
The answer to that has always been “lack of corporate dollars”.
The City of Sacramento did *almost *pay Al Davis a $50 million “franchise fee” back in 1990, but they withdrew it when he told them he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave Los Angeles; I don’t see the city ponying up the money it would take to build a stadium today, and there don’t seem to be enough “corporate dollars” to privately finance one.
It took a dozen years or more to build the new basketball arena downtown; an MLB or NFL stadium would be much more expensive.
Ultimately, that’s a matter of money and what the rest of MLB will or won’t allow.
“Territory” is not exactly an official thing in MLB. There is a sort-of agreement between the A’s and Giants franchises, which is rooted in the long and rather tumultuous history of Bay Area baseball - both teams have at various times tried to leave, and the Giants in 1992 actually made a deal to move to Tampa and Tropicana Field, but the NL voted it down. It was the second time the team had been on the verge of moving; there had also been a deal in place in 1976 to move to Toronto and they were literally starting to pack but it was shot down by a last minute move by the SF government.
The “territory” deal was struck in the early 90’s as a gracious move by the A’s to a franchise was that, frankly, in serious trouble and had been forever; it is impossible to overstate was a terrible baseball stadium Candlestick Park was, and despite having some pretty good teams the team was not drawing many fans.** The “Territory” deal was made on the assumption that the Giants were going to move to San Jose, **not that their empire was always supposed to extend from San Francisco to San Jose. The problem was instead solved with Pac Bell Park, which immediately fixed the ballpark issue and jacked attendance through the roof.
There is no doubt at all that suzerainty over San Jose is worth something to the Giants - but, honestly, there is nothing at all preventing MLB from saying “too fucking bad” and allowing the A’s to move to Sunnyvale or San Jose or Los Gatos or wherever the hell some dumb mayor will let them build a park. I would think MLB/ the A’s SHOULD pay them something because they were bought by current ownership on the assumption those “rights” were part of the team’s value, but it’s beyond any doubt or question that they can’t continue on for long in the Coliseum.
The plan now, apparently, is a stadium in downtown Oakland near Laney College, but it’s a long way from reality.
As a pseudo-A’s fan (I prefer the Giants), it pisses me off that they keep talking about making all these crap teams in order to field a team at “the new stadium”. The new stadium they don’t even have a site for, let alone a plan to build one nor a schedule as to when and if one is going to ever be built.
