Alameda County is seemingly on board.
Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher is one step close to getting his ballpark-village built on the Oakland, California waterfront. Alameda County supervisors in a four-to-one vote approved a non-binding resolution to help Fisher pay for the parks, affordable housing, and other infrastructure he wants for his project. Alameda County is sort of on board with the ballpark-village concept and that means a clear path has been established for Fisher to plan ahead. There will be a number of obstacles in his way but the road has gotten easier with the Alameda supervisors supporting the construction of a ballpark-village. But it does not mean that Las Vegas is out of the picture for Fisher. It would be foolish for him and Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred to abandon Las Vegas as a possible destination for Fisher’s business even though Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area market that includes Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose in the immediate area and Sacramento as a secondary market is a much wealthier business market than Las Vegas.
There are many question marks about Las Vegas which remains a tourist industry town about the viability of the area as a baseball market. Las Vegas has a National Hockey League franchise and a National Football League team. Those two entities are getting as much corporate money out of the market as possible. How much money is left for baseball? The television market is small. Oakland has a large population base, Las Vegas does not. But Las Vegas officials want to remain in the game to get an MLB franchise which is why they probably don’t mind seeing the city being used as leverage in the Fisher-Oakland talks. Leave a good impression and MLB might eventually come. Alameda County is on board, Fisher and MLB are happy.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
