While the threat of franchise relocation may be cooling, some cities looking to keep their teams haven’t shown an aversion to throwing tons of public money a team’s way.Take the Yanks and Mets deals. Both will rely on the issuance of public, tax-free bonds to finance both ballparks. No taxes are being raised to pay [...]

The June election is less than 6 weeks away, and some major things will be decided that could have an impact (direct or indirect) on the A’s future in the Bay Area. Among the issues: Oakland’s mayoral race could extinguish or revive any hope of retaining the A’s within city limits. Frontrunner Ron Dellums appears [...]

Over at The Hardball Times, Maury Brown provided an assessment of the three teams that are most often targeted for a possible move (Twins, A’s, Marlins), along with potential target cities (San Antonio, Charlotte, Portland, Las Vegas, Norfolk). In his judgment, we shouldn’t expect the A’s to find greener pastures outside the Bay Area. I’ve [...]

drummer510 has started up a blog called “Keep the A’s in Oakland.” It’s an outreach-type blog that encourages like-minded folks to call and write Oakland pols and educate the public on what’s possible in Oakland. I’ve given the author a few pieces of info to get him going, including my mock-up of the Broadway Auto [...]

Forbes finally released their annual team valuation list today. The usual suspects are at the top of the food chain, with the Yankees being the first team to surpass the $1 billion mark. The Washington Nationals had the biggest gain, jumping all the way to #6 with its $440 million value. That figure is in [...]

This installment comes from San Jose City Hall’s Council Chambers, where the third ballpark EIR outreach meeting is being held. There are less than twenty people in the gallery this time, due in part to Soccer Silicon Valley calling off the dogs for now. As new items come up during the session, I’ll post them [...]

The start of the baseball season is usually accompanied by two neat statistical news releases. Forbes Magazine’s 2006 team valuation figures are not available, but Team Marketing Report‘s newest MLB Fan Cost Index is. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the elimination of the Coliseum’s third deck led to a 25% increase in the [...]

A new piece in Slate by SF Weekly contributor Tommy Craggs provides a nice forward for today’s upcoming post on ticket prices. Craggs bemoans the loss of the Coliseum’s upper deck, especially section 310, where he and his friends frequently sat during games. Perhaps a little too romantically he writes, “Underpoliced and sparsely populated, the [...]

Furthering the effort to dispel any notion of a hidden agenda, Lew Wolff spoke with Merc scribe Mark Emmons and gave a little more insight into the business operations side of the A’s. Apparently Wolff owns 12% of the team, a partnership (which I assume includes members of the DiNapoli family) owns 13%, and John [...]

Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus wrote a piece analyzing attendance revenue for the four two-team markets. He wondered what effects one team’s success had on the other. After running attendance revenue figures through a regression analysis, Silver surmises that for the most part, one team’s success would have a symbiotic effect on its rival. The [...]