No statement I have seen better exemplifies Oakland’s strategy than this quote by City Administrator Fred Blackwell from the SF Business Times: “San Francisco has given the Warriors a waterfront offer that they could not refuse,” said Fred Blackwell, assistant city administrator, in a statement. “And in the end, we will leave a space for [...]

You have to hand it to Roger Goodell. He has a playbook for getting stadium deals moving, and by God it works. Goodell lets the team owner come up with a proposal, and if it stalls he comes in with Goldman Sachs in tow and/or a threat to move, implied or otherwise. As a result, [...]

One thing that I don’t think can be argued is that over the last 15 years or so, at least since Peter Magowan took control of the Giants franchise, the Giants have had a better PR machine going than the A’s. When the A’s hired former Giants PR head Bob Rose, it was a tacit [...]

First, a hat tip to two great legends who left the world much too soon. If you haven’t done it already, read Nina Thorsen’s KQED interview with the Trib’s Oakland reporter Angela Woodall. Then read Ray Ratto quick opinion piece at CSN Bay Area. Then sit back and consider what happened. If you’re struggling to [...]

On the northwest corner of West Santa Clara Street and North San Pedro Street in downtown San Jose, Baseball San Jose put up a series of Cisco Field renderings, many of which you’ve already seen. The renderings are blown up to poster size, which allows people to study them for details that may not be [...]

. The NFL is poised to start getting nearly $5 billion per year from TV deals with ESPN, NBC, CBS, and Fox. Time Warner Cable is considering simply buying the Dodgers for $1+ billion instead of paying $4 billion over 20 years for the team’s TV rights. The newly vertically integrated NBC/Comcast will stream the [...]

In light of the big redevelopment news, it might be easy to forget that there was plenty of other news from earlier in the week. Susan Slusser’s article featuring Peter Magowan had a poll attached. Normally I don’t bother with polls (notice how there haven’t been any on this site for a long time). In [...]

It’s never too early to declare winners and losers that were made as a result of today’s earthshattering news. First the losers: Backers of the Victory Court site. The site was heavily dependent on tax increment (redevelopment funds) to buy the land and pay for improvements. Now that’s out of the question. The City of [...]

The future at the Coliseum boils down to this. I’ve been reading the meat of the Oakland Coliseum Area Specific Plans RFP. It has some clearly outlined goals: To maintain a world class sports and entertainment complex To attract major technology or science employers to the campus across 880 from the Coliseum (a.k.a. Zhone) Create [...]

It can be easy to forget that for all of the work Angels owner Arte Moreno has done to boost his franchise, the team has never won a World Series under his stewardship. Moreno bought the Angels from Disney at the outset of the 2003 season, as Orange County was still in its championship hangover. [...]