Update 5:44 PM – These tweets from Sports Business Journal’s Eric Fisher look important:
Members of #A‘s stadium committee have now gone into MLB exec council – issue may at last be coming to a head.
— Eric Fisher (@EricFisherSBJ) January 12, 2012
MLB exec council meeting has broken. Selig declines comment on all substantive matters, inc contract, #A‘s. But clearly in high spirits.
— Eric Fisher (@EricFisherSBJ) January 12, 2012
Now the original post:
Again, I don’t expect anything to happen at the owners’ meetings other than Bud Selig getting his extension and some rules-related changes. Yet there is this fresh off the wire from Mark Purdy:
In Scottsdale for MLB owner meetings and who walks into the hotel? Bill Neukom. Hmmmmmm. Need to check this out.
— Mark Purdy (@MercPurdy) January 11, 2012
It’s probably nothing. Or is it?
All parties claimed Giants/A’s territorial rights not on agenda at current owners meetings. But if Bill Neukom is there, don’t believe it.
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) January 11, 2012
Got my answer. Neukom is here as the Giants’ “chairman emeritus.” Says he is here to sit in on committee meetings+be a resource if needed.
— Mark Purdy (@MercPurdy) January 11, 2012
Corey Bush here from Bud’s select committee studying A’s possible move, making me believe issue is under discussion at these MLB meetings.
— Barry M. Bloom (@Boomskie) January 11, 2012
#Athletics owner Lew Wolff says team plans to move spring home to #Cubs site by 2015.
— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) January 11, 2012
There is other news. Today I was asked to participate in the Blogger Event at FanFest. Naturally, I accepted the invite. Interviews with players and such are not where this blog usually goes, but I appreciate what the A’s are doing to work with the blogging community, so it’s incumbent upon me to reciprocate. Any ideas on how I should do this? Does anyone with a video camera want to tag along? I’m open to suggestions.
In the meantime, read Wendy Thurm’s (@hangingsliders) excellent post at SBNation detailing a very reasonable solution to compensate the Giants for territorial rights.
newballpark.org 
Do territorial rights have to be on the agenda if Selig uses his ‘Best Interest of Baseball’ clause?
I thought Neukom was gone from the ownership group.
Not on the agenda and not being discussed are two totally different things.
If Neukom is going to throw his weight around on this, can’t Wolff do the same?
LW will not be the only A’s owner in attendance either.
Is this going to be the shootout at the O. K. Corral?
The Giants’ position is they shall hold “territorial rights” over San Jose for all eternity. Sounds reasonable, no? Haas really messed up the A’s with that 6-counties-to-2 business, with the A’s on the short end of that. And now, the Giants open a “Giants Dugout” store in so-called A’s territory anyway.
How many A’s owners are there? Wolff and Fischer are obviously the main guys. I know of Guy Saperstein and the DiNapoli’s as minority owners. I assume there are a few others?
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As for the bloggers event, I would be most interested in players honest assessment of what is like to play for the A’s. I assume that would be pretty hard to get since nobody is going to say anything that slights the organization or the fanbase. Maybe you could ask baseball related questions to warm them up and then ask for comments on playing for Oakland later? If you promise to not to associate names with quotes you might get them to open up a bit.
Forgot to mention Beane and Crowley as part of the ownership group.
I’m willing to guess that these owners meetings will be full of BS non-stories like this.
the latest from Purdy: “Got my answer. Neukom is here as the Giants’ “chairman emeritus.” Says he is here to sit in on committee meetings+be a resource if needed.”
While Thurm’s piece is excellent, her “reasonable solution” is still based entirely on assumptions:
1) That hard-core Giants fans in San Mateo, Santa Clara County’s will jump ship on “their” team and begin supporting an A’s team based in San Jose.
2) That current corporate sponsors of the Giants located in Silicon Valley will jump ship on “their” team and begin supporting an A’s team based in San Jose. This ideal has been seriously debunked by the SVLG poll of a few years back AND by the recent SVLG letter to Bud Selig (i.e. we’ll continue to support BOTH teams!).
Also, what if the Giants somehow became God-awful in years 2015-17 and the A’s became sudden contenders in a new yard? Would a drop in Giants revenue be attributed to the A’s being in SJ vs a bad product on the field? How would you measure this?
People always want to make this out as if the A’s were moving to San Jose from, say, Canada or Alaska; they’re not! They would be simply moving 35 miles further away from the Giants in the Bay Area. I’m sure by now MLB recognizes this by now (see Reinsdorf statement from a month ago) and will soon do the right thing.
If there’s a lawyer in the room (Neukum), it means something’s up! 1 year chair tenure ship then chairman emeritus. Oookkkkaaayyy…. /rolleyes
What’s the matter? Neukom doesn’t trust Baer to run the show after bombing on the radio last week, unable to say what even constitutes the South Bay? It’s time for the A’s to start getting tough, too. The Giants have their heels on the A’s throats and it’s time to stop it.
It’s very suspicious that the Giants always include San Mateo when talking about the effects of the A’s moving to SJ. They are going to to try to confuse and distort the situation by combining SM and SC counties in an attempt to extort more money out of the A’s and MLB. Yet certain local hacks want to call Wolff and FIsher greedy. Why don’t any of them call out the golden child’s ownership?
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Also, don’t territories simply define where a team’s stadium can be? If so, I don’t get Wendy’s point about re-dividing up the counties to be shared in some cases and exclusive in others. Once the A’s have Santa Clara, what’s the point? Both teams will be able to market to fans across the region and will be served by media that addresses the entire region. In terms of stadia, A’s get Santa Clara, Giants get SF, the rest is shared. Done. It’s not like assigning counties in various ways is going to ensure the money from them flows to a specific team.
Update 5:44 PM – New tweet from Sports Business Journal’s Eric Fisher
…I think I’m going to head down to church and light a candle.
They’re probably just asking for another 1000 days to debate…
PJK – let it burn bright sir!!!
The Giants know the fans in the Bay Area are fickle. As long as the A’s play in a dump and they play in a jewel they will always get fans regardless of wins or losses.
If the A’s get a new stadium in San Jose they may lose fans from San Mateo County since a good majority of it is actually closer to San Jose.
The Giants fear a bandwagon occurring for the A’s at Cisco Field if they start winning or god forbid a World Series title. The Giants will be back to square one when they were playing second fiddle to the A’s back at Candlestick for several years.
Wendy Thurm is thinking like a Giants fan and that they have a reasonable claim. The Giants have a horrendous argument about San Jose in general.
In the spirit of fair competition and business they should be given zero by the A’s. If anything MLB has to pay the Giants off 100% for this flaw in their system. This market should have been shared like the rest of them.
The Giants reign over San Jose is coming to an end and not for the A’s but for the best interests of baseball as a whole.
The AL West will have a new team in their division with a big payroll starting in 2015.
Theres’s no question that relatively speaking, San Mateo county is home to a very large number of Giants fan. I’m not so certain the same could be said for Santa Clara county, which is why the Giants always lump San Mateo and Santa Clara counties together. I believe we’d be surprised if the numbers were broken down by counties. The Giants are not concerned about the A’s taking away their fans in the South Bay, because those numbers IMO are not significantly high. What they are afraid of is the A’s tapping into the rich South Bay market, thus strengthening them financially. The primary reason why the A’s are currently taking so much heat in the press is because they are hamstrung financially. All that would change if they moved to San Jose.
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On the subject of territories, why not give the Giants SF county, the A’s Santa Clara, and everything else be shared? Seems to me it makes no difference whether a team owns the rights to a county if another team can open up a retail store within that same territory. Territorial rights only seem to determine where a team can play.
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With regard to compensation, any analysis (as suggested by Wendy Thurm) would have to take into account the fact that the Giants just won a World Series a year ago, while the A’s are probably at their lowest point in years. Fan support for the Giants will never be higher than it is now, and the reverse could be said about the A’s. Any increase or decrease for either team would have to be compared over a 5 – 10 year period.
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ML, what do you mean when you ask “Any idea on how I should do this”? Will the discussion be limited to on field matters, or will it be anythings game?
@Dude, Wow I just read your post. Seem like you and me think the same way, sorry about that.
What “Contract,” and who’s in “high spirits”? The suspense is killing me ;o)…
Tony, I think he’s talking about Selig’s contract extension.
contract- Bud’s extension.
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High spirits- Bud is giddy because he just came out of a meeting where everyone agreed on everything.
…or Bud came out of a meeting where he got a contract guaranteeing him $22M per year.
“Members of #A’s stadium committee have now gone into MLB exec council – issue may at last be coming to a head.” Wow! Now we know why Neukom showed up! Go A’s!
Got it on contract extension. But if the executive committee was meeting with the A’s stadium committee, then they were clearly only focused on the stadium situation. Selig in high spirits after this meeting? We need a fly on the wall in AZ.
What’s irritating to me is that I’m not hear anything on our local radio station. But I am on the edge of my seat with these updates here.
fc – no problem. Funny that we wrote pretty much the same thing. As they say, great minds, etc…
What ANY of you fail to realize is this is a biz and fans are the stock and the on filed the product no matter what if you lose stock or the rights to those stocks then you fail as a biz. You take about well how many fans are there? Does it matter of course it does on game at Cisco is one game lost at ATT in this economy every single game ticket sold is important so why would you give it up? Plus your crazy if you think companies will support both sure some will but one lost company for SF could be worth millions once again in this economy when companies are watching the balance book more your insane if you think they’d blow money on grown men playing a Childs game two fold. Stop complaining SF owns it that ownership makes the value of team more, so why give it up for any reason aside from at least a 580 million dollar layout which according to you guys is more than enough because SJ will make the A’s the Yankees of the west coast LA will grumble with how much money that city will pump into the team! Lol yea right!!!! South bay is an asset that addition to the other assets the giants have make them profitable. Its not just the south bay obviously that area can’t support a team alone. Your crazy if you think MLB wi ruin the gravy train on biscuits wheels the Giants ride and the payroll and profits they pump in the game.
^^^^ Can anyone here translate gibberish into English for me?
I only speak a little gibberish. Some thing about an A’s move to SJ will hurt the Giants, the A’s won’t be better off there, and the MLB will protect the Giants because the Giants are somehow making the MLB money. I’m not sure, it’s a dialect I’m not familiar with.
Good point? Is “MLB wi Gravy Train” a new game for Nintendo? I’m so confused.