A's Will Continue to Receive Revenue Sharing

When the latest collective bargaining agreement came out, there was a clause in there that said that the A's needed to have a binding agreement for a ballpark by January 15, 2024 in order to continue to receive revenue sharing. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, they have met that low bar and will continue to receive money from other owners presumably for the rest of time. 

Now, none of this is surprising. The A's entire relocation has been predicated not on making the best decision for the franchise, but on John Fisher's team to be able to get revenue sharing. That's the deadline that A's president Dave Kaval has mentioned numerous times (or he did before his phone was buried in the desert after a number of social media missteps). 

What's funny about the announcement that came out on Thursday is that, in true Review-Journal fashion, they had an announcement that meant nothing ready to go to counteract the bad press the A's were getting that day. It's a tired joke at this point, but you knew it was coming. 

The Oakland Ballers, an expansion team in the Pioneer League that is set to play their first season in 2024, had an agreement to play a game at the Oakland Coliseum on June 29th. The contract had been signed and the deposit had gone through. Then the A's enacted a clause that allowed them to nix the deal since they are supposed to be the only professional baseball team allowed to play at the Coliseum. 

The Ballers (aka B's) wanted to provide the community with one last memorable experience at the venue where fans didn't have to worry about giving any money to the owner that is trying to rip the A's away. The B's also planned to hand out a number of tickets and were hoping to draw a pretty sizable crowd--maybe even sell the place out. The A's couldn't have a Pioneer League team even attempt to pack the park, so instead they just said that they couldn't play there. 

In their effort to change the narrative, the team fed the Review-Journal a story about how they'll continue to receive revenue sharing. That is how out of ideas the franchise is. The team knew the Ballers announcement was coming, too. Many outlets that reported the Ballers' news had an e-mail sent by the A's to the JPA saying they invoked their clause to be the only pro baseball team allowed to play at the Coliseum. That e-mail was provided by the A's, which means they had some time to figure out their planted counter-story.

People are waiting on renderings which were supposed to come out a month ago, a financial plan for how Fisher plans to pay for the park, where the team plans to play their games past the 2024 season, and a slew of other concerns about the feasibility of the project, and the best that they could come up with was revenue sharing. 

That'll get the Vegas residents excited. May as well start offering season ticket packages now. 

The curious part of this announcement is how many questions there still are about the A's potential relocation. One could argue that they're still further along in Oakland than they currently are with Vegas. Neither site has funding, but Oakland has secured more money (roughly a billion dollars in on-site and off-site infrastructure funding), has an environmental impact report, and Howard Terminal even had renderings. They may technically have a binding agreement in Las Vegas, but they also had a binding agreement at the Wild Wild West site before switching to the Tropicana site. 

The A's had an exclusive negotiation agreement at Howard Terminal that expired last summer. That's basically all they have in Vegas, too. With a touch of effort, it seems like the A's could have had this binding agreement to keep themselves on revenue sharing in place in Oakland by about May, right after their negotiation summit with Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao. 

If the deadline was so important, it seems weird that they would start all over again in another location--assuming Fisher has the money to build the ballpark at all. 

But hey, cool counter-announcement. All it really showed us was that the A's were legitimately scared that they'd be outdrawn by an Independent League team, which would cause people to ask way too many questions about why they're leaving in the first place.