The Oakland Athletics, an “unpopular team” that boasts the worst spectator mobilization rate in the Major League (ML), has begun to relocate to its hometown in earnest.
The Nevada Independent, a U.S먹튀검증. media outlet, said on the 20th (Korean time), “The Oakland club built a new baseball field north of the Early Giants Stadium for $1 billion (approximately 1.3206 trillion won) on condition that it does not include new taxes with Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo. agreed to do so,” he said.
Nevada, located right next to California, is famous for being home to Las Vegas, the best tourist city in the United States. Auckland is said to be building a retractable dome with 30,000 to 35,000 seats after purchasing the land from Red Rock Resort, the owner of the site.
Las Vegas has been consistently discussed over the past few years as the home of the 31st and 32nd major league clubs, or the relocation of Oakland and Tampa Bay. According to the Nevada Independent, Oakland surveyed the Las Vegas area for two years to build a new home stadium. It also reportedly hired 18 lobbyists, including Auckland President Dave Cabal, to pass the bill during the 120-day parliamentary session.
If the bill passes, Auckland will have the long-awaited independent home. Founded in Philadelphia in 1901, the Athletics moved to Kansas City in 1955 and again to Oakland in 1968.
However, the San Francisco Giants had already established themselves as a popular club in the area. In addition, with the return of a famous American football team to its hometown, it has become difficult to attract baseball fans even though it is a prestigious team that has won a total of 9 World Series championships, including 4 in Oakland. The vicious cycle continued as profits naturally decreased, leading to low-investment and high-efficiency operations represented by Moneyball. In order to overcome this, they fought over the rights to the San Francisco and San Jose areas, but failed.
In the end, it has become famous in Korea as a major league team that is less popular than the KBO League as it competes with Tampa Bay every year for the last place in the number of spectators. The situation was the same in this season when the team started rebuilding, so except for the opening game (26,805) against the Los Angeles Angels, where Shohei Ohtani (29) started, the team only mobilized 10,000 people per game.
Until the game on the 19th, an average of 6,963 people per day entered the Coliseum Stadium (capacity 46,847), the home stadium of Auckland this season, which is significantly less than the KBO league, which mobilized an average of 10,325 people.
However, if he leaves Oakland and moves to Las Vegas, things look much better. Unlike Oakland, where there are many high-crime areas, Las Vegas is relatively safe thanks to its famous casinos and other tourism, and it is expected that it will be able to easily secure a fan base because it has never had a major league team related to it.