Jamaaliver wrote:Tough to be an Oakland Sports fan these days...
I imagine being an Oakland resident is even worse. Was that a big TV market decades ago? I know crime, joblessness has been an issue in recent decades.
Is there a major cause of why this city has struggled so much?
Loss of industry, perhaps?
Oakland still is in one of the largest media markets in the country. In fact, that is one of the main reasons the A's are moving from Oakland to Vegas, because MLB changed their revenue sharing agreement between the owners where now the media market plays a factor in whether a franchise receives revenue sharing - where as it was previously based on a team's salary. Now the A's no longer receive revenue sharing because of the media market size, so they are moving to Vegas which is like #40-something in the media market size, so the A's will be practically guaranteed to get revenue sharing going forward. + Nevada is giving up public $.
Parts of Oakland are very nice, and I would say Oakland overall is pretty nice. Crime can certainly be an issue. Seemingly a decent bit of incompetence and corruption with public officials. But those issues are not unique to Oakland. Also, this is not just about the city of Oakland, as the county of Alameda has significant say in the land. And I am happy they didn't hand over more public resources to a small group of incredibly wealthy people (not that they didn't try). In any event, there are plenty of fairly wealthy people living in the area that are more than happy to be sports fans of a team that's trying - but the A's have been purposefully bad for multiple seasons, with this season ownership literally playing out the plot line from Major League. Make no mistake, this is all by design from this ownership group, as they just want to maintain their easy cash flow via revenue sharing + public $ with minimal investment in the team on the field.
