MLBTR Chat Transcript

Oakland wouldn’t be feasible as a home for the Rays in 2024 as the schedules have been set. Teams planning to fly into Tampa Bay and then fly out to a close destination – often playing without a day off as doubleheaders are no longer scheduled – would be stuck. The Rays need to play in the eastern time zone and preferably in the south.
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The Oakland and the Tampa Bays situations remain as poor as they’ve been for the last 7-10 years. This nonsensical idea that MLB needs to expand to 2 more franchises….assuming they want to forget the AL and NL as such and have 8 divisions with 4 teams each in them is going to be a problem with 3 timezones…but more importantly: they’re looking to expand to cities that have had large growth the past 10-20 years…..which is why they expanded to Miami, Tampa Bay, Phoenix, and Denver years ago.

The problem there is: 1) Only the Denver franchise has drawn well over the years; and 2) We live in a technical world that is changing everything. Therefore, while expanding to say Nashville – a city in which people have moved to from all over America for numerous reasons – those people are not all going to sign up for season tickets. Most will go 5 times – give or take a few a season at most – to see a game live, and usually (as with the 4 previous expansion teams) will go to see the team from the market they came from live. Where technology fits in is simple – through streaming services fans living in Nashville from other areas of the country can view all their former market teams games on large monitors at home for a fraction of the cost of going to see a game live in Nashville. Through the Internet they can keep up daily with their home team, reading local newspapers/blogs and even streaming sports talk shows from their old market.

Moving to Oakland only worked out when they had WS teams. When those teams turned over the fans went back to the Giants. Point being that the idea that MLB already has 2 sick markets. LV is not going to have 2-3 million a year in attendance, nor will the Rays no matter where they play.

Expanding into 2 new markets in the continental US aren’t going to draw well. The best expansion areas would be in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and/or the Dominican Republic. People in those areas love the game and understand it better than at least 80% of Americans under the age of 50 (because they play it sunup to sundown). The problem there: Major League game prices are now expensive, with many franchises depending on business clients that can write the money off as a business expense. Mexico, Puerto Rico, and/or the Dominican Republic are not wealthy areas, so even if the average fan wanted to attend a lot of games that cost would be prohibitive. Franchises in those areas would have payrolls a fraction of what Americans small market teams have.

By not going to some sort of full revenue sharing unlike the other professional team sports, MLB is slowly strangling itself. If this next bout of expansion happens the existing franchises will share in billion dollar fees for newcomers to join, and then like caffeine/sugar or an energy drink (same thing) there will be temporary satisfaction, then the crash will come that the body/league will be sicker than before.