Libby Schaaf Gives “Priority” to Oakland Athletics
Oakland mayor elect, Libby Schaaf spoke on the Damon Bruce show this week to discuss her plans regarding the three Oakland sports teams that are all threatening to leave. She admitted that the Warriors were a long shot at this point but maintained that the door isn’t closed until they’ve officially moved out of the Oracle.
Stating that one of the first calls she made upon election was to Lew Wolff, Libby Schaaf has maintained that she’ll do whatever it takes to keep “her teams” in Oakland, short of using public money. Bruce reminded her that the privately funded AT&T Park in San Francisco ended up costing the city a considerable amount of money in infrastructure costs and, despite being against any public money going towards the stadia, she feels that it is the city’s responsibility to make sure that certain infrastructure needs are taken care of.
Where Libby Schaaf lost Raiders fans, apparent in the phone calls Damon Bruce received and the Tweets I was sent last night, is when she said that from an economic standpoint, priority needs to be given to the Oakland Athletics. Fans that look strictly at team value or ticket sales may find this questionable but, as Bruce tried to point out, there are considerable other economic factors that will benefit the city.
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Because of their higher average ticket price and their ability to sell 25,000 more seats per game, the Raiders do make more money at the box office but that money goes straight to The Raiders and isn’t drastically higher than what the A’s make in a year so we’re going to throw that factor right out the window.
What the city is interested in is traffic, jobs and taxes. If they were to build Coliseum City, complete with bars, retail, and restaurants, the Athletics bring in much more money. If you own a restaurant that can handle 2,000 patrons a night, won’t you make more money if you have 2,000 patrons 81 times instead of 10? The economic impact is not determined by the amount of money a team makes for themselves but the amount of money it generates for the area. Bringing 2,000,000+ people into an area over a six month period has a much bigger impact than bringing 400,000 over a 10 day period.
My Twitter buddy was quick to point out that more fans travel to Oakland and stay in hotels. This may absolutely be true. With a fan base in Los Angeles that can easily make the drive up for a game, the Raiders probably do draw more fans to hotels in the area but looking beyond the fans, the Athletics put baseball teams, and the dozens of people associated with those teams, into those same hotels for 81 or more nights a year. If I ran a hotel (and I used to), I would absolutely give preference to the company that bought a floor of rooms 81 times a year over the company that did the same for 10 days.
Ok, so the Athletics win in foot-traffic around neighboring business (this is for Coliseum City, not the current venue where there are no neighboring business) and they probably win in the lodging industry. What’s left? Employment.
The Raiders, by virtue of their larger crowd sizes at games, need to employ more security, concession attendants, parking staff, and cleaning staff. It’s probably fair to say that they employ twice as many people, on game day, as the Athletics do but, since there are fewer games, the Athletics will employ four football seasons worth of people in one season and those employees will be working 12 days a month instead of 2.
Let’s assume these are all minimum wage jobs and six hour shifts and that the Raiders need to employ twice as many people as the A’s. With 1,000 employees a game, the A’s will have a $4.3 million payroll where the Raiders, with 2,000 employees a game, will have $1 million payroll. Not only do the A’s generate more income tax, they also put four times as much money right back into the city of Oakland when those employees pay rent, buy groceries, go to the movies and pay utilities.
When Libby Schaaf says that the A’s get priority based on economy alone, this is what she’s looking at. It’s not enough to analyze the box office of each team. Forbes, in their evaluations of both teams, put the A’s revenue per fan at $44 and the Raiders revenue per fan at $31. If I’m understanding that number correctly, the Raiders would need to sell over 230,000 seats per game to equal the revenue that A’s fans bring to the table. So, while the argument can be made that the Raiders gate makes them more valuable (in 2013 their gate was 1,000,000 less than the A’s but with 71 fewer games) it cannot be denied that if Coliseum City were to be built, the Athletics would generate much more associative economic boost than the Raiders.