… so John Fisher is trying to sell a partial share in the team.
Earlier this week the New York Post reported this about the ongoing saga of a potential stadium in Las Vegas for the Athletics:
Billionaire Oakland A’s owner John Fisher is looking to cash in on the team’s move to Las Vegas by selling off a minority stake that values the franchise at $2 billion — a whopping 66% increase from its most recent valuation, The Post has learned.
Fisher — an heir to The Gap clothing empire co-founded by his parents, Donald and Doris Fisher — plans to start shopping a 25% chunk of the team with a price tag of $500 million in the coming days, two sources close to the situation told The Post.
That’s absolutely correct about the “recent valuation” of the A’s, as per the annual Forbes report on team values, which had the A’s at $1.2 billion, second lowest in MLB (only the Marlins were lower). The Cubs, for what it’s worth, were valued by Forbes at $4.22 billion, fourth behind the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox.
The thing is, that Post report isn’t 100 percent correct. Fisher doesn’t “plan to” start shopping this 25 percent share of the A’s — he’s already been at it for a while, apparently with no takers:
“Start shopping”? A’s have been unsuccessfully hitting up potential local investors for months (including a top secret meeting at Red Rock a month ago), no takers. https://t.co/Cjd7fgYn5v
— Vital Vegas (@VitalVegas) October 23, 2024
You might recall that Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts sold some minority non-voting shares of the Cubs to help finance Wrigley Field renovations. He had no trouble doing that. Fisher… well, that’s a different story.
And there’s more, as reported by longtime baseball writer Craig Calcaterra:
And all of this is happening at a time when Fisher, who has STILL not revealed how he plans to pay for his portion of the new stadium in Las Vegas, has to submit an actual financial plan in order to take advantage of the public funding measure passed by the Nevada legislature. Per that plan Fisher is supposed to come up with $850 million. The Post reports that he’s going to borrow $300 million of that, so in the event he does manage to swindle someone into giving him half a billion bucks for a no-control stake in the A’s, he’ll only have to pay $50 million in the deal. Pennies to him, of course.
In any sane world Fisher would’ve had his financing in order months ago. The fact that he doesn’t yet, and that the biggest part of that financing is currently taking the form of a rather desperate plea for a white knight, doesn’t bode well for the stadium project. Which is why I will reiterate my belief that the Vegas stadium deal is going to fall apart, perhaps before the end of the year.
I’m with Craig. While the Nevada legislature has in fact approved some public funding for the proposed A’s stadium on the Strip in Las Vegas, as you can see there are so many contingencies on that funding that if any of them fall through — and at this point it looks like all of them might — the whole deal might collapse.
It’s one of the worst things any baseball owner has done in recent memory. There was, in fact, a reasonable proposal to build the A’s a new stadium in Oakland, but Fisher instead stripped down the team of all its good players, then jacked up ticket prices to the point that no one wanted to pay to see a 112-loss team (in 2023) and then threw up his hands and said, “Look! My team is suffering, we have to move!” Just awful.
What we do know is that the A’s will play for the next three years in Sacramento, where it was just announced earlier this week that the league has agreed to keep natural grass at Sutter Home Field instead of the proposed artificial turf. The grass will be much easier for players, especially during the hot summers in Sacramento. Even Scott Boras chimed in with positive thoughts on that:
Scott Boras tells KFBK: “Certainly more examination and review of the playing surface options was required. Very pleased the health and safety of players became a essential focus of the move to Sacramento. A positive result for City and MLB players and teams.”
— KFBK News Radio (@kfbk) October 21, 2024
The owner of the Sacramento Kings, Vivek Ranadivé, has made no secret of the fact that he’d like to own a MLB team and put it in his home city. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Ranadivé might eventually buy the A’s, get a stadium built and keep them in Sacramento.
As always, we await developments. In any event, the Cubs and Cubs fans will be the first to get a look at Major League Baseball played at the 14,000-seat Triple-A Sutter Home Park, as the Cubs will be the A’s opponent for their first series in Sacramento beginning Monday, March 31, 2025.