New stadiums in Las Vegas and Tampa will be built.
It has taken years but Major League Baseball’s two major impediments to expanding to 32 teams have been cleared. The owner of the old Oakland Athletics, John Fisher, got a new stadium and is moving his team to Las Vegas and the Tampa Bay Rays’ ownership is getting public money, lots of public money to the tune of at least $875 million, to build a stadium-village in Tampa with the hopes of finishing the 31,000-seat planned stadium by April, 2029. Two problems solved although stadium issues remain in Chicago as White Sox ownership is exploring a plot of land that could house a White Sox stadium in town. It appears that Kansas City Royals business owner John Sherman is getting closer to getting public money to build a downtown stadium and in Anaheim, the Angels franchise owner Arte Moreno and the city are not talking about either renovating or replacing current stadium.
Now that Oakland and Tampa Bay stadium issues have been solved two new hurdles need to be overcome before MLB owners can consider adding to members to the lodge. There needs to be a new collective bargaining agreement with the players and the suits who run MLB need to figure out what to do with shrinking regional cable TV revenues as regional sports networks have folded. The owners collective bargaining deal with the players ends on December 1st. The cable TV problem is ongoing as consumers continue to cord the cord. Meanwhile, Orlando’s bid for an expansion team is probably done as MLB is not putting a franchise about 80 miles east of Tampa. Politicians and possible owners are coming out in Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Nashville, Vancouver, Portland, Oregon and Raleigh and positioning themselves in an expansion race that has not even started.
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