Now that both their NFL and MLB teams have moved to Vegas, Oakland can’t catch a break. They’ll probably all go for SF teams now. Cannot imagine they’d still root for their old teams in Vegas.
Yup, they gutted the team, stopped making even short-term fixes to the stadium, and changed the ticket packages and season ticket structure to make them worse to actively discourage attendance and push the “see, we had to move” narrative.
Fisher’s a local guy who inherited his money (his parents founded The Gap), failed at his first company, and now is screwing his neighbors out of their baseball team. What a dickhead.
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It’s pretty crazy IMO in the last handful of years we’ve seen a NHL team, NFL team, and apparently now an MLB team all move to Vegas. They’ve also been heavily rumored to be front of the line for an MLS and NBA expansion team too. I guess with society’s softening views on gambling goes a long way but 10 years ago this would not have even seemed possible to me.
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Obviously Las Vegas is a huge market for tourism, but I really wonder if it is getting oversaturated for sports teams. Will be interesting to see if it can really support that many teams over the long run, especially baseball with its 82 home games.
As I’m sure people on this board are aware, the Las Vegas combined statistical area isn’t that much bigger than the Triangle, I think about 2.3M vs 2.1M, and the Triangle is growing faster, yet somehow the power players think it can support 3 and counting top league teams, and we don’t really get much of a sniff at a second.
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I know @John mentions it a lot but branding, branding, branding I think is what’s keeping the Raleigh-area in the ‘yeah but it’s just Raleigh’ kind of category.
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In all my life, I haven’t yet understood the appeal of Vegas. Never been, and never want to. Only reason I think I’d ever step foot out of a plane in Vegas is because it’s the nearest airport to Utah’s National Parks.
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There’s the nearby national parks, the shows on the strip are fun. Growing up in SF, my summer camp also drew Las Vegans and they were good kids - honestly a lot more “normal” than most of the Californians.
But yeah, most of it is desert suburban sprawl. Kind of a combination of Phoenix and the outer LA suburbs.
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You’re not missing anything outside of the parks imo. Tourist trap capital of the US.
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I’ve been to Vegas a bunch of times and it has its perks and drawbacks just like any big city/metro area. Everything on the Strip is just geared towards gambling, drinking, clubbing, partying, etc. and if that’s not your scene you’ll hate Vegas. My wife hates spending money recklessly and hated Vegas when I took her out there when I had a conference to attend.
Outside the Strip as @oakcityyimby points out there’s some good national parks, Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, etc. Fun fact I have been there when it was 115 outside in September and also in February when it snowed. Not sure there’s many places like that in the world lol.
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Dr. Niles Crane : When’s the happy occasion?
Dr. Lilith Sternin : Tomorrow, in Las Vegas.
Dr. Niles Crane : Oh Lilith, how delightfully kitschy! It’s your 2nd marriage, so you’ve decided to poke fun at the institution by getting married at the tackiest place you could possible choose!
Dr. Lilith Sternin : Brian’s family lives in Las Vegas.
Dr. Niles Crane [stuttering] : Well, isn’t that convenient? You’ll have someone to show you the museums.
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Unfortunately Oakland city council has one chromosome, there mistake was putting this in a ballot. That whole city dealt with this before lost the Raiders, now another one. You’d think since this happened before they know what to do they let it slid.
This is the best description of the Oakland City Council I’ve heard in a long time
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One has to wonder what the long term future of the Oakland Coliseum is honestly. No more professional football or baseball there and the Warriors no longer use Oakland arena right there either.
The arena is still useful as a concert venue, but at least in the last set of plans, the Coli was definitely coming down and being replaced with a big mixed use development with lots of community amenities.
Vegas acts much larger than it is, Raleigh seems to act a lot smaller. I wonder what issues we have besides unmotivated billionaires and that the Census Bureau hates us?
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Las Vegas CSA ~2.38M
Triangle CSA ~ 2.19M
Las Vegas acts bigger because its population is augmented by millions of visitors per year, and the amount of foot traffic is consistent enough to think of it as part of how the city behaves on a daily basis. 30 million visitors hit Vegas yearly. That’s an insane number.
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And those aren’t just your average visitors. Some individual visitors are coming and dumping millions of dollars directly into the businesses there in a single unfortunate weekend. If you’re a supply-and-demand person the prices they can ask on Raiders tickets are among the highest in the league despite the fact that the team is really really bad.
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I suspect that sporting attendance is like how others might see Celine Dion. It’s just a ticket to a one time event, a splurge of sorts.
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What can we do to build up tourism? We can be like Vegas if we tried but this whole region refuses to try.
If NC wasn’t married to its bibles, RTP could’ve been like the Strip. But no, wasted priorities. This is why we lag.
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Different priorities? I imagine a vast majority of people that live here don’t want to be like Vegas in any way. Touristy towns aren’t great to live in. I chose to live here over somewhere like Nashville because so much of Nashville is a tourist trap. Not to say we can’t add cool things that might drive people to visit, but we will never be on that level and I don’t think we should strive to be. I think we should focus on things that fit our identity better - things like the Dueling Dinosaurs at the Science Museum that they estimate will bring an extra 300k in town to visit just it.
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