Curtis Meyer – Reporter
In what has a become a bit of a nightmare scenario for many fans, the number of sports teams that are threatening to relocate or have relocated has grown. Across all the major North American sports, there is a disturbing trend of team owners being unhappy with their “situation”.
The most recent example hits close to home. The Kansas City Chiefs’ owner, Clark Hunt, and Royals’ owner, John Sherman, have made the news in the last month, as they proposed a tax increase. Splitting the funds, the Royals plan to build a new stadium and move into the downtown Kansas City area, while the Chiefs looked at improving Arrowhead Stadium and the surrounding space.
The only issue is the bill. The large majority of the funds would come from taxing the residents of Johnson County. While the Royals seemed doomed from the start–lacking so much as a rendering of what the new ballpark would look like–the Chiefs’ failure was purely about the money.
According to TicketSmarter, the average price of an NFL ticket was $377. The average price of some of the cheaper tickets still went for $112. A large majority of the public simply can’t afford to drop hundreds of dollars for a football game. Why, then, would someone let their money go to renovations at a stadium they can’t even afford to visit?
This issue is exacerbated by the antics of the owners themselves. After the vote, Hunt said, “We would not be willing to sign a lease for another 25 years without the financing to properly renovate and reimagine the stadium,” adding that the organization wouldn’t rule out moving to a new stadium in Kansas City or elsewhere.
Threatening to move a team as established as the Chiefs is low, especially considering the recent performance of the team and the support of the Chiefs’ fan base. Threatening your fans does not go over well, and that was reflected in many reactions. As the vote failed in Missouri, politicians on the Kansas side of the city have begun scheming ways to lure the Chiefs over the border, despite their constituents’ lukewarm feelings towards shouldering the cost.
It’s yet to be seen whether this standoff will be resolved in a way that suits both parties, but one has to wonder how much money it will end up costing the fans just to see how much money the owners themselves will make.
While the Chiefs have at least tried to show good faith, and have worked with lawmakers and fans, the MLB’s Oakland Athletics is the standard in bad ownership, bad baseball, and just all-around bad feelings. Owner, John Fisher, purchased a majority stake of the A’s back in 2005, and since then, the A’s have simply bordered around mediocrity, with their best seasons being the 2018 and 2019 season when they reached 97 wins twice in a row.
The last couple of years, however, have been a lesson in how to ruin a team, as the A’s went 60-102 in 2022 and 50-112 in 2023. Fisher repeatedly raised ticket prices, while trading fan favorite and star players, purposely attempting to empty the stadium to justify a relocation to Las Vegas.
His actions spurned diehard fans into action, as they held multiple reverse boycotts last season, flooding random games while chanting for Fisher to sell the team and keep the A’s in Oakland. Fisher has shown a laughable amount of ignorance towards fans’ wishes while claiming that the team with the cheapest payroll in all of Major League Baseball was losing 40 million a year. Even if this were true, Fisher’s own tactics are what caused the situation.
The sad thing, in both cases, is the willingness of politicians and others to allow owners to win despite their egregious behavior. The City of Las Vegas just handed out 38 million dollars in public money to go towards financing a new stadium. Mayors in Dallas and San Antonio have made public declarations courting the Chiefs.
People don’t learn. The teams need our money, but we don’t need the teams. With the rise of national broadcasts, it really doesn’t matter if you live close to your favorite team, you can watch their games anywhere. If no one stands up to these owners, then they will continue to swindle their own fan bases, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.