Oakland A's Stadium News: MLB to reject Oakland for San Jose

According to a source Monday evening, Major League Baseball (MLB) is set to report that their MLB Baseball Stadium Commission formed to evaluate the Oakland A's stadium situation is going to recommend to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig that the Oakland A's move to San Jose.

The news came too late in the night Monday to check with appropriate key players for their reaction, but it's far to say one person who will not be pleased is Oakland City Attorney John Russo, who has openly said he's considering a lawsuit against both the Athletics and the City of San Jose.

The reasons why MLB would pick San Jose over Oakland will be listed in the report set to be released within three days (unless MLB elects to delay the release of the report after this blog post). But the array of information required and the template that information fits in is not complex or vast. One can guess that San Jose has a more complete stadium development plan. But if Major League Baseball even uses the term "marketing" or "ticket sales" as a San Jose advantage in the report then the stadium committee itself doesn't know what it's talking about.

Let's be more clear. If the stadium committee mentions that San Jose, which is just 30 miles from Oakland and in a smaller population center of the Bay Area (Oakland's at the center of the 3 million population East Bay), but still in The San Francisco Bay Area, and competing with the SF Giants Fan base for ticket revenue, is better for selling tickets, then this blogger will assert that Major League Baseball itself does not understand marketing a stadium product in the 21st Century.

The Oakland A's fan base is really Worldwide. It just hasn't been tapped by the Oakland A's. The Athletics best marketing partnerships are with air travel agents, airlines, convention and visitors bureaus, and hotels. Getting tourists to make baseball-special trips and taking advantage of business travelers who will want to go to MLB rivalry games is the base for ticket sales. It's as important as local sales. Luxury boxes should be considered as right for a national market, where people in Boston can buy part of an Oakland luxury box for Red Sox games. Multiply that approach times the teams in Major League Baseball the A's will play and there's a submarket to go after.

The Oakland A's don't do this. I should be able to go online and find A's ticket sales in several different languages, but I can't. So the problem is 20th Century marketing in a 21st Century World. If the MLB Committee shows that in their evaluation report, they just weren't worth putting together in the first place. Or maybe they were just formed to rubber stamp the idea of moving to San Jose.

The Commissioner would say, as he did earlier this month, that the commission gathered a lot of information. But if their initial questions are wrongheaded, then it doesn't matter how much data they collect: the decision will be the wrong one.

Stay tuned.