2 Vegas-Related Stories That Show How Broken Consumer Relationships Are on the Consumer Side (1 of 2)
Part 1: How "Fans" of a Major League Baseball Team That is Moving to Vegas Used Ridiculous Methods to Combat an Owner and Compel Him to Stay Where He's At.
James Baca, known in a previous iteration as “James B” was as synonymous with Vegas as topless showgirls once were. I loved that city so much. I first went just after I turned 21 with my grandma of all people, my mom and my siblings, all of which were underage at the time. I didn’t really gamble, I just took it all in. I wanted to come back.
2006, I was 23 and my cousin invited me to go see UFC 62 IN Vegas with him. I had such a blast at that event. Seeing the celebrities in the audience was part of the magic that lured me back many more times.
Look at how cool I thought I was drinking out of my Stratosphere cup
I went to Vegas 33 times in the next 12 years. 4 times was the most I ever went in one year. I went to concerts, boxing events, adult film conventions, and sometimes I just went to eat, gamble, and drink obsessively.
Casino Royale! I thought I was such a baller with my Strat and Casino Royale cups!
I got to admit. I didn’t mind the random chats with women at the bar, and I didn’t mind the arm grabs from high-end ladies of the night being a solo guy in the casino. I never purchased the latter though. It just made me feel alive. It was my drug.
Crazy, drunken nights where you win a lot of money, spend it all on $24 drinks and $37 pizzas and then go find a group of people to hang out with and just have a blast. I once partied all night with Porn Star Angel Vain in 2010 and it is probably a top 10 highlight still.
I wrote two books about Vegas called…. Well, I won’t tell you what they are called, because I can’t claim them anymore. But they are on Amazon, and occasionally make me $5 a month. I use that money to buy myself a milkshake every now and then, the fruits of my labor from a decade ago.
I can’t claim the books because that is not me anymore.
That is a broken, stressed, binge drinking man seeking female attention at every turn, and being the worst type of person despite the best being around me. I am not that any more, I promise.
I started getting really into the world of business and being an adult. I got older. I don’t think I got wiser though, because I still went. When I left banking in 2018, or should I say, when banking left me, I was at a crossroads.
I loved Vegas, but as I became “The Notorious Banker,” and a lot of my schtick focused on customer service and customer experience, not to mention dealing with consumer issues. It really wasn’t a schtick, it was who I became. I became a real life adult — a professional who was an expert on these things.
My thrice-a-year trips to Vegas were fun, but as my money dwindled, I became fixated on what I was getting for my buck. I looked at even something as hotel check-in… all automated now. No interaction with someone to get an upgrade. You are facing the A/C units and you will like it for $19 + $59 resort fee.
You can’t even find fucking Dr. Pepper in Vegas. Sorry for the casual swearing, I am trying to stop in my writing, but seriously no Dr. Pepper. Places are either Pepsi or Coke and Dr. Pepper, which piggybacks off those distributors to move the merch somehow never gets included in casino bars or mini-bars or restaurants. What the fu—heck?
You want a picture with someone dressed like Mickey Mouse on the sidewalk, they work on tips. You give them a $5 instead of the $20 they wanted, and freaking Mickey Mouse will tell you off.
I went to WWE Summerslam at Allegiant Stadium, and stayed at Wynn Las Vegas (they hate when you say ‘the Wynn’) and because of my brother getting floor seats, WWE gave him steel folding chairs to take home with the wrestlers on the seat. In 105 degree Vegas heat, me, my brother and his friend had to schlep the chairs 5 miles to our hotel, and when we walked into the hotel on the way to the room to sleep, we get accosted by Wynn Security.
“What are you doing with those chairs?”
“Umm.. They are mine.” I said
“Why do you have them?”
“Because they were giveaways at Summerslam”
”Why are you bringing them in my casino?”
“Because that’s where my room is.”
”I’ve never heard of someone taking chairs.”
This is where I got combative, but in a nice way.
”You work in Vegas, yet you don’t know what events are going on around you that your guests are going to?”
He starts to talk, I interrupt him
"How is that possible?”
He finally firmly has to get the last word.
”Just so you know, folding chairs aren’t allowed in this casino.”
Sure, idiot.
While I respect customer service people so much because I was one, this security guy was looking for a fight. Any normal Vegas person should know what is going on in town, why people are there and why they would have a title belt or a chair with WWE wrestlers on them. I think he thought we were going to go “Roadhouse” in that building. So Stupid.
After I got home from that trip in August 2021, I kind of got done with Vegas. It was not who I was anymore. I don’t drink. I don’t womanize, nor have the whiff of wanting to anymore. I don’t like to gamble, except on sports. There’s this dude named VegasMatt on social media that gambles $100 a spin or more at various casinos in Vegas and wins more than I’ll ever win in a lifetime every day. He got me to quit cold turkey simply by watching him.
I’m good. I’m happy and content. In retrospect, dealing with shitty customer service on my wedding day there when the doorknob shorted out in my honeymoon suite and the casino refused to open the door for me because I didn’t have my ID on me.
HELLO, WE ARE WEARING A NICE SUIT AND WEDDING DRESS AND HAVE A WEDDING BOOKED IN YOUR CHAPEL THAT SAME DAMN DAY!
I just got tired of the customer service BS. I worked for a terrible place. I was told to be terrible, and I know how easy it is to be great, people choose not to do it.
That being all said, and I wrote a lot, the stories I am going to tell are going to be strongly against the complainers, in this case, potential customers/fans of two sports companies who handled a firestorm two separate ways that are both Vegas related, including one that was the most ridiculous thing I think I ever have seen in my 40.7 years on this earth.
Let’s do the simple one first.
In Major League Baseball, The Oakland Athletics (nee Kansas City) (nee Philadelphia) announced their intention to move to the city of Las Vegas by the 2028 season. It feels like a long time from now, but it really isn’t.
The main reason for the move was a lack of fan support in the Oakland area, where Oakland managed to have the worst attendance by far in the majors, with some players mentioning they could hand count the amount of people in the 50,000 seat stadium.
The secondary reason was lack of city support for a new stadium to replace the decades-old Oakland Alameda County Coliseum which had many issues, up to and including opossums living in the stadium and the sewage backing up into the dugouts. It was beloved by fans, so they said, yet no one showed up.
While MLB’s revenue sharing gave the owner of the A’s John Fisher a big check every year without being competitive, he knew that he could make a lot more in moving to Vegas and increasing the valuation of his team. He discussed many options for a stadium, until he finally settled on the site where the Tropicana Casino now stands to have a baseball stadium on the strip. It’s going to be expensive as hell, but cool!
I loved Vegas for how it evolves, so I am all for this, except for the obvious traffic nightmare/paid parking issue that is going to plague the south strip. Oh well, maybe my writing will take off, and I won’t have to worry about $35 event parking — No, I will always do that. I’m a small town New Mexico boy. Paying for parking is just not something I can ever get with.
Las Vegas, which once had zero pro sports, is now on its way to 3 teams, with an NBA team, rumored to be owned by LeBron James coming by the end of the decade. All 4 sports will be there. Sounds good, right? Well, not according to some really crazy Oakland-Area A’s fans who wanted to do nothing but put a stop to Fisher moving what would be the final pro team left in Oakland.
Now, I am one who thinks people do petitions just for clout. Like everyone wants to be a leader of some movement, even if they don’t believe in it. Me? I have to really care about something to waste energy.
The Oakland A’s fans who wanted the team to stay NEVER WENT TO ANY GAMES. If they did in any decent number, they would still have a team, and the pressure to build a new stadium would have been put on the mayor. But there wasn’t any support, so the Oakland mayor pretty much told John Fisher to take a flying leap for years. Fans instead decided to just chant and complain online as if they were regulars at the games.
(chanting) “Sell the Team. Sell the Team.”
Um, when you are rich, stuff like that doesn’t work on you. Here’s two ways these people tried to get their point across to Fisher and the A’s, each way more ridiculous than the next.
The first one was ridiculous just on the notion that their attendance to a game would somehow be detrimental to the impending move to Vegas.
So, in June, organizers looking to keep the team in Oakland organized what they called a “Reverse Boycott” of the team. Now, we all know when you boycott something, that means you want nothing to do with it. But a reverse boycott for these people meant GOING TO A DAMN GAME like they should have been 81 times a year if they really loved it so much.
I swear when I saw this, it was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.
You are PAYING money to the owner once that you don’t like because he is moving somewhere where he doesn’t have to hope that your flighty ass makes it to the ballpark? How does this make sense?
You are giving him probably $1 million in revenue that day alone and you think a few chants and a few signs are going to dissuade him from moving the team? You think you can compel him to sell the team, and if so, what chance is it that the new owner isn’t going to see you NOT show up to the games and STILL move the team?!?!? Make it make sense to me.
If I am the owner, you can boo me all you want, because at the end of the day, you still bought a ticket to my show. You still are going to get a beer and a dog because you can’t help yourself.
Look at Vince McMahon, former sole owner of the WWE. Do you think he minded being booed? Nope, because you paid him money to be there!
You are going to only highlight you NOT going to the games more often, which is why he wants to move to Vegas, where even if the seats are empty, casinos will likely gobble up tickets as comps to their guests!
I know some may not agree with me, but what kind of a message do you send your child when you say, “We don’t like the guy who owns our team, so what we are going to do is PAY HIM MONEY, Go to his team’s games to yell at him and hold up signs saying what a bad man he is!”
There was two reverse boycotts that were reported. One against the Tampa Bay Rays who have almost zero national fans, and one against cross-town SF Giants.
Here’s the attendance numbers for the first one against the Rays:
To me, this was the only TRUE Reverse boycott these idiots had. They have 23,000 more people from one day to the next, and that is where all of the photos are from that I shared above.
Here’s the numbers for the SF Giants “boycott”
So, Oakland “Fans” claimed the 37,553 people in the 2nd Boycott, but they didn’t acknowledge a reverse boycott on the second game. So how can you tell me that it was not packed because of people making the 15 mile trek from where the Giants play to Oakland? You can’t. I think those wanting to say that it was another successful reverse boycott are full of themselves.
Because if they wanted a true show of force, they’d have picked another game to ATTEND to Boycott… God, it sounds so stupid.
Look at the Cubs, probably the most nationally loved baseball team going to Oakland early in the year:
Not even 10,000 combined fans. Plus there’s no way you can tell me that there was zero Cubs fans there, so immediately take away half of those people, and you likely had 2,000-2,500 REAL Oakland fans at those games.
Other complaints that I saw online and on Tiktok was “The owner raised prices in the last year.”
Ok…and? Did you see the cost of eggs earlier this year? How about the cost of gas last summer? How about the cost of sodas? It all has gone up in price, so saying high ticket prices is what is keeping you from going when the Golden State Warriors, who played in Oakland until 2019, are selling out their 20,000 seat hoops arena 41 times a year at the highest ticket price in the NBA tells me you are full of crap.
People spent $600 to see Blink 182. I saw people spending an average of $1,300 to see Taylor Swift, and you have the GALL to tell me that $20 for a bleacher seat is a bridge too far? Come on, man.
Another complaint: They only had a handful of concession stands open. Yeah, because you aren’t going to the games! If you went, they would have more open. That’s how it works. It’s not North Korea where there’s huge buildings, huge stores totally devoid of customers because they have no money, yet a ton of employees!
There was several TikTok videos where people who bought cheap bleacher tickets try to “sneak” into the field level seats, and the videos were of security guards pushing them back to where they bought their tickets. While I understand the point these idiots are trying to make, if you bought a ticket in a certain section, and you are trying to sneak into seats that could be someone else’s seats, how is the team at fault for wanting you to adhere to the rules. If they don’t care how it looks on TV, why do you care?
Rob Manfred (The Commissioner of Baseball) HATES BASEBALL
Yeah, he hates it so much that he wants to help an owner move a team to where people never show up to a place where even if people don’t show up, the tickets will be gobbled up for comp purposes, and the value of the franchise will at least double, maybe more, along with raising valuations of other teams in the process. His job is to make money for his bosses, the owners.
Arrest John Fisher (The Owner of the Soon to be Las Vegas As)
For what? I wish they would interview this person just so they can stumble on their words and live in infamy for protesting something that they aren’t even sure why they are protesting. Even in jest, throwing shit like this around is toxic behavior.
While it is not a vulgar sign, and I wouldn’t throw them out of my stadium for having it, I got to admit, people who exhibited anti-social behavior like this should not be able to attend games. You can boo all you want, you can chant “Sell the Team” like everyone else, but you went ahead and made it personal and weird. If you are drunk and belligerent, you got to go. But if you don’t like the owner or the players, feel free to boo. That’s what people do
Why does MLB hate its fans?
I think if anything, a move to Vegas shows that they love them, because now you can incorporate a major sport into a Vegas trip. Imagine how much Cubs vs A’s tickets will go for in Vegas?
People equal hate with a business decision. The Oakland owner doesn’t hate you. He hates that for all the fake bravado you have about the team remaining, you sure as hell don’t show it in your actions, up to and including attending games!
“VEGAS BEWARE!” LOL
So, yes, the Athletics team has moved 2x before. The Philadelphia A’s moved to Kansas City in 1954. The Kansas City A’s moved to Oakland in 1968. They are prone to move a little more than the average team, with Atlanta’s Braves matching them in amount of moves (Milwaukee, Boston). And yes, the Vegas move will be a third move, but that doesn’t mean a 4th move will happen soon.
Let me explain how modern baseball works..or modern pro sports as a whole works. If a city convinces you to move to their city and builds a big stadium for you, it generally comes with a lease that is ironclad. Typically that lease is for 30 years. Which means by the time the A’s get to Vegas in 2028, the lease will start then, and they will be there until at least 2058. That’s a long time from now. The Day the Music Died will be approaching its centennial. Miss you, Ritchie!
This team won’t up and leave before then, without paying a hefty penalty, and with the way people sue each other nowadays, a giant injunction to keep them from breaking the lease. Plus do you think Vegas, a place where a space can literally house 3 different restaurants in a calendar year because the other two failed would be as hamstrung as Oakland fans purportedly are if they lost their team? HELL NO! Vegas evolves week-to-week sometime. The baseball team would be missed, but it won’t be heartbroken, either real or fake, like Oakland fans claim to be.
Oakland A’s fans should listen to the song “You Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone”, because that is what is happening there.
They took it for granted and it is NOT the fault of the ownership group. Wrigley Field and Fenway Park are 100 years old, and people complain about the seating there because 100 years ago, people weren’t as obese so the seats, legroom and aisles are much smaller. Those places sell out all the time, crappy team or not, bad owner or not. Oakland fans just chose not to go, but goddamn it if they are going to let go of the team without a fight. Ugh.
Look at this attendance chart from Sports Reference:
If you have a kid born in 2006, they will be an adult in 2024. Crazy, I know!
But that same kid has only lived through 1 season where the Oakland A’s finished inside of the top 10 in attendance, finishing 9th in 2013 when they won a division title, their second in a row.
The rest of the time, anywhere from 10th-15th (15th is last place) in the AL in attendance. In those same 18 seasons, they finished 1st four times, 2nd four times, and made the playoffs 7 times. There are some teams that had a 2 decade long playoff drought starting in 2000, and these guys made it seven times.
They made it in SPITE of no fans showing up and a relatively modest payroll, which they had to have because they weren’t generating a lot of revenue!
It just drives me crazy, and just shows my point that people will protest anything. I am fervently pro-customer/consumer most of the time, but you aren’t always right.
In November, it was finally voted on by the owners to allow the Oakland A’s to move to Vegas with a target date of 2028. From what I understand, there will be no relocation fee, which is insanity. Usually, these pro sports teams will get charged a nominal fee to move, which is cut up 29 ways and every owner gets a few million in their pocket for no reason other than saying “Yes” to it.
So in a last-ditch effort to save the team, Oakland A’s supporters sent out “Save the Team” boxes to 15 owners who were identified as owners who can help stop the move by voting “no” at the owner’s meeting.
Read the batsh*t crazy story here
Here’s a quote from the article with a photo of the boxes.
This last-ditch effort includes a big assist by clothing company Last Dive Bar, a loyal A's supporter. It made the boxes and a snazzy, colorful “Keep the Athletics in ... OAKLAND” postcard.Oakland clothing company Oaklandish provided the hats, while the box also features a DVD created by “The Summer of Sell” group, a USB flash drive and a personal letter from Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao along with a photo of her in an A's jersey. The boxes were sent from her office address.
It was also mentioned that another company that was founded in Oakland made the boxes they sent them in.
So, Here’s the 10-Minute video that was on the DVD. It’s on Youtube. I will discuss the contents of it in a second. But first I want to rant.
So, these idiots made a lot of assumptions:
That owners actually read their own mail, and if they did, why would they do it at the stadium? Why not send it to their actual offices? Most owners don’t sit around the stadium all day. They are businessmen. They have other interests. These guys watch too much “Seinfeld.”
If they did read their mail, would they actually be intrigued by the goddamn box that was obviously made by the Riddler from “Batman?” I mean the box says, “Stay in Oakland,” so I don’t need to know anything beyond the side of the box what you are about.
This is more a computer nerd thing. Do you actually think that 1) Owners just have a DVD player at the ready. This isn’t the 2000s. 2) Think that when they see a thumb drive, their first instinct will be to insert it into their computer. How do they know based off your message you didn’t load the thumb drive or DVD with a virus, spyware, a denial of service code, or child porn, or as the people who choose to rename everything call it now, CSAM and were going to blackmail them?
These people aren’t you. You don’t become a billionaire by falling to lame-ass marketing ploys by people laying it on too thick. As I mentioned, you are telling them to vote against a fellow owner who is going to make them richer by moving to a bigger market, so you already are behind the 8-ball!
What I think this was and you can tell off that shared paragraph was that this was a marketing ploy not to save the team, but for these small businesses to get themselves some free pub. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I can see through your faux outrage.
Now onto the video I shared above. I implore you to watch it. One person would see it as “Loyal fans show how strong they are in numbers by supporting their team.”
Even as someone who is pro-consumer, you know what I saw it as? “Look how our protests at ballparks across the country crippled your product if you don’t give us what we want!”
They show charts that Oakland invested money in their team in the past…1992, which is like 3 owners and 3 mindsets ago, and then they show where they are at now with a chart that lists the “Pittsburg Pirates” near them in spending. At least spell the names right, man!
I think this only is motivating the owner more to get the hell out of there. There was a chance that Oakland can still play there pending the move in a few years, but after seeing this, I can tell you that there’s no reason for that to happen. Oakland A’s need to leave and never come back, because these people are going to make it about themselves until they do leave.
It’s going to happen. They will be in Vegas, and Oakland will have to move on. Looks like they are trying. It was announced this week that a businessman is bringing a Pioneer League team into Oakland to replace the A’s.
Pioneer League is an independent league, typically in small towns and filled with players who would never get a shake in the majors.
The team will be named the “Oakland B’s”… seriously
It reminds me of this group of people I helped back home broker a pay increase with their boss, who was thinking of limiting their hours. They asked for my help, and paid me handsomely some advice at how to confront their old man millionaire boss. They had ideas, but none of them were good. They had a list of demands that they wanted which I begged them to send me before they sent them for proofreading.
That’s when I saw they created an email address for this. payuswhatwedeserve(ownersname)@gmail.com
I said, “Holy Crap, you are laying it on way too thick. He will respond with a smirk and he will never think about it again.” I begged them not to use it, and they didn’t, and I ended up getting them their money and got my “finders fee” for my troubles!
The Oakland B’s are laying it on too thick. You spent $2 million to buy a baseball team to do a teenager dig on an owner who is going to sell his team for $2 Billion eventually, fulfilling your wish for him to sell it, albeit still burn you out of your team and make him a lot of money!
This is a bunch of people looking for clicks and looking for free advertising cosplaying as activists to save baseball in their community. It’s no longer cute, it’s just stupid!
As someone who once loved Vegas, I am excited for the new team, and while I empathize with Oakland fans, I just wanted to tell them…
That’s right, and doing elaborate coordinated protests only made you lose your team that much faster! Customers are NOT always right!
Part 2 of Vegas related consumer ridiculousness coming next week!
James Baca - Consumer Beast