At this point, it’s hard to trust anything that comes from the A’s regarding their move to Las Vegas.
Notoriously reclusive A’s owner John Fisher (sort of) came out of hiding on Wednesday as the Las Vegas Review-Journal published a Q&A with him, giving us the longest on-the-record interview of his 18-year tenure atop the organization. Before Wednesday, Fisher’s lone interview came in 2020 with the San Francisco Chronicle, when he apologized for being the only MLB team to half $400 weekly payments to minor leaguers at the height of the pandemic.
Fisher’s interview amounted to something of a PR campaign, facilitated by Review-Journal sports and business reporter Mick Akers, who has become an ally for the A’s over their past two years of exploring Vegas for a new ballpark.
On Wednesday night, Maury Brown of Forbes shared how Fisher was disingenuous when telling Akers that the A’s are running at a $40 million loss this season. According to Brown, Fisher failed to acknowledge the multiple league-wide revenue streams the A’s take advantage of each year to arrive at his number.
The truth? Brown says the A’s could actually make around $70 million in profits this year once they get their much desired revenue-sharing check from MLB after the season.
Here are the revenue streams that Fisher conveniently failed to acknowledge to Akers:
$58.6 million - MLB national TV revenue
$3.9 million - MLB TV stream deals
~$14 million - MLB merchandise sales
$30 million-plus - MLB revenue sharing
That’s nearly $110 million in free money that Fisher gets for being in the MLB owners club. Consider that the A’s payroll is a league-low $58.9 million this season and have a historically bad record of 36-91, it’s clear that Fisher is in it for financial gains and not to put a winning product on the field.
“So, Fisher says the A’s are losing $40 million this year,” Brown wrote. “Okay. But that’s on the ledger before the league’s centralized money hits. After all, Fisher didn’t get to be valued at over $2 billion by engaging in a massive losing game. And no one in MLB is losing the game of business. The lesson? It’s not very often that owners talk to the media. It’s incumbent upon them to try and dig out the details.”
This is par for the course for Fisher, who has proven to be a spineless, conniving owner while throwing his loyal fanbase to the wayside. How MLB continues to trust this man is beyond me.
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