MLB To Hold San Francisco Giants’ Rights In San Jose, Deny Oakland Move

It’s been the topic of speculation for years, but according to a report in the New York Daily News – the speculation has come to an end regarding a potential Oakland A’s move to San Jose. Well, at least for now.

Per the Daily News:

"Unfortunately, the “Moneyball” film came up empty with the Academy Award voters, and the same fate beckons for Beane and Oakland A’s owners Lew Wolff and John Fisher in their determined effort to move to a new stadium in Hi-Tech haven. The latter prospect, in which, for a variety of reasons, MLB is going to uphold the San Francisco Giants’ territorial rights in San Jose, will be especially disheartening for Beane."

The move, obviously long opposed to by the Giants front office and ownership, would have essentially taken the lucrative Silicon Valley out of the Giants territorial rights – one of the main reasons the Giants were able to secure the funding for their current home, AT&T Park.

The Daily News also mentions that even if the process did get beyond Selig, which it apparently will not – MLB owners would not pass the needed amounts of votes for the move, mostly out of a retaliation fear. The DN cites an example if a franchise were to desire a move to New Jersey, said teams in the area (Phillies, Mets, Yankees, Red Sox) would obviously oppose and wouldn’t want to ruffle the feathers of the Giants organization by allowing the Atheltics to take a large chunk out of the Giants’ territorial rights.

All wouldn’t have been lost though, had the move been approved as the Giants were due some hefty compensation in the above situation. While we don’t have many examples to go off of, the most recent would be the 2005 deal that Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos struck to protect the O’s financially when the Nationals moved into “their market”. Angelos brokered a deal which allowed the O’s to be the sole owners of both the Nationals TV and radio broadcast rights (which resulted in the Mid-Atlantic Network) – making the Nationals the only team in professional baseball who do not own their own broadcast rights. And for anybody who’s seen some of the most recent money being shelled out for broadcasting rights in professional sports, while certainly not as lucrative as the said teams territorial rights, it’s no small change.

Either way, it appears that for now, the Giants will maintain control over all of their current rights and the A’s, unfortunately for them, will need to find another route for a new ballpark.