MLB Territorial Rights Map?

[kq76]

Has anyone ever seen a map of MLB teams' territorial rights? You know how San Fran has rights over most of the Bay area while Oakland doesn't? That, but for all of the USA or NA.

I'm asking because I'm wondering what teams have rights over the cities that keep getting proposed as likely expansion or relocation sites.

This map looks like what I'm looking for, but it's just a map somebody made.

[Bluenoser]

Can't remember where I found this, was about 2 years ago. It doesn't show Oakland at all, (are they that small?) but the 2nd one you link shows Oakland with a much bigger area than the Giants. That isn't true.
_

[kq76]

Yeah, that one is the Facebook fan data map that came out years ago. I'm looking for an MLB official territorial rights map. My guess is it's never been released to the public, but maybe someone has it.

[Bluenoser]

Ok, tks for the info on the image I posted. Sorry couldn't help.

[nutt]

This was the 2019 map:



Technically, the Bay Area is both Giants and A's territory. It'll be interesting how they divvy up Las Vegas if the A's move there, as the map shows it is Dodgers/Angels/Giants/A's/D-Backs territory.

This is the Canadian map:

[kq76]

Originally Posted by nutt

This was the 2019 map:

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Technically, the Bay Area is both Giants and A's territory. It'll be interesting how they divvy up Las Vegas if the A's move there, as the map shows it is Dodgers/Angels/Giants/A's/D-Backs territory.

That's the blackout map.

I assumed they weren't the same because, like you pointed out, the Giants and As share the same territory in it, but I distinctly remember reading articles saying that the As had a much smaller territory than the Giants and that wherever they moved to locally that they'd likely have to get permission and pay a fee.

Originally Posted by nutt

This is the Canadian map:
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Now that's interesting! I hadn't seen that before. The filename says it's a blackout map too. The blackouts make some sense.

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Aha! So I decided to go back and read an article about the As-Giants rights fiasco (that article is long, but fairly detailed) and... It appears that the only team in MLB that has territorial rights may be San Francisco!

What happened was the Giants kept trying to move locally to a new ballpark (Candlestick was terribly windy apparently), but they kept getting told no by the voters. So Walter Haas, the then owner of the As, gave Bob Lurie, the then owner of the Giants, territorial rights to the "South Bay" in the hopes that that would convince voters to okay the Giants a move to a new ballpark. And here's the kicker: he didn't ask for any compensation in return! He gave them the rights out of the kindness of his heart? Regardless, it didn't work as they still got rejected again and again.

Then, as I'm sure many of us know, the Giants tried to move to Tampa Bay, they got really close, but in the end they were told no by MLB too. So Lurie gives up and accepts a lowball offer from an investor group that wants to keep the Giants in SF. They go on to build Pac Bell Park and enjoy sellout after sellout.

Meanwhile, the As are struggling, they've since been sold to new owners as well, and they decide they need to move. They decide they want to go to San Jose, which is in the South Bay, but the Giants' owners say, "Hold up! We own the rights to the South Bay". The As look at them quizzically. And the Giants say, "Yeah, Haas gave the rights to Lurie and we bought the team and its rights from Haas". So the As ask Selig to step in, he starts a committee, but they don't help, and Selig says, "eh", and the As have been stuck in Oakland ever since.

So yeah, maybe there is no territorial rights map for all of NA. There's just one for the Bay area.

[Syd Thrift]

If you're talking about the monopoly-protected "if you relocate here you have to give us money" deal, yeah, I don't think that's ever been published. I think it's basically "draw a circle with a radius of 100 miles around every team", although I can't find the exact radius or that this is the case. The Giants and A's are a special situation because when the A's moved to Oakland in 1967 part of their agreement was that the Giants would maintain local territorial rights. I think the Nationals probably have a similar agreement with the Orioles, and of course the Yankees are going to have the straight up rights around New York City since they're the elder tenant (I'm not sure how Chicago works although I know that of the two teams the one that's historically tried to move is the White Sox).

As noted, too, these rights don't exist in any other sport and only exist in baseball because judges have misinterpreted the Kenesaw Mountain Landis ruling over the Federal League to mean that the league has a special antitrust exemption. That could get litigated and has the possibility of just going away on its own.

[BBGiovanni]

I don't recall seeing a map of it, but it's more or less as SydThrift says. But it's in narrative form in the MLB Constitution, Article 8 of the older one here. A google search didn't immediately turn up a more current version, which I'd think would have said something about minor league territories after the demise of MILB/NAPBL. The Internet Archive has a more recent version here, it looks like an appendix to a court or securities filing or something. Anyway the territories look unchanged. I didn't find anything on MLB's site either, the constitution for USA Baseball is the only thing that came up when I searched.

The part on territorial rights seems to have stayed the same across the drafts I've seen. MLB teams have the "right and obligation" to play home games in their assigned territories. Which are way, way smaller than their blackout areas. Arizona's territory is only Maricopa County, for example. I never thought about spring training territories before, I wonder if AZ/FL teams have some kind of rights to that? Anyway.

NY and CHI are fully-shared territories, in which the teams have equal rights to all the territory, like owning a house in joint tenancy. The Bay Area, in contrast, is literally divided. The Athletics have the rights to Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. The Giants have Marin, Monterey, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco "counties" (SF is a city/county). The Giants are also granted rights with respect to Santa Clara County "as to Major League Clubs". Which probably explains why they later bought the San Jose Giants, so they also had the exclusive minor league territory under the minor league agreement (R.I.P.).

I think it's pointless to he-said-she-said the whole thing 30 years later, since 28 owners could have voted these rights away any time they wanted to and it's been in the Constitution since then. Mr. Haas, maybe the last owner that really thought of his team as a public trust, agreed to the change, but Horace Stoneham and the NL didn't object to the A's moving to Oakland in the first place (although TBF he was probably on a bender when Charlie O. called).

Anyway, that's how the territorial rights work and where you can find them. I didn't immediately find a current MLB constitution, as I speculated above it seems like it would have been changed during the destruction of MILB but who knows.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

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Nice! Thank you. I told myself to try again at a later date, but you found it.

I'll read it in full later, but unless things have changed since 2018, it appears that no one owns the rights to Las Vegas or its Clark County. I thought the Dodgers might have owned the rights (when I went to NV every summer as a kid I remember Dodgers memorabilia was everywhere and they seemed to always be on tv). Interestingly, I just noticed that the Vegas team has been the AAA affiliate of the As since 2019. Staking territory maybe?

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by kq76

Nice! Thank you. I told myself to try again at a later date, but you found it.

I'll read it in full later, but unless things have changed since 2018, it appears that no one owns the rights to Las Vegas or its Clark County. I thought the Dodgers might have owned the rights (when I went to NV every summer as a kid I remember Dodgers memorabilia was everywhere and they seemed to always be on tv). Interestingly, I just noticed that the Vegas team has been the AAA affiliate of the As since 2019. Staking territory maybe?

With the huge caveat that MILB either no longer exists as an entity or is now totally controlled by the cartel, I'm not sure what the minor league territories mean. Fisher and his cheapskate buddies do not own the Aviators, they and the ballpark are assets of the Howard Hughes Corporation.

Affiliation agreements don't (didn't? again, idk) involve any territorial rights, I don't think. There was always a fair bit of horsetrading around the minor league franchises and their minor league territorial rights, like Horace Stoneham selling the Minneapolis Millers to Clark (?) Griffith or O'Malley swapping the Fort Worth Panthers (?) for Phil Wrigley's Los Angeles Angels. But where the team is independently owned it's more indirect, but still not an impediment. Like the crazy swap for the Phoenix Firebirds, their owners probably got something when the D-Backs started but didn't hold out much. Even then I think MLB could have just terminated their affiliation so there was no incentive to hold out.

As to the A's affiliation, in recent years LV and Cashman Field were literally the dregs of Triple A and teams fought hard to not have to send players there. Once the Dodgers gave up they cycled through the Jays, Mets, and maybe the Nats, I forget. The A's even took Nashville to avoid it but by then the new ballpark for the Aviators was coming so they either figured the facilities were going to be fine or as you say wanted to make sure they squatted as best they could.

I don't know how closely you follow the mess now, but it's really taken a turn for the bizarre. Oakland and Alameda County politics are wild cards enough, but Fisher and Dave Kaval have kept visiting Vegas, tweeting about how great it is, etc. But the mayor or somebody from Clark County claimed the other day they wouldn't give the A's/MLB the public money they want. Anyway, between that and selling off all their players for the umpteenth time it's really hard to figure what they think they're doing.