In a move that foretells the A's acquisition of Earthquakes v. 3.0, the team's sales and marketing veep, David Alioto, has accepted the newly created position of Executive VP of Earthquakes Soccer, LLC. According to the press release, Alioto "will oversee business operations, sponsorship opportunities, develop sponsorship opportunities and assist in venue development surrounding A's ownership's attempt at securing a soccer specific stadium in the Bay Area for a Major League Soccer franchise."
Basically, it means Alioto will be doing for the Quakes what Michael Crowley currently does as President of the A's - except there's no team yet, of course. Good luck to Alioto on negotiating the extremely murky waters that define San Jose politics. Alioto may end up leaning a bit on both Crowley's and Lew Wolff's South Bay local status to get the SSS deal done. I'd like to see the Quakes get the benefit of some clever McCann-Erickson ad campaigns, the same kinds used for the A's the last couple of years.
From a strategic standpoint, there's something attractive about being able to pool certain parts of operations for the two teams. The seasons run concurrently, so some stadium operations can be consolidated. Sponsorship opportunities can be pitched to cater to the different audiences. Packages of club seats and suites may look attractive if they're for two teams (and all related venues' events) instead of just one. The ballpark financing concept is already out-of-the-box, why not sales as well? (Trivia note: According to Andrew Zimbalist's splendid book In the Best Interests of Baseball?, MLB Advanced Media runs the MLS website.)
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I read the SJ Mercury article about Alioto/Quakes this morning. Correct me if I didn't read the article correctly...but the A's have 200 corporate sponsors!? WOW! The way you hear people talk around here, you'd think the Giants had the monopoly on every corporation in the Bay Area. Way to go A's!!
ML, when you wish Alioto luck on negotiating the murky waters of SJ politics, are you assuming that the new Quakes stadium would necessarily be located in SJ? At this point, why not Santa Clara, or Santa Rosa for that matter?
If you're considering SJ as a temporary home for a new franchise while a new stadium is built, I assume your considering Spartan Stadium, in which case Alioto would be negotiating with SJSU/Spartan Shops, no?
San Jose makes the most sense because it has a number of available sites and the existing fanbase can be leveraged. Santa Clara may emerge as a good site, but considering the people involved, having something as close to downtown SJ as possible is probably the directive.
Spartan Shops won't be running Spartan Stadium once SJSU finds a new operator. One of the candidates is SMG, who also runs the Oakland Coliseum and Arena. Talks between the city and SJSU may soon clear the way for aggressive improvements to the entire South Campus area.
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