Holy shit. @BernieSanders and @RepCasar just introduced The Home Team Act, a bill that would “Require team owners who want to relocate to first offer local owners the chance to buy it." This would have saved the A’s. Full stop. It would help prevent owners from "uprooting teams that people have rooted for for generations. No more extorting taxpayers for billions." (Casar.) It would prevent owners from "blackmailing one community against another for multi-billion-dollar subsidies." (Sanders.) It goes without saying this is needed. “Nearly every major city in the nation [has been] asked to mortgage its future to the sports industry," @fieldofschemes has written. If I may. The relationship between sports fans and the sports business has been broken ever since the Supreme Court gave MLB an antitrust exemption in 1922. Multiple Supreme Court justices have criticized the ruling as “unrealistic, inconsistent, and illogical.” The ruling stemmed from a whimsical interpretation of professional sports as a fundamentally communal, rather than capitalistic, enterprise. In practice the exemption merely grants team owners license to run their teams in the most ruthlessly capitalistic ways possible. “The major leagues” Kevin Baker has written, “remain to this day the most complete and enduring cartel in American history.” But it hasn't ever been addressed. In America, owners get to have it both ways. They're permitted to run their businesses like robber barons. The sports industry is insulated from both government regulation and free-market competition. Fans and cities possess no power or protection. This bill would give them some. Hell ya. It's also not that ridiculous at all. A version of this law already exists in Ohio. Lawmakers passed it after Art Modell moved the Browns, to protect fans in the state from ever having to go through that kind of thing again. Stronger versions of this sort of thing exist in Europe. In 2025, England passed the Football Governance Act, a regulatory framework designed, in the language of the law, “to protect and promote the sustainability of English football.” The law mandates team owners and league executives regularly consult with fan representatives on all matters relevant to fan interests. And it empowers an Independent Football Regulator (IFR) to evaluate the potential impact of all proposed changes by an owner to his or her club on fans and community members and to strike down those changes found not to be in fans’ interests. These include changes to a club’s name, crest, and, most fundamentally, its home. Versions of this sort of thing have been batted about by US lawmakers before. Most have not been given much attention. I hope this time it's different. It's too late to save the A’s. But I hope it passes so that no other fans have to suffer the indignities fans suffered here. So that sports work better for future fans like my sons.
