On missing fans, mascots and missteps

Pounding the beat in beat-up sneaks ...

On the telecast of the recent Warriors-Cavaliers game in Cleveland, acres of empty seats were visible. Maybe people couldn’t get Quicken Loans to buy tickets.

At Levi’s for 49ers’ games, empty seats. On Dec. 9 at the Broncos-49ers game, I estimated the house was three-fifths full. The Giants’ long streak of sellouts ended in 2017.

Lesson surely not lost on Warriors, A’s and Raiders: Fans will come to a bad stadium to see a good team, but will stay away from a good stadium that is home to a bad team.

For the A’s, that means just building a ballpark won’t be good enough once the novelty wears off. Same for the Raiders. Soon we’ll hear that their new stadium is sold out — but that’s what the 49ers said. Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ new president of baseball operations, wants players who are useful, not just ornaments. He said at the recent winter meetings he does not want “a pinchhitter-slash-team mascot.”

Is that a vague threat to Lou Seal, whose hitting has fallen off in recent years? Under the team’s ramped-up analytics, maybe Crazy Crab can start games and Lou Seal can close.

Commissioner Roger Goodell says the NFL will not pay for hotel-surveillance videos involving NFL players, and that makes sense. It’s kind of sleazy for a big, important company like the NFL to go around bribing hotel workers to leak videos.

But upon further review, there’s nothing more tawdry than the way the league handles these situations now. Hire a couple of guys, call ’em the Bribe Squad, beat TMZ to the punch and stop embarrassing professional football and all its fans.

One challenge for the Raiders is to find a general manager, but a bigger challenge is to figure out what to call him. Can’t call him or her a general manager because the GM is the person who selects your players, and the Raiders already have a man who does that.

The new hire, like the child of a hippie couple, will be creatively named. Maybe Chief General Consulterator. Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler