As of Thursday, December 5, the Oakland A’s are no more.
In a meeting of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, the board unanimously granted a 30-year land lease to the owners of the Major League Baseball team as well as permission to build a stadium on the land. The current estimate for the stadium is $1.75 billion; Athletics co-owner John Fisher is covering $1 billion of that cost while Nevada taxpayers are covering another $380 million.
This approval was the last major step in the process of moving the A’s from Oakland, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. The A’s announced the move to Las Vegas in 2023 after being allowed by MLB to pursue relocation in 2021, and MLB announced that 2024 would be the last season the A’s would play in Oakland in April.
While a declining fanbase, higher local costs, and a string of losing seasons pushed the A’s toward relocation, the deciding factor was the Oakland Coliseum. The Coliseum has been a source of frustration for the A’s for years as the facility (which used to also house an NFL team) fell into disrepair. The A’s had plans to upgrade the stadium for decades but were blocked by the city not wanting to fund new development.
In 2018, the city and the team finally agreed on the “Howard Terminal” plan that would turn an industrial area on the waterfront into a $12 billion revitalized city neighborhood with retail shops, 3,000 low-income housing units, and a new ballpark. However, waterfront businesses sued to keep their land, and while the A’s were untangling that legal mess, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and city funds dried up.
The new domed stadium will seat 30,000 and be built on the Las Vegas strip on the land that used to be the Tropicana Hotel. Current estimates say the stadium won’t be finished until 2028, so for the next three years, the A’s will play at Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, which is home to the Sacramento River Cats, the minor league affiliate of the A’s. Sacramento has teamed with the A’s to upgrade the facilities at Sutter Health Park so the ballpark can comfortably host an MLB-sized game.
Vegas will be the fourth city the Athletics will call home (fifth if their temporary stop in Sacramento is counted). The A’s were founded in 1901 in Philadelphia and became a charter member of the American League. They won the World Series five times in Philadelphia. In 1955, the A’s moved to Kansas City for a decade and then landed in Oakland in 1967. The A’s won three World Series in the 1970s and one in the 1980s but have had middling to poor seasons ever since.
In recent years, Oakland has seen its two other major league sports teams leave the city: the NBA’s Golden State Warriors went to San Francisco in 2018, and the NFL’s Oakland Raiders also left for Las Vegas in 2019. Both teams cited similar reasons for moving as the A’s did—lack of community funding, a dip in fan support, and a need for a newer, bigger facility. In fact, all three teams played in the same outdated facility: the Oakland Colisium-Arena Complex.
A different outcome of the December 5 meeting wouldn’t have kept the A’s in Oakland, however. If the stadium authority had rejected the lease and construction plans at the December meeting, the bid to relocate would have been pulled and the A’s would have to start looking for another city, possibly one just outside Las Vegas (that would have a different board) or even another major American city.
