The Major League Baseball (MLB) team currently based in Oakland will become the Las Vegas A’s as soon as the 2025 season. At an owners’ meeting last week in Arlington, Texas, every team voted to allow the team to move.
While the vote doesn’t guarantee a successful relocation, it is a significant milestone in that it allows the team to move forward and start the planning process without any impediments from the league.
If completed, the A’s would only be the second MLB team to relocate in the last 50 years, the previous one being when the Montreal Expos moved to Washington, D.C. to become the Nationals in 2011.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said the first meeting he had upon his appointment nine years ago was with Oakland officials to try to keep the A’s in that city. He said he reluctantly agreed to the move after trying “everything humanly possible.”
In June, the Nevada Legislature passed a bill that set aside $380 million to help fund a 35,000-seat stadium for the A’s. The club had initially reached an agreement with Red Rock Resorts for a plot of land alongside I-15 that formerly housed the Wild Wild West casino.
But when Bally’s Corp. and Gaming and Leisure Properties (GLPI) came forward with a deal that would designate 9 of 34 acres that currently hosts the Tropicana casino for a new stadium, A’s owner John Fisher changed his mind.
The Tropicana is owned by GLPI, while the casino is operated by Bally’s. If that deal is completed, the $1.5 billion stadium would be a part of an expanded casino resort complex.
But some have suggested that deal may also fall through since a stadium with a retractable roof system would need more than 9 acres, so a report in on the blog site Vital Vegas suggests the A’s are again considering sites adjacent to the Rio casino or the Festival Grounds on the North Las Vegas Strip across from the Sahara casino.
The proposed move has raised the ire of Oakland fans, who last year conducted several “reverse” boycotts and packed the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, the longtime home of the A’s, with more than 30,000 fans who often chanted “sell the team” in the hopes of keeping the team in town.
Fans have become increasingly frustrated with owner Fisher and GM Dave Kaval, who have consistently sold off better players to shave payroll. This year, Oakland had the worst record in baseball, losing 112 games.
Fisher, who inherited his money from his parents Donald and Doris Fisher, the founders of the Gap clothing store, said it was a day of mixed emotions.
“I know this is a hard day for our fans in Oakland,” he said at a press conference following the vote. “We made sincere efforts to keep our team in Oakland, but unfortunately, it did not work out. I am grateful to the fans who have supported our team.”
Manfred agreed.
“This is a terrible day for fans in Oakland,” he told reporters. “I understand that. And that’s why we’ve always had a policy of doing everything humanly possible to avoid a relocation. And I truly believe we did that in this case. I think it’s beyond debate, that the status quo in Oakland was untenable. Those of you who have been in the building understand what I’m talking about. And I absolutely am convinced that there was not a viable path forward in Oakland.”
There were also reports last week that Fisher is looking to sell at least 25 percent of the team because he lacks the money to contribute to his end of the stadium deal—the team will need to locate at least $1 billion in additional funding to complete the project.
The A’s have been searching for a new home for more than a decade, with proposals being shot down by the San Francisco Giants, who claimed San Jose as their territory, as well as other areas not willing to host a large stadium.
The last straw was a proposal at Oakland’s Howard Terminal on the shores of the bay, which would have been home to a stadium and a mixed-use development valued at up to $12 billion. But disagreements about who would pay and how much doomed that proposal to failure.
The A’s have a lease at the Coliseum for another year, but their home after that is uncertain, even if the Tropicana stadium is built by the proposed 2028 opening.
The A’s would prefer to stay in the Bay Area, where they have a multimillion-dollar TV contract as long as they’re in the area, so they could potentially share Oracle Park with the Giants or play out of a Triple A stadium in Sacramento. Also being considered is the potential to play in the Triple A Las Vegas Ballpark, home of the A’s minor league Las Vegas Aviators affiliate.
