Oakland A’s Relocation To Las Vegas Underway After Land Purchase; Storied Bay Area Tenure Set To End

The Oakland Athletics’ rich franchise history began with a glory stretch led by Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers and the other members of those powerhouse A’s teams that won three straight World Series championships (1972-74).

Dave Stewart, the former major league pitcher nicknamed “Smoke,” was an integral part of the second A’s dynasty in the late 1980s and 1990, when the club had three straight World Series appearances and won a title in 1989.

And there was the “Moneyball” era ushered in by longtime A’s executive Billy Beane that translated into consistent success despite ever-diminishing team payrolls.

But the Oakland era appears to be coming to a close after A’s president Dave Kaval announced that the club has a binding purchase agreement in place for 49 acres of land west of the Las Vegas Strip, and where a new $1.5 billion, 35,000-seat baseball stadium with a partially-retractable roof would be built to house the A’s.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal first reported the news. Kaval projected that the team would move into the new Vegas venue by 2027.

Las Vegas Review-JournalMajor-league deal: A’s to purchase land near Strip for new ballpark

“Oakland Athletics represents home & family. It’s part of who I am. We understandably knew it would happen & I did everything I could the best way I knew how to change it, but this reality genuinely hurts & will take time to process,” Stewart wrote in a tweet posted Thursday.

The 1989 World Series MVP’s remarks likely represent a majority sentiment among Oakland sports fans, who have already endured another local pro sports franchise relocating to Sin City — the NFL Raiders. According to Kaval, however, despite the club’s best efforts to work with Oakland city officials to keep the team in the Bay Area, an agreement could not be reached.

“It was really time. Major League Baseball imposed a deadline on us, where if we don’t have a binding agreement on a new stadium by January (2024), we’d lose our league revenue, which is a very significant amount of money,” said Kaval in a phone interview, referring to the revenue-sharing money the A’s receive as part of collectively-bargained rules. “We’ve been working the last two years on parallel paths, one in Oakland and the other in Las Vegas, to achieve that deadline.

“What started to happen this year is that it became increasingly obvious — despite six years’ of a concerted effort, a $100 million investment, environmental impact reports, dealing with multiple lawsuits — that we were still seven to eight years from opening a stadium at the (Oakland) waterfront,” added Kaval.

Kaval said that it has been an especially difficult path to navigate since the current A’s home — Oakland Coliseum — is “so run-down and 10 years past its useful life.”

“We were getting great traction in Vegas, with (potential) sites that worked,” said Kaval. “There was a receptive set of elected leaders who were willing to partner with us. We had to make a hard decision, but it’s one that we think will put the franchise on much more solid financial footing. We are focusing all of our attention on Las Vegas, and the next step is finalizing the public-private partnership. We also would have to file for relocation.”

Oakland Coliseum has been in decay for years — it is/was home to the A’s and Raiders — and the franchise’s exploratory efforts in Oakland centered around the Howard Terminal site. But two years ago, the writing seemed to be on the wall when the team and city officials couldn’t come to terms on an agreement, even after the A’s proposed a privately-financed $1 billion, 35,000-seat stadium with an estimated $11 billion in private investment to the Howard Terminal neighborhood.

“We’re in a situation where we are in the bottom of the ninth, and we’re down to our last couple at-bats,” Kaval said in 2021. “We need to see if we can put together the necessary approvals and get a consensus on a financial framework. And a timeline. A timeline is critically important because we’re running out of time at our current venue.”

Beane declined comment on the Vegas site announcement.

Meanwhile, one baseball insider said that A’s owner John Fisher — the son of Gap founders Donald and Doris Fisher —hasn’t fulfilled his obligations to channel the money the club receives from revenue sharing into improving the team, making the necessary Coliseum renovations and investing in a new venue in Oakland to keep the team there.

“The model MLB used for revenue sharing is, if you’re a team in a top market like San Francisco, you don’t receive revenue sharing,” said the insider. But the Oakland A’s are the beneficiaries of that money that other small-market teams like the Miami Marlins, Pittsburgh Pirates and Tampa Bay Rays enjoy.

“(Fisher) hasn’t done anything with that money,” said the insider. “It is rewarding bad behavior.”

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao blasted Fisher and the A’s for not acting as “good partners” with the city of Oakland.

“It has become clear that we are not able to reach acceptable terms, and that the A’s have not been engaged as good partners in these efforts,” said Thao during a press conference Thursday. “At every opportunity, the A’s have made increasing demands on Oakland… Instead of working with us, they have announced a land deal in another city. And I want to be very clear — this announcement happened mid-negotiations, and it shows that they had no interest in reaching a deal with Oakland at all.”

But Kaval said he and the A’s have nothing but gratitude toward the city and Oakland officials during the process. He said Las Vegas, however, presented a faster resolution, less risk and a stronger financial foothold for the team going forward.

“It is sad, and I feel for our Oakland fans that we’re at this point,” said Kaval. “We’re disappointed we weren’t able to realize our vision of a (Oakland) waterfront stadium, but we don’t regret trying.

“We look at Vegas as a really interesting market for fans. There’s a local fan base, which is super rabid for the (NHL) Golden Knights and (A’s Triple-A affiliate) Aviators, and now the Raiders. At the same time, you have 45 million tourists. With the support of resorts and casino operators, you really have a compelling business model,” added Kaval. “If we could have a (baseball) stadium that generates real revenue, I think the sky is the limit, and we could really restore the A’s into one of the premier teams in all of sports.”