Oakland A’s Secure Land for Las Vegas Stadium: What it Means for the City and the Team

The Oakland Athletics have made a big move! They secured an agreement last week to buy a 49-acre plot in Las Vegas, where they want to build their new stadium. This runway roof baseball field will be able to fit anywhere between 30,000 and 35,000 people. Since they could not find a place for their new facility in the Bay Area, they have decided to move it far away—all the way to Las Vegas.

The A’s baseball team will team up with Nevada and Clark County to build a stadium. They plan to start construction soon, with the goal of moving into their new home by 2027.

The A’s President, Kaval, said this is a huge accomplishment for them since they’ve been working hard in Las Vegas to find a perfect spot for their new home. Now that they have it all figured out and have signed the purchase agreement, he says it’s a very big milestone!

The A’s have been looking for a new place to play their games since 1968. They wanted to build stadiums in Fremont and San Jose, but then shifted their focus to Oakland waterfront. If it goes as planned, Las Vegas would be the fourth city that the team calls its home; it used to be Philadelphia Athletics from 1901-54.

The A’s are now making Las Vegas their main focus in finding a new home. Back in December, Commissioner Rob Manfred said that they wouldn’t have to pay any extra money if they moved there. He also said that the situation with Oakland has been continually delayed and it’s past time for the team to find a solution.

Oakland’s Mayor Sheng Thao expressed her sadness, as the A’s team did not have a conversation with the city of Oakland in the way she wanted them to.

The city has done a lot to make the A’s stay here. We’ve been trying for three months and things have gotten better, but it seems like the A’s don’t want to stay in Oakland. They just want to use this process to get a better deal from Las Vegas. I’m not okay with that – the fans and everyone living here should get what they deserve.

We’ve done some amazing things for Oakland and its Port, like getting a new site ready and investing over $375 million in new infrastructure. I won’t let the current budget challenges keep us from making sure our people are safe and taken care of. So, we’re going to stop talks about using Howard Terminal and look into other solutions instead.

The A’s might be the second Major League Baseball team to change cities in more than 50 years. The only other one was the Montreal Expos, who became the Washington Nationals in 2005.

The A’s current lease at their Coliseum is going to be over after 2024. Unfortunately, not many people have been coming to watch their games lately as John Fisher (the owner) has cut back on spending money and traded away most of their well known players.

Oakland’s team had the least amount of money ($58 million) to spend on players when the baseball season started – less than what was spent on just two players from New York (Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, each making $43.3 million).

The A’s team this season has a really bad record with only 3 wins against 16 losses. They have been losing by way more than anyone else in the league since 1899! Not many people are attending their games either; the average attendance is less than half of what other teams get, which is 11,027 people compared to 27,800 on average. It’s also been 5 years since they had over 2 million people show up for their games at home.

The A’s may leave Oakland, leaving the city with no major sports teams anymore. This is because both the NFL’s Raiders and the NBA’s Warriors have already moved to different cities in 2020 and 2019 respectively. Kaval said that it is hard news for their fans to hear since they worked so hard on making Bay waterfront successful, but unfortunately, it hasn’t given them enough progress or success.

Las Vegas is becoming a popular sports destination, after not being accepted in the past because of its connections with gambling. Gambling is now allowed around the country, and now Las Vegas has two professional teams: The NHL’s Golden Knights (who started in 2017) and the Raiders.