ARLINGTON, Texas (`) — The Oakland Athletics’ move to Las Vegas was unanimously approved by Major League Baseball team owners Thursday, cementing the sport’s first move since 2005.
A 75 percent majority of the 30 teams was needed to approve A’s owner John Fisher’s plan, which was supported by baseball commissioner Rob Manfred.
“Work has been going on for more than a decade to find a stadium solution in Oakland,” Manfred said Thursday. “It was John Fisher’s preference. It was my preference. … It did not happen.”
After years of complaints about the Oakland Coliseum and an inability to negotiate government support for a new ballpark in the Bay Area, the A’s plan to move to a stadium on the Las Vegas Strip $380 million in public funding approved by the Nevada government.
“Incredibly difficult day,” Fisher said. “We made every effort and did everything we could to find a solution there.”
The Athletics’ lease at the Coliseum runs through 2024 and they will remain next season in the aging and dilapidated stadium where they have played since moving to California in 1968. It remains unclear where the team will play afterward until a new ballpark opens, which Fisher said will happen in 2028.
Las Vegas will be the franchise’s fourth-largest city, the largest city for an MLB team. The A’s played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954 and then moved to Kansas City for 13 seasons before moving to California. The new stadium will be the team’s fifth, following Columbia Park (1901-08), Shibe Park (1909-54), Memorial Stadium (1955-67) and the Coliseum.
Since the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers in 1972, the Montreal Expos, who became the Washington Nationals in 2005, were the only other team to move.
The A’s proposed a ballpark in Fremont, about 25 miles south in the East Bay, in 2006, but abandoned the plan three years later. San Jose, 40 miles south of Oakland, was proposed in 2012, but the San Francisco Giants blocked the site because it was part of that team’s territory.
After the A’s chose a site in the Oakland area near Laney College, it was rejected by the college and neighbors. The franchise then focused on the Howard Terminal area in Oakland, although after receiving some approvals a financing plan was never reached.
The team announced April 19 that it had purchased land in Las Vegasa month later, it replaced that location with a deal with Bally’s and Gaming & Leisure Properties to build a stadium on the Tropicana hotel site on the Las Vegas Strip.
Nevada lawmakers and governors approved public financing for a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat, retractable-roof baseball stadium near Allegiant Stadium, where the NFL’s Oakland Raiders moved in 2020, and the T-Mobile Arena, the venue of the current Stanley Cup winner, will be located. The Vegas Golden Knights began playing in 2017 as an expansion team.
Oakland finished as the worst MLB team this season at 50-112 and once again ranked last in the majors with an average of 10,276 spectators per game. That was significantly less than the leaguewide average of 29,283, but more than the previous two years, when the A’s had fewer than 10,000 fans per game.
While San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose is the 10th largest television market in the U.S., Las Vegas ranks 40th. Tony Clark, president of the Baseball Players Association, questioned last month whether moving to a smaller city would put the team on the path to needed permanent support under MLB’s revenue-sharing plan.
Because of the sport’s antitrust exemption, granted by a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the MLB is able to control city changes. Over the last half century, the NFL has seen moves from the Raiders (from Oakland to Los Angeles, back to Oakland and then to Las Vegas), the Colts (from Baltimore to Indianapolis), the Cardinals (from St. Louis to Phoenix), and the Rams (Los Angeles to St. Louis and back to LA), the Oilers (Houston to Nashville) and the Chargers (San Diego to Los Angeles).
The owners held their three-day meetings this week at a hotel next to Globe Life Field, a retractable-roof stadium that opened in 2020. That’s the site of next season’s MLB All-Star’s Game and the home of the Rangers, who won their first World Series title in their 52nd season in Texas this month.
Manfred also announced Thursday that Atlanta will host the 2025 All-Star Game.
Last week, a judge in Nevada rejected a proposed referendum supported by a statewide teachers union That would give voters the final say on whether to provide public financing for the A’s’ proposed Vegas stadium.
Schools over Stadiums spokesman Alexander Marks said the organization’s leadership will likely both appeal the decision to the Nevada Supreme Court and resubmit the referendum petition.
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Blum reported from New York.
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