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The Oakland Athletics’ move to Las Vegas was unanimously approved Thursday by Major League Baseball team owners, cementing the sport’s first relocation since 2005, according to two people familiar with the vote.
The persons spoke on the condition of anonymity because the league had not yet released the findings. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred supported the proposal, which required a 75% majority of the 30 teams.
After years of complaints about the Oakland Coliseum and a failure to get government funding for a new ballpark in the Bay Area, the A’s intend to relocate to a stadium on the Las Vegas Strip that will be built with $380 million in public financing granted by the Nevada government.
The A’s lease at the Coliseum ends after the 2024 season, and it is unknown where the team will play until a new ballpark opens, maybe in 2027.
Las Vegas will be the fourth location for a team that began in Philadelphia in 1901 and traveled to Kansas location for 13 seasons before arriving in Oakland in 1968. After Columbia Park (1901-08), Shibe Park (1909-54), Memorial Stadium (1955-67), and the Coliseum, the next stadium will be the team’s sixth.
The only other club to relocate since the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers in 1972 was the Montreal Expos, who became the Washington Nationals in 2005.
The A’s suggested a ballpark in Fremont, roughly 25 miles south in the East Bay, in 2006, but dropped the idea three years later. The location of San Jose, 40 miles south of Oakland, was offered in 2012, but the San Francisco Giants vetoed it since it was inside their area. The A’s chose a location near Laney institution in Oakland, but it was rejected by the institution and residents, so they concentrated on the Howard Terminal section of Oakland. Although certain permits were obtained, a finance strategy was never developed.
The team announced April 19 it had purchased land in Las Vegas, then a month later replaced that location with a deal with Bally’s and Gaming & Leisure Properties to build a stadium on the Tropicana hotel site along the Las Vegas Strip.
Nevada’s Legislature and governor approved public financing for a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat ballpark with a retractable roof that will be close to Allegiant Stadium, where the NFL’s Oakland Raiders moved to in 2020, and T-Mobile Arena, where the current Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights started play in 2017 as an expansion team.
While San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose is the 10th-largest television market in the U.S., Las Vegas is the 40th. Baseball players’ association head Tony Clark last month questioned whether the shift to a smaller city would put the team on a path of needed perpetual assistance under MLB’s revenue-sharing plan.
MLB is able to control city changes because of the sport’s antitrust exemption, granted by a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court decision. In the last half-century, the NFL has seen moves by the Raiders (Oakland to Los Angeles, back to Oakland and then Las Vegas), the Colts (Baltimore to Indianapolis), the Cardinals (St. Louis to Phoenix), the Rams (Los Angeles to St. Louis and back to LA), the Oilers (Houston to Nashville) and the Chargers (San Diego to Los Angeles).
