Oakland A's Relocation to Las Vegas Sparks Outrage Among Fans

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.

News circulating around the potential move to Las Vegas has been a point of contention for A’s fans for months. The A’s will be the second team Oakland has lost to Las Vegas in recent years, following the Raiders football team’s move in 2020. Several fans expressed their disappointment with the A’s leadership over the decision.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee responded to the news of the A’s relocation by vowing to continue working to hold the MLB and its owners accountable for “prioritizing their pockets over the communities that have supported them.”

“It’s incredibly disappointing, but not surprising that a group of billionaire owners supported another billionaire owner’s efforts to line his own pockets at the expense of a passionate community and fan base,” said Lee in a statement. “The East Bay does not deserve to lose its last professional sports team. It’s shameful.”

Elizabeth Ruman has been an A’s fan since she moved to Oakland over a decade ago.

“Oakland’s the heart of the Oakland A’s, and I don’t think anybody will forget that. It’s like that sad feeling you get like from a divorce, like they’re really gone.”

Another fan, Shannon Baker, says she’s been a fan for years and enjoys taking her kids, adding, “I want to say good riddance, but at the same time, I’m still a fan, I still like going, we go to a lot of games … but at the same time I do kinda still hope they stay as long as they’re able to,” said Baker. “It just feels like it’s all business, all money and not necessarily always looking out for the fans.”

“We’re die-hard A’s fans out in Oakland, don’t leave us, baby,” said Jesse Wolfson-Pou, who’s been a fan his whole life. “We used to have three teams in Oakland: we had the Warriors, the A’s and the Raiders, and now we’ll have none. I love going to the A’s games, they’re not too expensive, they’re fun. I’m not a fan of the move.”

A 75% vote of the 30 teams was necessary for approval of A’s owner John Fisher’s plan, which was endorsed by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred.

“There was an effort over 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 didn’t happen.”

After years of complaints about the Oakland Coliseum and an inability to negotiate government assistance for a new ballpark in the Bay area, the A’s plan to move to a stadium to be built on the Las Vegas Strip with $380 million in public financing approved by the Nevada government.

“Incredibly difficult day,” Fisher said. “We gave every effort, did everything we could to find a solution there.”

According to Jorge Leon, president of the Oakland 68s, an independent supporters group, the A’s move isn’t final yet.

“A’s owner, John Fisher, still needs to come up with the money/financing plan, the Federal Aviation Administration could veto the selected stadium location because it’s next to the airport, and at least part of the state of Nevada’s contribution would be jeopardized if a ballot measure being pushed by the Nevada teachers’ union passes in November 2024,” said Leon. “That effort received a minor setback in court this week, but it’s far from over.”

The Athletics’ lease at the Coliseum runs through 2024, and they will remain next season at the outdated and run-down stadium where they have played since moving to California in 1968. It remains unclear where the team will play after that until a new ballpark opens, which Fisher said will be in 2028.

Las Vegas will become the franchise’s fourth city, the most for an MLB team. The A’s played in Philadelphia from 1901–54, then moved to Kansas City for 13 seasons before going to California. The new stadium will be the team’s fifth after 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 only other team to relocate was the Montreal Expos, who became the Washington Nationals in 2005.

The A’s in 2006 proposed a ballpark in Fremont, about 25 miles south in the East Bay, but abandoned the plan three years later. San José, 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 its neighbors. The franchise then focused on the Howard Terminal area of Oakland, though a financing plan was never reached after some approvals were gained.

The team announced on April 19 that 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 near Allegiant Stadium, which the NFL’s Oakland Raiders moved to in 2020, and T-Mobile Arena, which the current Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights started playing in 2017 as an expansion team.

Oakland finished an MLB-worst 50–112 this season and was again last in the majors in average attendance at 10,276 per game. That was well below the league-wide average of 29,283 but up from the previous two years, when the A’s were below 10,000 fans per game.

While San Francisco/Oakland/San José 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 Los Angeles), 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 adjacent to Globe Life Field, a retractable-roof stadium that opened in 2020. That is the site of next season’s MLB All-Star Game and the home of the Rangers, who, in their 52nd season in Texas this month, won their first World Series title.

Manfred also announced Thursday that Atlanta will host the 2025 All-Star Game.

Last week, a Nevada judge threw out a proposed ballot referendum backed by a statewide teachers union that would have given voters the final say on whether to provide public funding for the proposed Vegas stadium for the A’s.

Schools Over Stadiums spokesperson Alexander Marks said the organization’s leadership will likely both appeal the decision to the Nevada Supreme Court and refile the referendum petition.

KQED’s Juan Carlos Lara and Rachael Myrow contributed reporting to this story.