Getty Image / Robert Martinez
The Oakland Athletics may not be leaving the city for Las Vegas if Oakland’s mayor, Sheng Thao, gets her way. She sent a letter to the owners of 15 of the 30 Major League Baseball clubs, asking them to reject the pending move of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas.
Here’s ESPN, who was granted access to the letter, with more details.
Thao’s letter, obtained by ESPN, reiterates many points the mayor has been making since April, when the A’s stunned the city by announcing plans to move to Las Vegas and build a stadium on a nine-acre site currently occupied by the Tropicana Las Vegas Casino Resort. The letter is part of the city’s ongoing effort to counter the A’s contention that Oakland did not act with sufficient urgency in obtaining clearances and securing funding for a $12 billion, 55-acre residential/retail waterfront development that would include a 35,000-seat stadium.
Thao wrote that Oakland has procured $428 million in public funding for off-site infrastructure, a figure that is in addition to approximately $500 million in on-site infrastructure the city and county will contribute through “tax increment funding.”
“The proposed funding assistance for a new stadium development,” Thao wrote, “is thus nearly triple the $380M the A’s have reportedly secured in Las Vegas, for a much smaller stadium project. … There is a clear path to build a state-of-the-art new ballpark here in Oakland, and to do so just as expeditiously (if not more so) than in Las Vegas.”
This is a truly wild story, with a lot of complicated parts about it.
Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher has long been one of the lowest-spending owners in the league. The Athletics haven’t been in the top-twenty of payroll rankings in over a decade, and 2023 was especially embarrassing. Their payroll was last in the league, and was a small fraction of the top teams in the league like the Mets, Dodgers, and Yankees. One source put it at just $33 million. There are a good number of players making more money than that.
And, the situation at the Oakland Coliseum, which hosts the Athletics, is dreadful. Simply put, the facility is nowhere close to what a modern MLB stadium should be. Reports of sewage leakages, poor concessions, and empty crowds are what people think of when they think of the dilapidated venue.
But, Oakland claims that they are willing to put up at least some of the money to get a respectable stadium to the Bay Area and keep the team in Oakland. Negotiations broke down between the team and city in the Spring, and a move to Las Vegas was announced soon later.
That move could be stopped if less than three-quarters of the owners approve it. And, while that doesn’t seem likely, I think she does raise a good point in the article about how putting an expansion team in Las Vegas, one that will have their own identity, could make the league more money.