Oakland mayor blindsided by A's bombshell Vegas deal amid negotiations

[RandySF]

OAKLAND — Following months and months of uncertainty, Oakland thought it was inching closer to a deal for a new waterfront ballpark for the Oakland A’s this week, negotiating daily to keep one of baseball’s storied franchises in the city it had called home for five decades.

Then, in an instant, it was over.

On Wednesday evening, Mayor Sheng Thao received an unexpected call from A’s President Dave Kaval. He kept his words brief: “Heads up, we have a land deal in Las Vegas.”

Hours later, the A’s dropped the same bombshell on the rest of Oakland — that the team was nearing an agreement to buy land in Las Vegas and build a $1 billion, 35,000-seat ballpark a mile off the strip, finally ditching the Coliseum in East Oakland that Kaval has spent the past couple years disparaging.

The team and city had been “in mid-negotiations — the closest we’ve ever been to landing a deal,” Thao said. But troubling signs permeated the talks.

“At every opportunity, the A’s have made increasing demands on Oakland,” Thao said at a news conference Thursday, a day after she announced that negotiations for the waterfront development were dead. “And at every opportunity, we have risen to the challenge and overcome the hurdles placed before us.”




https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/04/20/oakland-mayor-blindsided-by-as-bombshell-vegas-deal-amid-negotiations/

[LonePirate]

1. The A's would move from the stadium with the largest seating capacity to the second smallest.

It would miss being the smallest by only a couple hundred seats. Barring a huge mark-up in ticket prices, which is a possibility in Las Vegas where tickets for everything are very expensive, they plan on recouping that $1B via other methods, probably government subsidies, huge sponsorship deals, inflated concessions and merchandise pricing and maybe media rights. Parking may not be a large source of revenue either like it is for many teams.

So the financing of the stadium and the long term profit motive are certainly questionable here.

[Sympthsical]

4. Their stadium is currently empty anyway

Most of the times I've gone, the entire upper deck is closed. They're just poorly attended games. The SF Giants are the more popular Bay Area team by a very long way.

Mix in a rise in crime (in the area and on BART - but BART in particular can be a wretched experience in that area) and people just don't want to go. Covid pretty much killed the A's once and for all. They're below 10k average attendance the past two years compared to the Giants' 30k.

With the loss of the Raiders to Vegas and the Warriors to the Chase Center in SF, Oakland pretty much doesn't have a sports scene anymore.

It's a shame.

[msongs]

2. rest assured no matter where they go taxpyers are gonna be screwed out of $$ nt

[TheBlackAdder]

3. THIS 👍

[Florida Bull]

5. Las Vegas

Las Vegas now seems like a very popular destination for professional sports teams. Just recently, an NHL team and an NFL team. Now, apparently an MLB team. There is also speculation about the NBA possibly expanding in Las Vegas. Soon to be 3 out of 4, and potentially all 4 sports leagues. That is not particularly common, even for moderately large cities.

San Diego, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Nashville each have only 1 major professional sports team, and even Houston lacks an NHL team.

[brush]

6. There's a lot of money in Oakland so they can't balme anyone...

but the city itself for not replacing the Coliseum, the worst facility in sports. It should've been replaced decades ago as it's been horrible for years.

I live in Vegas (formerly in Berkeley) but wanted the Raiders to stay in Oakland, their birthplace, but the city couldn't keep them either because of that horrible stadium.

It's sad, tha Warriors are gone too. What a shame, all the tightwads doing nothing for years to keep the teams. Sad.

[Buckeyeblue]

7. You can't blame Oakland. They've been trying to get a new stadium for years