MLB owners give Fisher green light to leave Oakland, move A’s to Las Vegas

After 56 seasons, Major League Baseball has given up on the Oakland Athletics.

The election that A’s fans have anticipated and dreaded for months took place Thursday morning and, as expected, MLB owners voted 30-0 to approve owner John Fisher’s plan to relocate his franchise to Las Vegas.

The owners, tired of the exhaustive A’s stadium search and desperate for commissioner Rob Manfred to consummate a deal, were ready to vote “yes” on ending the A’s time in Oakland, which would create an extremely lucrative one-team market for the San Francisco Giants.

The A’s moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland and are headed to their fourth city. They are committed to just one more year at the Coliseum before their lease expires, and because Fisher doesn’t expect to open his dream house on the Strip until 2028, an interim home for the team will be necessary for at least three seasons.

Will it be the Coliseum with a belatedly negotiated lease extension? Or as part-time tenants at Oracle Park? Or Summerlin, Nev., home of the A’s Triple-A team? Or a location to be determined later?

Eventually, Major League Baseball and the A’s will sort out that important detail. For now, Fisher can be assured that his fellow billionaires and team owners have his back and support his abandoning Northern California and playing ball in the desert.

A’s Las Vegas ballpark construction timeline revealed

Construction on the Oakland Athletics’ Las Vegas ballpark is scheduled to begin in April 2025 and be completed in January 2028.

The tentative timeline was noted Wednesday during a presentation by Mortenson-McCarthy, the A’s ballpark construction manager, to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority….

One aspect of the draft lease agreement that differs from the Raiders and Allegiant Stadium is what happens to the facility after the initial 30-year lease is up. The A’s have the right to extend the lease with four 15-year extensions and one nine-year extension. The A’s will also have a purchase option on the the stadium after the initial 30-year lease expires.

The two sides are also still working on what happens in the event that the A’s choose to relocate after the initial 30-year lease is up and if the stadium becomes an eyesore. With the A’s ballpark planned to be built on what stadium authority chairman Steve Hill called one of the most important intersections in Las Vegas, having a decaying stadium located there would be “detrimental” to the city.

A’s owner: Relocation application done; team will lose $40M this year

In an exclusive interview with the Review-Journal, Fisher breaks down what went wrong in Oakland, his excitement about a future in Las Vegas, what he makes of the “sell the team” chants by A’s fans and whether the end of “Moneyball” will start with the team’s Nevada move…

The whole reason that we’re building a new stadium is so we can have not just a competitive team, but, we hope, a team that can have the kind of success, for example, that the Golden Knights have had, winning the Stanley Cup in six years. If we can win the World Series within our first six years, that would be an incredible goal to have…

Athletics stadium deal wins final legislative approval in Nevada

The Oakland Athletics cleared a major hurdle for their planned relocation to Las Vegas after the Nevada Legislature gave final approval on Wednesday to public funding for a portion of a proposed $1.5 billion stadium with a retractable roof.

The deal that backers said will help further establish Las Vegas as the new “entertainment and sports capital of the world” still needs the governor’s signature, and MLB still must approve the A’s move from California to the Las Vegas Strip, but both are expected.

The state Assembly approved the final version of the bill with $380 million in taxpayer money on a 25-15 vote after making minor changes to the measure the Senate approved on a 13-8 vote Tuesday, just hours before the Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup.

The Senate accepted the changes with no debate on a voice vote Wednesday night and sent it to the governor’s desk as an “emergency measure” adopted during the special legislative session that convened with Democratic majorities in both houses on June 7. Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo had proposed the stadium spending plan.

Statement from the @Athletics on @GovLombardoNv signing #SB1 pic.twitter.com/PVMoOGLDz1

— Howard Stutz (@howardstutz) June 16, 2023

Economic boost or big business hand-out? Nevada lawmakers consider A’s stadium financing

The A’s plan would authorize up to $380 million in public assistance for the potential $1.5 billion retractable-roof stadium in a special tax district, mainly through $180 million in state transferable tax credits and $120 million in bonds mostly from Clark County. The county also would contribute $25 million in credit toward infrastructure costs. The proposal would not directly raise taxes.

Presenters projected $900 million in annual construction wages and $17 million in tax revenue from operations each year in a study run by firms including Goldman Sachs, and funded by the Athletics. They said the state’s general fund would increase from the project.

“This is a good investment,” said Steve Hill, president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, adding that Las Vegas’ tourists would help fill the stadium. “There will be more money available at both the state and local level, if this deal is done then if it’s not.”

Lawmaker questions from a multitude of concerns in the bill that lawmakers said could have an outsized effect on their communities. This included how a lack of recent success from the Athletics could affect attendance, traffic along the Strip, compatibility with the nearby airport and the integrity of the metrics that they used to gather projection numbers.