Coming Soon: The Las Vegas Athletics

Maybe Taylor Swift was talking about the City of Oakland.  Because, as the city prepares to lose its third pro sports franchise in less than a decade (leaving it with zero!), blaming it on the teams becomes harder and harder to do.  What they're asking for isn't unreasonable, especially since they were the ones with the leverage.  Especially after the Warriors and Raiders, the light bulb should've gone off in somebody's head.  Hey, maybe the problem is us!

The A's stadium saga appears to be reaching its conclusion, as the team has entered into a binding agreement with Las Vegas to purchase land with the intention of building a Major League ballpark.  Once that happens, it'll be official.  The Oakland Athletics will become the Las Vegas Athletics, and Oakland will no longer be a pro sports city.  Which, frankly, is entirely the city's fault.

It's been the same problem for years.  The Oakland Coliseum has long been one of the worst stadiums in the Majors.  And that was before the Raiders came back to town and ruined it further.  Those renovations to accommodate the football team took a bad venue for baseball and made it even worse!  Everyone knew it, too!  The stadium's a dump and they need a new one.  Yet the city's efforts to build one have been half-hearted at best.

Seriously, how many times have the team and the city tried to come to an agreement on a new stadium, only to run into one hurdle or another?  There were location issues, political issues, cost issues.  Whatever the reason, the result was always the same.  The A's and Major League Baseball got their hopes up that the stadium situation might be resolved, only for the deal to fall through and the A's having no choice but to go back to the Coliseum.

They tried.  Over and over again.  Yet every time the A's tried to get Oakland to build them the new stadium they so desperately need, something happened so that it wouldn't.  It eventually got to the point where they knew they were getting nowhere in Oakland, so they had to explore opportunities elsewhere.  Their focus turned pretty quickly to Las Vegas, which is offering them exactly what they're looking for (and they've tried, and failed, to get from Oakland multiple times).

If they didn't get what they wanted from Oakland, they were gonna get it somewhere else.  So why is everyone acting so surprised that they were considering moving?  Especially after what happened with the Raiders...for the exact same reason!  And, let's not forget, the Raiders were lured back to Oakland from Los Angeles because the city agreed to renovate the stadium.  But even they grew dissatisfied with the stadium, and the lack of progress on a new one, so they felt like they had no choice but to move.

There are some decrying the A's lack of loyalty to Oakland, but who are we kidding?  They have no loyalty to Oakland!  This is a team that started in Philadelphia, moved to Kansas City, then moved again to Oakland.  Both of those moves were because the new city provided them with a better opportunity.  Which is exactly what they'll be doing again when they move for a third time...to Las Vegas.

This all could've been easily avoided, too.  The city and the fans had to know what was potentially gonna happen if they didn't approve a new stadium, either the funding or the stadium itself.  So why are they surprised that it is?  They want to complain about the A's lack of "loyalty," but where's their loyalty to the team?  This is a two-way street.

I liken this situation to what happened with the New York Islanders a few years ago.  The Islanders needed a new building, Nassau County kept refusing to build it, so when the Nets built the Barclays Center, the Islanders moved in, too.  That ultimately didn't work out and the eventually did build their own arena (which is beautiful).  But Nassau County took the Islanders for granted and ended up losing them.  Which is exactly what Oakland did with all three of its teams.

With the Warriors, it's a little different.  They stayed in the Bay Area.  And the opportunity to play in a brand new arena in downtown San Francisco was too good to pass up!  Besides, they started in San Francisco, so moving back to the other side of the Bay (to a larger city that's one of the major cities in the U.S.), especially after the team got good, seemed inevitable once an arena was approved and constructed.

Let's not act like the Oakland Coliseum Arena wasn't also a dump, either.  It's literally located right next to the terrible baseball stadium in the same terrible area of the city.  When the coliseum and adjacent arena were built, they successfully achieved their goal of bringing major league pro sports to Oakland.  That was in 1967!  The fact that neither venue was ever really modernized is a big part of Oakland's problem, though.  It's a small market with an inadequate stadium.  That's a bad combination for keeping a team.

A's fans are apparently planning a "reverse walk out," where they plan to pack the stadium to show that there is fan support in Oakland.  Their argument is that the only reason they don't come is because the team is terrible.  That might be true, but it's not like they'd be packing the place even if the team was good.  Just look at the Rays.  They actually are good, and they have problems selling tickets, too...because of their venue!

So, yes, they're right that the A's can't expect people to buy tickets to watch a terrible team in a terrible venue.  But it's a catch 22.  Because the A's need a new stadium to generate the necessary revenue to improve the team.  And they'd almost certainly do better at attracting free agents if they had a better stadium.  Because it's a well-known fact around MLB that a number of players hate playing in Oakland, and some even have clauses in their contract that say they can't be traded there.  So, if they pretty clearly don't want to play there, they probably aren't even considering coming there as a free agent!

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, the A's will get everything they're asking for and then some.  Oakland is doing everything it can to show it doesn't want pro sports.  Las Vegas is doing everything it can to prove that it does.  The Golden Knights showed that pro sports in Las Vegas works.  That's why the Raiders moved there, and that's why the A's are moving there, too.  Because Sin City has suddenly become a sports mecca (they've gone from zero pro teams to three in less than a decade, with an NBA team likely to join as soon as they decide they want to bring the Sonics back, plus have a Super Bowl, Final Four and CFP National Championship all coming up).

Will the A's start spending money and attempting to be competitive once they move to Las Vegas in 2027 (or sooner)?  Most likely.  Which will once again have the people in Oakland crying foul.  But their issue shouldn't be with the team.  It should be with the city.  Because the team tried.  The A's put in the effort.  They didn't think about moving until they were left with no other option.  Which isn't their fault.  It's the city's.

All Oakland had to do was find a suitable site for a stadium and agree to help finance it.  They didn't even need to pay for the whole thing.  The team was hoping the city would want to be their partner on the stadium project.  The City of Oakland evidently wasn't interested.  And will now pay the price for taking the A's for granted.  Because, in a way, Oakland will get exactly what it wanted.  You don't want a major league venue?  Fine.  Soon you won't be able to call yourselves a "major league city" either.  Which, frankly, is on you.