Oakland A’s set to move to Vegas

It looks like the Oakland A’s are ready to go to a new home.

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The A’s have entered an agreement to purchase land outside of Oakland and even outside of even California, for that matter. The parcel is in Las Vegas near the Strip, The Associated Press and other media outlets reported.

The Oakland A’s will become the Las Vegas A’s, the team’s president told KTNV.

The site chosen for the A’s new ballpark sits on 49 acres currently owned by Red Rock Resorts, the parent of Station Casinos.

The stadium will have 35,000 seats and will cost $1.5 billion, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. It will also include other features, such as restaurants and possibly an amphitheater.

The team will be working with Nevada and Clark County to have a public-private partnership to come up with the funding needed to build the stadium, with ground being broken by 2024 and the team moving into the stadium by 2027, the AP reported.

Right now, the A’s call the Oakland Coliseum home, the same place they started at when they moved from Kansas City in 1968. The lease on the Coliseum runs out after the 2024 season.

The team has tried to move out several times to proposed stadiums in Fremont, San Jose and the Oakland waterfront, but none came to reality.

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao was not happy with the A’s plans to pick up and move to another state, saying that the city is “ceasing negotiations and moving forward.”

“I am deeply disappointed that the A’s have chosen not to negotiate with the City of Oakland as a true partner, in a way that respects the long relationship between the fans, the City and the team,” Thao said in a statement, according to ESPN. “Yet, it is clear to me that the A’s have no intention of staying in Oakland and have simply been using this process to try to extract a better deal out of Las Vegas. I am not interested in continuing to play that game — the fans and our residents deserve better.”

The A’s, according to the AP, would be only the second team to change cities in more than 50 years. The last two moves involved Washington D.C., when the Senators moved to Texas to become the Rangers in 1972. The Montreal Expos moved to D.C., bringing a team back to the nation’s capital, to become the Nationals in 2005.

If the move goes through, Oakland will be left without a pro sports team. The Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020 and the NBA’s Warriors moved to San Francisco the year before, the AP reported.

Before playing in Kansas City, the current Oakland A’s started in Philadelphia as the Athletics, according to Baseball Reference. The team’s been around since 1901 as part of the new American Baseball League and is among the 10 oldest teams in MLB.