Why can’t Oakland hang onto a professional sports franchise?

From the outside, Oakland looks like it should be hotspot for America’s big three Sports. The 45th largest city in the United States, Oakland is the blue-collar version of its more swanky cross-bay cousin San Francisco. It’s a west coast reflection of America’s heartland, where the NFL, NBA and MLB have found some of their most successful and most lucrative homes.

But last year’s news that the Oakland A’s would be moving to Las Vegas was another nail in the coffin of the city’s rich sporting life. Once the move is completed in 2028 there will be no professional football, basketball or baseball team in Oakland.

The first to go were the Warriors, although their exit was soothed by the fact that the team would simply be crossing the bay to return to its previous home in San Francisco. The next, the Raiders, was a more bitter departure. Founded as the Oakland Raiders in 1960, the team was relocated to Los Angeles in 1982 and would spend 12 years there before moving back to Oakland. Now, the 2020 move to Las Vegas feels distinctly permanent.

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However the most painful of all will be the loss of the A’s, who confirmed the move to Las Vegas in April 2023. The team has signed a binding agreement to purchase land on the Las Vegas strip, where they plan to build a 35,000 seat, $1.5 billion ballpark with a retractable roof. And with that, Oakland’s final pro sports team will officially depart.

Why are the A’s moving to Las Vegas?

As has been the case with many of the recent high-profile team moves, stadium development played a big role in the A’s decision to relocate. The historic Oakland Coliseum has been the team’s home since moving to the city in 1968 but the creaking old building lacks the commercial opportunities that the newer stadiums offer.

Other cities have been willing to offer taxpayer-provided funding for teams building a new stadium, as Las Vegas did for the Raiders as part of their move. However Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao was less willing to pay for vast new mega-stadium, instead offering the team the chance to develop at the Howard Terminal former cargo shipping site.

The A’s have claimed that the Mayor’s demands and deadlines were heavy-handed, arguing that ownership “made a strong and sincere effort to stay here,” adding: “We are disappointed that we have been unable to achieve our shared vision of a waterfront ballpark.”

Mayor Thao, however, insisted that the A’s were solely focused on finding the best financial offers. She said: “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.”

Why are so many sports teams leaving Oakland?

While the public-private partnership helped to lure the A’s to Las Vegas, it is also true that teams have actively sought to leave Oakland. It suffers from a combination of factors that make it a difficult sell commercially: a blue-collar city in a high-taxation state. These facts, teams believe, places a cap on potential revenue.

And while other working class cities - such as Miami, Atlanta or New Orleans - face similar problems, Oakland has major competition right on the doorstep. San Francisco, on the other side of the bay, is much more affluent, and Los Angeles offers of much larger share of the vast California market.

This situation has played at least a part in all three of the recent sporting exoduses from Oakland. In the highly-competitive world of professional sport small margins can make big differences, and the economic currents dragging teams away from Oakland have become stronger in recent years.

In some ways, Oakland’s long-suffering sports fans have already started to cut ties with the A’s. Since the Las Vegas move was confirmed last year in-stadium attendance have dipped, a sign of waning interest in the soon-to-be-departed franchise. Back in March thousands of fans gathered watch the season opener in the Oakland Coliseum parking lot, choosing to turn away from a team that turned its back on them.