Oakland Athletics relocation to Las Vegas
On April 19, 2023, the Oakland Athletics, at the guidance of team owner John Fisher, announced a "binding deal" purchase of land in Las Vegas, Nevada for a new ballpark. The announcement indicated the team's intent to relocate out of their longtime home of Oakland, California after 57 seasons and four World Series championships. The proposed relocation of Oakland and the East Bay region's sole remaining major professional sports franchise comes on the heels of the city losing the NBA's Golden State Warriors to San Francisco in 2019 and the NFL's Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas in 2020, and has been described by national and international media as "catastrophic" for the community and "incalculable loss" for the community and larger East Bay region. The A's proposed relocation would make Oakland the first and only major city in history to be fully abandoned by North American major professional sports after hosting multiple teams across different sports.
The announcement was followed immediately by widespread condemnation, including public accusations of bad faith negotiating and intentionally-deceptive business practices on the part of the A's and Major League Baseball in negotiations with Oakland city officials. In 2023, Fisher, A's President Dave Kaval and Commissioner Manfred have repeatedly been caught or accused of knowingly giving false public statements and outright lying about the proposed Oakland Ballpark project, which began in 2018 and stalled sometime following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Public response to the proposed relocation of Oakland's only remaining major professional sports franchise has been widespread. Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob publicly stated he has a standing offer to buy the A's from Fisher and would privately fund a new ballpark for the team, though Fisher has repeatedly stated he will not willingly sell the team. Actor Tom Hanks, who worked as an Oakland A's hot dog vendor at the Oakland Coliseum as a teenager, on the topic of the A's proposed move to Las Vegas just after the departures of the Warriors and Raiders from town, stated "Damn them all to Hell." Other celebrities such as Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong have publicly joined the "SELL" movement, with the goal of convincing John Fisher to sell the team and allow it to remain in Oakland.
In July 2016, Manfred stated "I am committed to Oakland as a major league site. If we were to leave Oakland, I think 10 years from now, we would be more likely than not looking backward, saying we made a mistake."
In May 2021, Manfred's office announced that Major League Baseball had given the Athletics permission to explore relocation, citing slow progress on the proposed bayfront Oakland Ballpark.
In late October 2022, Manfred announced that he would instruct the league to waive the standard assessed relocation fee (estimated at $300 million) for Athletics ownership should the team choose to relocate specifically to Las Vegas. Manfred reiterated this in late July 2023, exacerbating the ire of other MLB owners frustrated with the "preferential treatment" Fisher and Las Vegas were receiving from Manfred.
In response to questions about the Tuesday June 13, 2023 "Reverse Boycott Game I", which drew the A's highest attendance of the season to date, more than triple the team's season attendance average to that point, Manfred condescendingly stated "It's great to see what is this year almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night. That's a great thing." He continued, erroneously stating, "There is no Oakland offer. They never got to the point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site." In response to a question about several academic studies on the economic benefits to communities that contribute public funds for professional sports facilities, Manfred responded "I love academics; they're great . . . Academics can say whatever they want. I think the reality tells you something else." All three comments were met with widespread condemnation of the commissioner, with the comment of Oakland having "no plan to build a stadium at any site" being immediately disproven the same day by Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and city officials, who in response publicly shared the plans for the proposed bay-front Howard Terminal ballpark at the edge of Downtown Oakland, opposite and in complement to the cross-bay San Francisco Giants' Oracle Park. Oakland city officials had been in negotiations with A's and MLB officials over the project since 2018 and into 2023, though Oakland city officials indicated the A's had seemingly stalled the project and begun to shy away from following through with it, starting sometime in 2020 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This claim was substantiated by the fact that the A's missed project deadlines without explanation, including a key city-mandated deadline for finalizing the stadium development plan in September 2022. Reports have indicated Fisher no longer has the financial capability to follow through with the Oakland ballpark project that he and his team proposed due to pandemic-related revenue losses and losses incurred by the declining stock prices of Gap Inc., which much of his net worth is tied to.
