The Oakland Athletics are engaged in lease extension talks with the city as they prepare for relocation to Las Vegas in the coming years.
It’s highly unlikely that anything will come to fruition on this given the A’s volatile relationship with Oakland city officials.
This has the downtrodden organization between a rock and a hard place. Their lease for the Oakland Coliseum runs out after the 2024 MLB season. They won’t play their first game in Las Vegas until Opening Day of the 2028 campaign.
It’s an absolutely major backdrop. Could a MLB team actually find itself homeless for three seasons? Not that this is anything new, but it would be a terrible look for the A’s and the league.
We now might have a decision on where the A’s will play for the three seasons after the 2024 campaign comes to a conclusion. Like pretty much every option, it’s a less-than-ideal scenario.
Related: Las Vegas Mayor speaks out against Oakland Athletics relocation
Oakland Athletics likely to play in Sacramento before Las Vegas relocation
“Sacramento is the front-runner to host the A’s from 2025-27 before they move to Las Vegas, a person briefed on the team’s search process told The Athletic on Friday,” MLB insider Evan Drellich reported on Friday.
Salt Lake City and a return to Oakland Coliseum for the three seasons are also possibilities, per the report.
Sacramento is interesting in that the San Francisco Giants would have to give up their territorial rights to the region. That was a major sticking point eons ago when the A’s were looking to build a stadium in California’s capital city.
As noted above, this is not an ideal scenario for embattled owner John Fisher and the A’s. They drew an average of 10,275 fans in Oakland last season. It was a black eye for the league as a whole and the Athletics’ organization.
Typically loyal to their local team, A’s fans are not going to travel to Sacramento to watch a team that’s years away from relocating to Southern Nevada.
Such is the nature of the beast when it comes to a situation like this.
As it relates to the A’s eventual relocation to Las Vegas, the famed Tropicana on the Strip is set to be torn down this spring. Shortly after, construction on a new venue for the MLB team will begin.