OAKLAND — The Oakland Athletics will begin their transition to their new home in Las Vegas in 2025. But they'll be taking the scenic route.
The Athletics will be leaving Oakland at the conclusion of the 2024 season and be playing at a minor league ballpark in West Sacramento for at least three seasons, in an announcement by the team and Oakland officials on Thursday morning.
The move will end a 56-year tenure of the Athletics, a stretch that included four World Series championships.
An three-year lease agreement was made with Sacramento, with an option for a fourth year in the event the new ballpark on the Las Vegas strip is not ready in time.
But until then, the A's will be sharing Sutter Health Park with the Sacramento River Cats, who are the San Francisco Giants' Triple-A team. The stadium holds around 14,000 fans.
"I just want to say we're excited to be here for the next three years," A's owner John Fisher said as part of his prepared remarks, "playing in this beautiful ballpark but also to be able to watch some of the greatest players in baseball, whether they be Athletics players or Aaron Judge and others launch home runs out of this very intimate, most intimate ballpark in major league baseball next three years."
In conjunction with the temporary arrangement with Sacramento, the franchise will not refrain from using a city name in its branding and will be known simply as "The A's."
The city of Oakland made multiple attempts to keep the team from uprooting, the final attempt came on Tuesday at the team's offices, where Oakland's representatives presented a five-year lease offer with a team opt-out after three.
In that offer, the A's would have been responsible for a $97 million "extension fee" that would have been due in full even if the team chose to opt out. Currently, the A's pay $1.25 million per season to rent the Coliseum, and the increased cost to continue playing in the Coliseum was a key issue, sources say.
Hours after the meeting, Oakland officials reached out to the A's with one final revised offer, which was an unreported three-year lease and a $60 million extension fee. That offer was contingent on Major League Baseball agreeing to a one-year exclusive right to solicit ownership for a future expansion team in Oakland.
And while the A's were receptive to the new offer, according to sources, the team met with Sacramento officials less than 24 hours later and quickly agreed to a deal.
"Oakland offered a deal that was fair to the A's and was fiscally responsible for our city," Mayor Thao said in a statement. "We wish the A's the best and will continue our conversations with them on facilitating the sale of their share of the Coliseum site. The City of Oakland will now focus on advancing redevelopment efforts at the Coliseum."
The 2024 season has gotten off to a horrible start for the A's, who are currently 1-6 and have drawn an average of 6,438 fans at the Coliseum through those seven games. And with the team the team beginning to cut ties with the city, that number that figures to drop even lower.
Oakland has a payroll of roughly $60 million, which is by far the lowest of all the MLB teams and $25 million below the next-lowest team, the Pirates.
Fans in Oakland have dubbed this the "Summer of Boycott," which began on Opening Day, as thousands of fans protested Fisher's ownership by going to the game that night but remaining in the parking lot throughout.
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