I understand Vegas is a great city and probably a better market but now Oakland has lost all their teams in a matter of just a few years.
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Oakland has a couple of things working against it…too many other big cities in California. (It’s hard to grow your market share when you’re a small fish in a big pond.)
But the real sticking point is how costly having a physical presence in California actually in in comparison to other places. There is a severe housing shortage in the bay area that has driven up the cost of real estate exponentially. The A’s needed a new stadium. Stadiums take up a lot of real estate, and require public infrastructure investments to handle the influx of people on game days (or during other events hosted there.) The owners demanded concessions from the city to assist in the construction. The city recognized that the citizens of oakland are already paying too much in taxes, and declined to provide the demanded incentives. So the owners shopped elsewhere and realized rebuilding in Oakland didn’t make financial sense.
It’s unfortunate that Oakland fans have been completely left in the lurch. But the Coliseum just didn’t have the amenities needed to be competitive in the MLB, and the owners asked for more incentives than the city would give them.
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