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 always been a tough market because it’s the “little brother” of the San Francisco sports market. Millions of people live in the Bay Area, but only a small fraction of those are going to favor an Oakland team over an SF team, especially if the Oakland team isn’t doing as well.
When leagues first started expanding out west, Oakland got a lot of attention because it developed relatively early. But if you were going to create a new expansion team today, why would you target the country’s 45th largest city in the shadow of its 13th and 17th largest cities? There will always be Bay Area sports teams, but they don’t have much reason to go by “Oakland” anymore rather than “San Francisco,” “San Jose,” or the generic “Golden State.”
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