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.
In: Other
Have you ever been to Oakland?
Ya and Vegas doesn’t even want a ball team there. The mayor actually said so publicly! And the stadium won’t be built for years, they haven’t even demolished the hotel yet where they are supposed to be building it.
Money.
The sports franchises in Oakland played in venues built decades ago.
The NBA Warriors are still in the area. They privately financed an arena in San Francisco which will makes lots or revenue from Warriors games and countless other things renting out the arena in a very wealthy city.
The NFL Raiders actually moved from Oakland twice. They left in the 1980s to move to Los Angeles. They moved back when the city of Oakland offered a financial package better than they earned in Los Angeles. The Raiders tried to move back to Los Angeles because it’s a bigger area, but the NFL chose to allow the San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Rams (both of which had previously played in Los Angeles). So the Raiders owner worked a deal in Las Vegas were the locals funded most of the cost of a new stadium where the Raiders could make more money than they made in their old stadium in Oakland lacking in amenities. Oakland was not willing to provide public funding towards the stadium like Las Vegas. Las Vegas’s population is much smaller than the San Francisco Bay population, but the way economics of the NFL work, the Raiders could make much more money with all the new amenities they could offer. Plus Vegas is a huge tourist attraction so many Raiders fans would travel there for games.
The Oakland Athletics want a new stadium too. When the Raiders moved back to Oakland, the stadium was renovated to accommodate the Raiders but hurt the stadium for the A’s. The A’s have a competing MLB team in San Francisco that had a stadium issue in the 80s and 90s. In order to help them get a stadium done, the A’s granted certain rights in the area to the Giants which gave the Giants priority for all the cities in the region other than Oakland. So when the City of Oakland was unwilling to fund a new stadium, the A’s weren’t able to go to some of the wealthy communities in the region and have them build because the Giants claimed rights to the land even though the Giants have a privately funded stadium in San Francisco.
So the A’s wouldn’t work with Oakland to find a place to build a stadium privately. They were at a stalemate for years. The A’s were envious of the deal the Raiders got in Las Vegas, so they went to Vegas for the same. Las Vegas agreed, but it was going to take years for the financing to be finalized and the stadium to be built. Unlike the Raiders, the A’s couldn’t work a deal to stay in the Oakland Coliseum until the new stadium in Las Vegas was completed. So the A’s are temporarily moving to the minor league stadium in Sacramento.
Unlike the NFL, MLB teams in larger markets have a much bigger financial advantage than teams in small markets. Las Vegas being smaller means the A’s will potentially be making a lot less money. But the game day revenue will be higher because of all the amenities they can charge money for.
TLDR: Jeff fisher the owner of the A’s is a greedy rat fuck and he demonstrated that at every opportunity that presented itself.
Mark Davis the owner of the raiders is “poor” comparatively to most of the other owners of sports teams with pretty much all of his wealth tied up in the raiders so unless the city completely paid for a stadium for the raiders they were never going to be able to stay.
The warriors left because they were able to completely, 100% privately fund their new stadium which is basically unheard of when it comes to new sports stadiums. They most likely wanted the most premium real estate possible for that when planning it and SF gave them that. (I don’t know all the particulars of the warriors acquisition of the land the stadium is on but I imagine it went down like that)
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.
Something not covered in all the other great answers:
Las Vegas, in particular, has a double whammy for game attendance: not only do they get league perks for being a “small market” team, they can attract large numbers of fans of their opponents to come to games and make a Vegas weekend out of it.
For big market teams, it’s entirely possible that the cheapest way to see your home team play is to fly to Vegas and watch an away game. The hotel and airfare are less than the difference in ticket price, if you get a good package deal.
New York fans aren’t going to fly to Oakland for the weekend, but many of them WILL fly to Vegas.
Oaklands teams both lost their market to the SF teams
The A’s and Raiders were killed off for the Giants and 49ers.
A “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us” situation
Same reason St Louis doesn’t have two baseball teams anymore
Team names and history should stay with the city/state. The team itself can move, but they have to get a new name when they move.
It’s a legitimate question as to whether San Francisco and Oakland both ever needed NFL and MLB teams in such proximity. The Giants came incredibly close to moving elsewhere in the mid 70s and early 90s. The Bay Area could probably support another team but closer to San Jose and tech money.
Crime? In-N-Out and Raising Cane’s also left.
Latest Answers