PACKING UP

Oakland A’s Say They’re Ditching the Bay Area for Las Vegas

The team has signed a binding purchase agreement for 49 acres of land off the Las Vegas Strip.

The Oakland A’s announced Thursday they had signed a binding purchase agreement for 49 acres of land off the Las Vegas Strip with plans to relocate to Sin City by 2027. “We have turned our attention to Las Vegas to get a deal here for the A’s and find a long-term home,” team president Dave Kaval told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Oakland has been a great home for us for over 50 years, but we really need this 20-year saga completed and we feel there's a path here in Southern Nevada to do that.” Kaval said the plan is to build a stadium that seats at least 30,000 and is about a mile west of the Vegas Golden Knights arena and a mile north of the Las Vegas Raiders stadium. Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao said she was “deeply disappointed” in the A’s decision. “The city has gone above and beyond in our attempts to arrive at mutually beneficial terms to keep the A’s in Oakland,” Thao said. “In the last three months, we’ve made significant strides to close the deal. Yet, it is clear to me that the A’s have no intention of staying in Oakland and have simply been using this process to extract a better deal out of Las Vegas.” The A’s will be the second professional sports team to ditch Oakland for Vegas in recent years after the Raiders did in 2020.