The Oakland Athletics will temporarily head north before they make their permanent move to Las Vegas.
Major League Baseball, the A’s and the NBA’s Sacramento Kings announced that the A’s will play at Sutter Health Park for at least three seasons beginning in 2025. The Kings, which are owned by Vivek Ranadivé, are the majority owners of the ballpark and its primary tenants, the Sacramento River Cats. The A’s will make West Sacramento their interim home while a new MLB-ready ballpark is being built along the Las Vegas Strip. Should there be any delays with the Vegas project, the A’s have an option to play at Sutter Health for a fourth year.
“We look forward to making Sutter Health Park our home through our move to Las Vegas,” A’s owner John Fisher said in a statement. “We extend our appreciation to the Kings and the City of West Sacramento for hosting the A’s while we work to complete our new ballpark in Las Vegas.”
Although there were questions about the viability of the team in Las Vegas, Fisher’s fellow team owners unanimously approved plans for the A’s long-anticipated move to Nevada back in November. The A’s aim to develop a fixed-roof 30,000-seat stadium at the site of the Tropicana Las Vegas hotel in time for the 2028 season. (The famed Tropicana closed its doors for the last time on April 2.) The Nevada state legislature approved of $380 million in public funding toward the stadium construction, which currently has a $1.5 billion price tag.
The Sacramento River Cats are the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. Their West Sacramento ballpark can host just over 14,000 fans, including standing room and lawn seats. It’s a far cry from the cavernous 63,000-seat Oakland Coliseum, which doubled as both a baseball and football stadium when the Raiders roamed the East Bay from 1966 until 1981 and again from 1995 through 2019. The Raiders, who played in Los Angeles in between their Oakland stints, moved to Las Vegas in 2020.
The lease at Oakland Coliseum expires after the current season, but the acrimonious relationship between Fisher and the city left the A’s few viable options on where to play while the Las Vegas venue is being built. (Fisher initially announced the relocation plans after MLB set its playing schedule for the 2024 season.)
The San Francisco Giants appeared unwilling to share Oracle Park with their regional rivals, and the open-air Las Vegas Ballpark—home to the A’s Triple-A affiliate Las Vegas Aviators—was not under serious consideration, the A’s said, because of the sweltering Nevada heat in the summer. According to ESPN, the move to Sacramento may require a renegotiation of the team’s deal with regional sports network NBC Sports California, which also broadcasts Kings games.
While MLB has given the OK for the Sacramento move, the MLB Players Association also needs to approve the relocation. “The MLBPA has had preliminary discussions with MLB about a range of issues related to the temporary relocation and we expect those discussions to continue,” a union spokesperson told Sportico.
In a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Oakland mayor Sheng Thao said that the city “offered a deal that was fair to the A’s and was fiscally responsible for our city. 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.”
With assistance from Barry M. Bloom.
