By the end of the last calendar year, the Oakland Athletics were scheduled to have a plan in place for where they would be playing their home games from the 2025 season to the 2027 season. However, 2024 has arrived and there has still been no progress.
Two cities appear the most likely to host the Athletics on a temporary basis: Sacramento and Salt Lake City. From a local standpoint, Sacramento appears to be the favorite as the mayor is pleased that a major league baseball team would be joining the city. If the Athletics were to play their home games in Sacramento, they would be sharing a stadium with the San Francisco Giants Triple-A affiliate, the Sacramento River Cats. The ballpark, Sutter Heath park has a capacity of up to 14,000 including standing-room-only tickets and lawn seats.
However, Utah has presented an interesting case of their own. Big League Utah, the group attempting to lure the Athletics to Salt Lake City have created several billboards with the words “Utah wants the A’s.” In addition, a new Triple-A stadium should finish construction by 2025 which can seat up to 11,000 fans.
Many have wondered why the Athletics cannot simply extend their lease and play the rest of their home games in Oakland until their stadium in Las Vegas is built. The main reason for why this will not happen is because of how complicated the negotiations could be. In the past, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao has stated that the only way she would consider extending the lease is if Oakland was guaranteed to receive an expansion team. This, coupled with the fact that the team and the city have not talked about a lease extension in over 10 months makes this very unlikely.
While the Athletics could make the move to Las Vegas in 2025 and play at their Triple-A affiliate stadium in Sumerlin, Nevada, it would not make the move appear as marquee as originally intended. While funding is being given to the city, only part of it can be from the public. Everything else must be funded by private financiers or Las Vegas will be behind schedule if the stadium does not begin construction by 2025.
While the bigger question of when the new stadium will begin construction remains in limbo, the more urgent question is where the Athletics will play their home games from 2025 to 2027. Since the move became approved by owners, the team has made progress in finding a temporary home. The success of the team’s temporary home will be crucial in producing excitement and anticipation centered around the move to Las Vegas.
