The Oakland, MLB stadium lease ends in two years.
It is now March and Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics franchise is no closer to getting a new stadium than the business was 15 years ago. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has spent years telling Oakland and Alameda County and California politicians to hurry up and give Athletics owner John Fisher hundreds of millions of dollars along with environmental approvals so Fisher can move his business from one part of Oakland to the city’s bayfront at Howard Terminal. Manfred is also applying some pressure on Las Vegas and Nevada politicians to come up with a suitable ballpark plan in the event Fisher cannot get the funding he needs to build a stadium-village in Oakland. “This year they kind of got a deadline,” Manfred said. “They need to have an agreement in place by next January, really important from the perspective of the club.” That deadline keeps getting pushed back but there may be a real deadline as Fisher has two years left on his stadium deal in Oakland. But time is running out in Las Vegas, if Fisher wants to go to Nevada in time for the 2025 season. It takes two years to build a Major League Baseball facility. Even if Fisher got a deal done by the end of March 2023, a Las Vegas stadium would not be ready for Opening Day 2025.
In 1980, then-A’s owner Charlie Finley agreed in principle to sell the team to Marvin Davis, who planned to move the Athletics to Denver. Oakland and Alameda County blocked the deal. Various owners have tried to get a new Oakland or Fremont or San Jose Athletics stadium built and have failed. San Jose was a problem as the San Francisco Giants ownership controlled the territory even though voters in the city said no to a Giants stadium. The Oakland market remains a problem.
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