By Jim Caltagirone
For the mirror
Identifying the American city that offers the most attractive opportunities for spectator sports is like conducting a national housing hunt based on the likelihood of avoiding natural disasters.
Absolute certainty is purely subjective.
As a reminder, a chart published in a national journal a few years ago identified the Southwest as the region most spared by tornadoes, hurricanes, snowstorms, floods and earthquakes.
By signing a binding purchase agreement for 49 acres right on the Las Vegas Strip, the Oakland A’s have crowned Southern Nevada as a destination for obsessive sports fans.
The Las Vegas metro area is already home to the NHL’s Golden Knights, the NFL’s Raiders, the NBA’s Summer League, AAA pro baseball, UNLV athletics, the Las Vegas Bowl, numerous post-season college basketball tournaments and a full range of motor racing events.
The location of the proposed baseball stadium in Las Vegas’ resort corridor is considered ideal for both tourists and residents.
“About 70 percent of our fans will be local, so we want to make sure we cater to them to have a great experience at the ballpark,” said Dave Kaval, president of A. “And this location will do that.”
Groundbreaking for the baseball stadium is scheduled for 2024, with occupancy expected for the 2027 season.
The A’s lobbied unsuccessfully for a new ballpark in Oakland for two decades. The Las Vegas location will house a 30,000-seat stadium that could be repurposed for a variety of other events.
Major League Baseball supports franchise move.
The addition of an MLB schedule will allow Las Vegas to encourage fan access to top-flight professional sports year-round and propel the city to one sport (basketball) to join the twelve metro areas that currently have teams in the major four support leagues.
As for the city of Oakland, the departure of the A will leave the city without a team in the major professional leagues for the first time since 1959.
Oakland can’t even claim the NBA’s Warriors since Golden State relocated from Oakland’s Oracle Arena to San Francisco’s Chase Center in 2019.
Previous moves have included the NHL’s Seals in 1976 and the NFL’s Raiders in 1982 (for Los Angeles), and then again in 2020 (for Las Vegas), after a 25-year return to Oakland.
It’s cold consolation for Oakland sports fans that numerous cities have lost multiple franchises. But the loss of concessions in all four major sports is a shameful first.
Oakland’s fiscal reality eventually forced the owners and Major League Baseball to give the A’s a way to Las Vegas.
Oakland Coliseum, the team’s current stadium, is almost 60 years old. As an aging building that requires significant investment, it simply cannot compete with the newer standards in terms of aesthetics and facilities.
Unreliable plumbing, broken seats, and roaming feral cats aren’t helping.
Perhaps not surprisingly, ballpark attendance in 2022 was the worst in any major league. On average, less than 10,000 fans attended home games.
The development of Las Vegas as the host city for three professional sports teams isn’t as significant as the exodus of the Dodgers and Giants from New York in the late 1950s, but it certainly demonstrates the city’s universal appeal.
If a franchisee can count on outside visitors for 30 percent of its total attendance, the odds are definitely in their favor.
Jim Caltagirone lives in Altoona. He is a regular contributor to Voice of the Fan.
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