Trending
By Jim Caltagirone
For the Mirror
Identifying the American city which offers the most attractive options for spectator sports is like conducting a national home search based on the probability of avoiding natural disasters.
Absolute certainty is purely subjective.
For the record, a graphic published in a national magazine several years ago identified the Southwest as the region most frequently spared from tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, floods and earthquakes.
By signing a binding purchase agreement for 49 acres just off the Las Vegas strip, the Oakland A's have crowned Southern Nevada as the go-to destination for the obsessive sports fan.
The greater Las Vegas area is already home to the NHL's Golden Knights, NFL's Raiders, NBA's Summer League, AAA professional baseball, UNLV athletics, Las Vegas Bowl, numerous postseason college basketball tournaments, and a full lineup of motor racing.
The proposed ballpark's location in the "Resort Corridor" of Las Vegas is considered ideal for tourists and residents.
"About 70 percent of our fans are going to be locals, so we want to make sure we cater to them, to have a great experience at the ballpark," said A's President Dave Kaval. "And this location will do that."
Groundbreaking for the ballpark is projected for 2024, with occupancy anticipated for the 2027 season.
The A's have been unsuccessfully lobbying for a new ballpark in Oakland for two decades. The Las Vegas site will accommodate a 30,000-seat stadium that could be re-purposed for a variety of other events.
Major League Baseball supports the franchise's move.
The addition of an MLB schedule will enable Las Vegas to promote fan access to top-tier professional sports year-round and move the city to within one sport (basketball) of joining the twelve metropolitan areas that currently support teams in the four major leagues.
As for the city of Oakland, the A's departure will leave the city without a team in the major professional leagues for the first time since 1959.
Oakland cannot even claim the NBA's Warriors as its own because Golden State relocated from Oracle Arena in Oakland to the Chase Center in San Francisco in 2019.
Previous relocations 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 is cold comfort to sports fans in Oakland that numerous cities have lost multiple franchises. But losing franchises in all four major sports is an ignominious first.
The fiscal reality in Oakland finally forced ownership and Major League Baseball to clear a path to Las Vegas for the A's.
Oakland Coliseum, the team's current ballpark, is nearly 60 years old. As an aging structure in need of significant capital expenditures, it simply cannot measure up to the newer ballparks in relation to aesthetics and amenities.
Unreliable plumbing, broken seats and roaming feral cats don't help.
Perhaps not surprisingly, attendance at the ballpark in 2022 was the worst in the major leagues. On average, less than 10,000 fans attended home games.
The evolution of Las Vegas as a host city to three professional sports teams is not as momentous as the exodus of the Dodgers and Giants from New York in the late 1950s, but it certainly demonstrates the universality of the city's appeal.
When a franchise can count on out-of-towners for 30 percent of its attendance total, the odds are definitely in favor of the house.
Jim Caltagirone resides in Altoona. He is a regular contributor to Voice of the Fan.