The Oakland Athletics are expected to meet with local officials, including those from the City of Oakland and County of Alameda, on Thursday to discuss a lease extension to remain at the Oakland Coliseum, according to John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle. A’s team president Dave Kaval is expected to be among those in attendance.
As it stands, the A’s lease at the Coliseum is scheduled to expire at the end of the 2024 season. The A’s are in the midst of a relocation attempt to Las Vegas, but they have several reasons to push for a short-term extension on the lease. As Shea notes, part of the motivation could be to continue fetching local broadcast revenue:
By staying at the Coliseum, the A’s would remain in their market and continue receiving regional-sports-network checks, per their contract with NBC Sports California, which amounted to $67 million last year. That deal runs through 2034.
Even if the A’s are successful in their bid to relocate to Las Vegas, their new stadium is not expected to be ready until the start of the 2028 season. That leaves them with three seasons’ worth of home games to place between the end of their time in Oakland and the beginning of their time in Las Vegas. The A’s could, in theory, spend that time at a minor-league ballpark, in Vegas or elsewhere, but no plans have been formalized.
This news comes after a week of heavy public criticism aimed at the A’s and their relocation plans. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman expressed her opinion that the team should find a way to remain in Oakland during a podcast appearance. Oakland mayor Sheng Thao offered her own analysis a few days later, questioning the viability of A’s owner John Fisher.
“There was a thought that this plan he had in the beginning was viable. And now we’re seeing that actually, maybe the plan isn’t viable,” Thao told The Athletic. “The question becomes, are the plans not viable or is it that the ownership’s not viable?”
