Oakland A’s Relocation Process To Las Vegas Begins

The Oakland A's have taken another step in moving their team in Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas Review Journal is reporting that the A’s officially began the relocation application process with MLB, one that will eventually end with a vote of the league’s owners that will decide if the team’s future home is indeed a $1.5 billion ballpark on the Las Vegas Strip.

The relocation proceedings started after Gov. Joe Lombardo signed Senate Bill 1 (formerly SB509) into law last week, pledging up to $380 million in public funding toward the planned 30,000-seat retractable roof stadium, soon to be located on the current site of the Tropicana Hotel.

The application will require that the A’s talk to the city of Oakland about why they are planning to leave the market, what efforts they carried out to stay in the Bay Area before exploring relocation, and why Las Vegas would be a better home for the team.

How long that process takes depends on a number of factors: How quickly the A’s put together their relocation application, and how long the appointed relocation committee takes to review the application before taking a vote of the owners.  Manfred says there’s some work that needs to be done, and he's not going to predict a timeline on that yet.

The A’s will need 75 percent of owners to vote in favor of the team’s planned Las Vegas move for it to become official. Manfred declined to answer questions regarding what items might pose a problem to some owners, that could lead to them not being in favor of the A’s relocating to Las Vegas.

Manfred states that "...the owners as a whole understand that there has been a multiyear, approaching a decade effort, where for a vast majority of time the sole focus was Oakland.”

In a nutshell, Las Vegas gets closer and closer to the "Las Vegas Athletics" - whether THEY want to or not.