The Oakland A's have worn out their welcome in Northern California. They have not only lost dozens of games this year, but they've also lost the support of most of their fanbase.
The A's have the worst record in all of baseball this season as of Sept. 6 at 42 wins and 97 losses, with 23 games remaining. The team's average attendance per game in 2023 is the worst in Major League Baseball at 10,463, compared to baseball's highest attendance average from the Los Angeles Dodgers at 47,789 per game as of Sept. 6.
The team did draw over 27,000 to a fans-organized reverse boycott game in June, where hundreds of fans began wearing "Sell" t-shirts imploring owner John Fisher to sell the team to keep it in Oakland. Fisher has, however, said he has no interest in selling the team. He's all set to move the team to a new ballpark in Las Vegas.
A's have a stadium deal in Las Vegas
Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo in June signed a bill approving a $380 million public funding package for a new 30,000-seat baseball stadium on the Las Vegas Strip. Fisher in May had reached an agreement with Bally's Corp. (BALY) -), which holds a 50-year lease on the 34-acre site of the Tropicana, to build a $1.5 billion stadium on a portion of the hotel-casino site.
The A's had been negotiating with the City of Oakland for a $1 billion waterfront ballpark as part of a $12 billion Howard Terminal project near the city's Jack London Square, which the team first unveiled back in 2018. The team had problems finalizing a deal as the city missed deadlines needed to move forward with an A's ballpark.
The A's lease at the RingCentral Coliseum expires at the end of 2024, and MLB officials said the team would need to have a new ballpark plan settled by then if it was going to remain in Oakland. But Fisher gave up on the Oakland deal as negotiations dragged on, and he set his sights on Vegas.
All signs point to Las Vegas for the A's new ballpark, and everything was all systems go after the team secured public funding from the state of Nevada. Or did they?
Education group seeks referendum on A's ballpark funding
Now comes a Las Vegas organization that calls itself "Schools Over Stadiums." The group, associated with the Nevada State Education Association, has filed a referendum petition to repeal the public funding for the A's stadium on the Strip, according to a statement released on X.
“Schools Over Stadiums has been committed to pursuing every possible path to stop the use of public funds to subsidize a billionaire’s stadium and that has always included putting the question to Nevada voters who were effectively shut out of the process,” Dawn Etcheverry, president of Schools Over Stadiums, said in the statement. “Nevada’s priorities are misguided and when we launched Schools Over Stadiums in June, our goal was to ensure that public funds go to the services Nevadans depend on like our public schools, not to a California billionaire for a stadium.”
The organization in its statement criticized the Nevada State Legislature for failing to hear a single bill in its 82nd Legislative Session to reduce the state's overcrowded classrooms, and did nothing to generate new revenue streams for schools. Instead, after the regular legislative session ended, the governor called a special session to focus on Senate Bill 1 to provide $380 million in public financing for the A's stadium.
"This referendum petition will target specific parts of Senate Bill 1 to strip public funding for the proposed stadium regardless of what State and County officials agree (to) in any sort of development deal," Alexander Marks of Schools Over Stadiums said in the statement. "We're excited to get out there and start gathering signatures from Nevadans who want to put our schools first. We're confident that a majority of Nevadans will join us in taking action to put Nevada's priorities back in line so we can address an education system that ranks 48th in funding with the largest class sizes and highest vacancies in the country."
