Northern Nevada's top 2023 sports stories: No. 7 Oakland A's announce move to Las Vegas | Nevada Sports Net

Nevada Sports Net is counting down Northern Nevada’s top-15 sports stories of 2023. The voting was completed by a 10-person NSN panel with each respondent providing a top-10 list with the first-place story getting 10 points, the second-place story getting nine points and so on. We will unveil one story a day until we get to No. 1. Here is today’s entry.

No. 7

Headline: Oakland A’s announce move to Las Vegas

Points: 33 (out of a total of 100)

In short: Over the last several years, Las Vegas has turned from a college sports town to a pro sports town, first adding the NHL Vegas Golden Knights before welcoming the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces and finally the Las Vegas Raiders. But in 2023, a new pro sports team announced a move to Las Vegas, those being MLB’s Oakland Athletics, who after a decade of angling for a new ballpark in the Bay Area, decided instead to relocate to a stadium on the Las Vegas strip. In June, the Nevada legislature approved $380 million in taxpayer money toward a $1.5 billion stadium on the Tropicana site that would feature a partially retractable roof with a capacity of 33,000 fans. In November, MLB owners unanimously approved Oakland’s move to Las Vegas. While ground has not been broken and hurdles remain, the A’s are poised to bring another professional baseball team to Southern Nevada as soon as the 2028 season.

Note to quote: “It’s a day of mixed emotions because we tried very hard to stay in Oakland, and we spent seven years and really blood, sweat and tears and got many approvals but never got to the point where we had a binding agreement or a path forward. So, we’re very empathetic to our fans. We know it’s a challenging day. We know their sadness. We understand that. But by the same token, we do have an exciting new chapter in Las Vegas. And finally after over 20 years, we have some direction with the franchise, which we think is important, and we owe that to the other owners, the players and everyone involved, all the communities, to actually have a path forward.” — A’s president Dave Kaval