Report: One city emerging as front-runner to host A's from 2025-27

The Oakland Athletics are closer to solving their home-field conundrum.
Evan Drellich of The Athletic is reporting that Sacramento has emerged as the front-runner to host the team from 2025-27 before it moves to Las Vegas. He added a decision will be made "in weeks" rather than months. There's still a slight chance the city of Oakland will extend its lease for the team.

"We had a constructive and positive meeting with the City of Oakland and Alameda County," an A's spokesman told Drellich, "and are focused on continuing conversations around a lease extension at the Coliseum."

The A's playing in Oakland again seems highly unlikely, though. According to Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, team owner John Fisher and team president Dave Kaval toured Sutter Health Park in Sacramento on Jan. 18. The ballpark is home to the Sacramento River Cats – the San Francisco Giants Triple-A affiliate – and can seat 14,000.
Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association must approve a temporary destination. Commissioner Rob Manfred admitted this will be a challenging process. 

"The reality of the situation is that whenever you're leaving a market where you've been for decades, and you're going to make a move to a different city where there's not a stadium, that's a really difficult undertaking," Manfred told Drellich. "And it's not going to be seamless, smooth — there are going to be bumps along the road. I am confident that the deal in Las Vegas is solid, that the A's will build a stadium in Las Vegas and play there in 2028."

Wherever the A's play after the 2024 season, they must successfully rebuild to attract new fans. 

Over the past two seasons combined, the club has posted an atrocious 110-214 record. The A's last won the American League West in 2020 and haven't won a World Series since 1989, the ninth-longest drought in baseball.