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By Steve Adams | November 16, 2023 at 8:22am CDT

Major League Baseball’s owners have unanimously voted to approve the Athletics’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas, tweets John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle. The approval was seen as something of a formality, with little — if any — opposition from the sport’s other owners anticipated.

The Athletics’ current lease at the Coliseum only runs through the end of the 2024 season, which leaves plenty of questions about where the club will play its home games in the interim. Among the potential scenarios that have been discussed are sharing the Giants’ Oracle Park, playing home games at their Triple-A stadium in Las Vegas, or temporarily extending the current lease. The current plan, while not yet final, could see them split their time between multiple sites, tweets Bob Nightengale of USA Today. The Athletics plan to build a $1.5 billion stadium with a capacity of 33,000 on the Las Vegas strip, at the site of the Tropicana Casino. That new home, however, is not expected to be ready until the start of the 2028 season.

With the valuation of the Athletics’ franchise slated to rise following the move, Nightengale further reports that the remaining owners included a provision with their vote that team owner John Fisher would be taxed “heavily” on any sale if he ultimately strives to sell the club for an immediate profit. The magnitude of the tax isn’t clear, nor is the length of time for which he’ll need to retain ownership of the team before he is exempt from said taxation. In such an event, the amount that he’s taxed would be divided among the other 29 franchises.

It’s the first relocation of any Major League team since the Expos moved from Montreal to Washington D.C. in 2005 (and, of course, became the Washington Nationals). The move from Oakland to Vegas, while still not yet 100% official — hurdles remain to be cleared with the funding and construction of the new facility — will bring a 55-year run in Oakland to an end and leave Northern California as the sole territory of the cross-bay Giants.