A’s departure would mark an unprecedented third strike for Oakland

• Read more:If the A’s do leave Oakland, can the Coliseum be salvaged?

A’s President Dave Kaval said Wednesday night that a move to Las Vegas is not certain.

“Everything is not done,” Kaval said. “Where we are is we have a land deal in place in Nevada and we are in positive discussions with the public policymakers on an incentives package. Nothing is fully completed. But we are focusing our efforts on Las Vegas. That is where the energy is going, especially with the timeline that we’re on.”

If the A’s do leave, they would become the third major pro sports team to depart Oakland in less than a decade. The NBA’s Warriors relocated to San Francisco in 2019, moving into newly built Chase Center. The NFL’s Raiders moved to Las Vegas in 2020.

The Warriors made the Coliseum Arena their full-time home in 1971 and won four NBA titles while playing at the site. The Raiders won two Super Bowls while playing in Oakland before moving to Los Angeles in 1982, then back to Oakland in 1995 for another 25 seasons.

Other cities have felt the sting of losing teams, but perhaps not in such a concentrated span as Oakland would if the A’s, who arrived in the Bay Area in 1968 and have won four World Series there, also leave.

“I don’t know of any other case where that’s happened, and I doubt very much that it’s happened,” said Andrew Zimbalist, a renowned sports economist at Smith College in Massachusetts. “Keep in mind, of course, that they haven’t lost the A’s yet.”

On Wednesday, Kaval said the A’s are pursuing a public-private partnership in Las Vegas that would help fund a ballpark there. The A’s also would need their relocation to be approved by a 75% vote of MLB owners.

It also isn’t unprecedented for the A’s to buy land in their longtime pursuit of a stadium. The team in 2006 announced an agreement to buy 143 acres in Fremont for a potential ballpark there that didn’t materialize. The A’s own half of the Coliseum site where their current stadium sits.

Previous attempts by the team to secure a new stadium have failed. Into this week, the A’s and City of Oakland were negotiating on a proposed ballpark-development project at Howard Terminal. Zimbalist wondered whether the A’s might have been “looking for leverage” by agreeing to buy land in Las Vegas.

“I don’t think Las Vegas has a lot of resources at this point to build another stadium,” Zimbalist said. “So I can’t help but ask myself … whether that’s mostly for leverage in bargaining with Oakland.”

Stanford economics Professor Roger Noll, an expert on stadium financing, said he thinks the A’s intend to leave, to Las Vegas or elsewhere.

“I believe they’re gone,” Noll said. “The bottom line to it is that neither Oakland nor Alameda County can afford a half-billion dollars or more to subsidize a sports team.”

Noll noted it’s “not unusual for cities to lose teams” historically. Los Angeles lost both the Raiders (back to Oakland) and the NFL’s Rams (to St. Louis) after the 1994 season. (The Rams moved back to L.A. in 2016, followed in 2017 by the Chargers, who moved from San Diego.) The last MLB franchise to move was the Montreal Expos, who became the Washington Nationals in 2005.

The Giants and Dodgers both left New York in 1958 for California. The A’s played in Philadelphia and in Kansas City before moving to Oakland.

With Oakland potentially losing a third team, Noll said: “I think the important distinction here is there is almost no hope of replacing any of them.”

Noll offered two reasons. Oakland “right now … simply can’t afford the kind of subsidies that teams can successfully demand,” he said. Secondly, Noll said, leagues are expanding less often than before.

The idea of Oakland landing an MLB expansion franchise specifically, in the event of the A’s leaving, could sound unlikely, though one industry source did not rule out the possibility, saying the city’s current issues are with its playing facilities, not the market. MLB has said it could expand by two teams after the A’s and Tampa Bay stadium situations are resolved.

“If you state, ‘Is Oakland a viable place for a professional sports team?,’ the answer is yes,” Noll said. “The teams that are there can make money. I don’t think the A’s make a lot of money, but both the Warriors and the Raiders made money playing in Oakland.

“但问题是能够让莫ney isn’t enough. You’ve also got to get hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies. And it’s that latter feature Oakland can’t match, and probably in the foreseeable future will never match.”

Zimbalist said that, as opposed to when the Raiders, Warriors and A’s moved into Oakland, arenas and stadiums now are often built in city centers, closer to business and higher-rent districts, and under the changing model, Oakland “began to lose some of its appeal.”

The site the A’s have a deal for in Las Vegas is 49 acres, not far from T-Mobile Arena, where the NHL’s Golden Knights play, and the Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium. Kaval said the A’s believe it is big enough for some mixed-use development. Unlike their proposal in Oakland, which included housing, the Las Vegas development would be “more like an entertainment-type area” with retail and restaurants, Kaval said.

Mark Rosentraub, professor of sports management at the University of Michigan, said he thinks an A’s move would be a “missed opportunity” to build a ballpark district similar to San Diego’s at the current Coliseum site. Rosentraub said he considers the Las Vegas site the A’s chose “the better of the three options they had” in that area.

“They put some big chips in the middle of the table,” Rosentraub said. “This is not to be seen as a trivial action.”

The A’s, started in Philadelphia in 1901, moved to Kansas City in 1955 and to Oakland in 1968. The team has contended for stretches in recent years but slashed payroll before last season, traded popular players and raised ticket prices. As a result, the A’s ranked last in attendance in 2022. And the team is off to a dismal start this season, both on the stands and in the field.

Dave Stewart, an Oakland native and former A’s pitcher, reminisced Thursday about jumping the fence at age 11 to watch players like Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando and Ramón Webster. Stewart later pitched for the A’s for half of his 16-year major-league career, playing on teams that won one World Series and reached two others, He had his number retired by the A’s last year.

Now, as Oakland faces the possibility of the A’s leaving, Stewart said the city is losing something more — a legacy of championship athletes, from Rickey Henderson to Joe Morgan, Jason Kidd to Bill Russell.

“To lose a franchise, it’s unimaginable,” Stewart said. “I still feel hope that the Oakland A’s remain in Oakland. And the reason why I remain hopeful they remain in Oakland is because the community has wrapped themselves around that organization. They’ve seen the good times and they’ve seen the lean times.”

Chronicle staff writer Sarah Ravani contributed to this report.

Reach Matt Kawahara: mkawahara@sfchronicle.com