Oakland on verge of losing all three teams

With Warriors on their way out, will Raiders and A’s join them?

Within a few short years, the city of Oakland could become deprived of any major sports team for the first time since 1960.

All three Oakland sports teams, the Raiders, Athletics, and Warriors, are looking to move out. The Warriors already have plans to begin building a new arena in San Francisco in 2016 and hope to move into the arena possibly as early as the fall of 2017.

The defending NBA Champions will be returning to San Francisco, where they played from 1962-71. They have played in Oracle Arena in Oakland ever since.

The move was announced in 2012, years prior to their championship victory. The project will be privately financed. The 12-acre site will include room for public and retail space.

The team had originally planned to move to Piers 30-32, but when those plans were met with harsh opposition, owner Joe Lacob set his sights on a different location in the Mission Bay neighborhood.

The reasoning behind this move is simple. This allows the Warriors to move out of Oracle Arena, the oldest arena in the NBA, and into a brand new state-of-the-art facility.

The new stadium will hopefully attract talented players to join the Warriors via free agency. The team will also make millions in sponsorships, according to an article written for fool.com.

But a move like this doesn’t come without consequence. The Warriors’ East Bay fanbase, loyal through a 40-year title drought, will be negatively affected by the move. Some of the most avid fans in the game are being alienated as their team leaves their city.

Similarly, the Raiders have strongly pursued plans to leave Oakland and the dilapitated O.co Coliseum they share with the A’s. The Raiders’ focus has been Southern California. They would prefer to have a new stadium built in Oakland, but the city has not cooperated to a reasonable extent, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Instead, they could once more be known as the Los Angeles Raiders. But there’s one issue. The San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Rams also have their sights set on L.A., providing fierce competition for an anxious Raiders organization.

Despite an Oct. 11 report that the Raiders are the least likely of the three teams to move down south, owner Mark Davis remains confident that his club has a decent chance of being the one chosen for L.A.

The Raiders do plan on submitting a bid for relocation. Another option they are exploring is a joint stadium in Carson with the Chargers, an option which has recently been supported by Disney CEO Bob Iger, according to USA Today.

Nothing is quite as imminent for the Athletics. Their hopes of relocating to San Jose have been shot down by the neighboring San Francisco Giants (who own territorial rights to San Jose), Major League Baseball, and even the Supreme Court. While the A’s aren’t in strong pursuit of any particular plan, the goal is to remain in the Bay Area.

Something must be done. O.co Coliseum, built in 1962, is showing its age. There have been issues with sewage, lights, and walls in the last few years alone. Even the new scoreboards added by the Athletics prior to the 2015 season is just putting lipstick on a pig.

Football and baseball teams cannot reasonably share a stadium, especially not one as old and run-down as O.co.

Not only is O.co old and falling apart, it also simply isn’t a good stadium. Its walls are unattractive. Plus, its vast foul territory is horrible for hitters, as foul balls that would be 10 rows deep in any other stadium are caught for outs at the Coliseum. This means free agent hitters have no desire to come to Oakland.

The Coliseum isn’t just hurting the A’s financially. It’s also hampering their ability to put a quality team on the field.

The East Bay will definitely be losing the Warriors, seems likely to lose the Raiders, and could even say goodbye to the Athletics, all within the next decade or less.

The city of Oakland needs to step up its game. Losing these three organizations would surely impact the city’s economy and reputation negatively, along with the culture.

It’s too late to keep the Warriors, but the Raiders and Athletics could still be saved. We are on the brink of an exodus. It’s your move to prevent it, Oakland.