On Sept. 26, 2024, over 45,000 people gathered at the Oakland Coliseum, in a mix of joy and sadness as they watched their beloved A’s play the team’s final game in Oakland.
That afternoon, the A’s defeated the Texas Rangers 3-2 in a win that served not only as the send-off for the city’s baseball franchise, but represented the last major professional sports team to abandon the city within the decade.
In 2019, Oakland lost the dynastic Golden State Warriors when they moved across the bay to San Francisco. The following year, the Oakland Raiders headed to Las Vegas in pursuit of their own financial windfall, and paved the way for the A’s to move to that same city of renowned glitz and glamour.
But for the people the teams left behind, the reckoning has not been easy. During their 60-year tenure in Oakland that began with the Raiders who started playing here in 1966, the three teams brought a total of 10 championships to the city: two for the Raiders, four for the Warriors, and four for the A’s.
In that time, generations of fans grew up feeling loyalty to and love for the players — and now it’s all a distant memory.
“I grew up going to games with friends and family,” recalled Jenna Anderson, a schoolteacher in San Jose. “It gave us something to do on any random night. We could just get cheap tickets and see some of our favorite athletes. There wasn’t anything like it.”
Another lifelong fan, A’s season ticket holder David Hernandez, who attended the final game at the Coliseum, had his own memories to share about watching Oakland’s sports as a child.
“My father has pictures of holding me here as a baby, and it’s also one of my oldest memories,” Hernandez said. “Games in Oakland were just different in the best way.”
There were reasons Oakland’s professional teams seemed to all pull out of the city at once.
For one, between the years 2019 and 2024, Oakland was responsible for 86 percent of the crimes committed in Alameda County. In 2023, a study was released showing that robberies had increased by 30 percent, and homicides by 37 percent, compared to 2019.
As a result, many fans during this period felt unsafe going to games, and ownership noticed the drop-off in attendance.
At the same time for the A’s, owner John Fisher decided not to spend the money required to improve the dilapidated stadium. Fans experienced dirty and broken seats, expensive food, limited memorabilia at team stores, and even an opossum problem within the stadium walls.
Not only that, for about 20 years, Fisher wasn’t paying big contracts to top level players the franchise needed to win.
Additionally, the City of Oakland throughout those years didn’t help allocate funding for any of the teams. On the contrary, the city increased the annual price astronomically for the A’s to remain at the Coliseum, from $1.25 million to $20 million, while claiming it was trying “to protect the taxpayers” from the costs of remodeling the historic stadium.
Meanwhile, A’s star players were being traded as the team lost more games, and fans began to protest by not buying tickets, so the stadium regularly appeared close to empty on game nights. This led to the conversation of the team possibly leaving Oakland for good.
Ownership wasn’t making money, so it looked to the decisions made by the Raiders for guidance. On Nov. 16, 2023, after years of negotiating, Major League Baseball owners unanimously voted to relocate the A’s to Las Vegas, ending a culture of some of the most loyal fans in all of sports.
Now, the Coliseum hosts a United Soccer League team, the Oakland Roots. And nearby, the Oakland Ballers, an Independent League baseball team founded in 2023 — who won the 2025 Pioneer League Championship — have gained some of the fans who lost the A’s.
But for the fans who remember how Oakland sports used to be, there’s no replacement for the past. According to some, the city’s sports teams were connected to something bigger — rooted to the very way they were raised.
“It’s just not the same — seeing a soccer field in a baseball [or] football stadium doesn’t even look right,” said Calvin Wunderman, a lifelong fan.
“I won’t ever go to a Las Vegas A’s game. They’re supposed to be here, in Oakland.”