Las Vegas sees itself as better long-term opportunity for the Oakland A's

The long-term future of the Oakland A's remains in doubt, and the city of Las Vegas seems ready to pounce. 

Dan Logan, the president and COO of the Triple-A Las Vegas Aviators, said this weekend that Vegas provides a better long-term opportunity for the A's than Oakland does. 

The Aviators are also the top minor league affiliate of the A's, while the city is hosting a two-game spring training set between the A's and Cincinnati Reds this weekend.

"Las Vegas had always been a unique sports market, a really good sports market," Logan told ESPN. "It makes sense. My perspective, make the best deal you can in Vegas and start to turn this community on. And every other [fan base] on. Las Vegas offers a dynamic that no other team has. We have 45 million visitors annually in this market, and that's what we want—heads in beds. That's what Las Vegas is about."

After having no professional sports teams for decades, Vegas is rapidly becoming one of the biggest sports towns in the country. It all began with the NHL's Golden Knights went to the Stanley Cup Final in their first year of existence and have remained a serious Stanley Cup contender every year since. It continued with the relocation of the NFL's Raiders, also from Oakland. 

Vegas now has its sights set on an MLB and NBA team. 

Logan acknowledged that Vegas would probably need to build a retractable roof stadium to deal with the high summer temperatures, and that would obviously take some time. Though, it is worth also noting that the Triple-A team in Las Vegas, which has existed since the early 1980s, does not play in a retractable roof stadium. 

The A's play in one that is widely regarded as one of the worst stadiums in professional sports, and have been unable to secure a new stadium deal in Oakland—that is also what contributed to the Raiders leaving for Las Vegas a couple of years ago. It would be quite a punch to lose a second professional sports franchise to the same city, but that seems to be an increasingly more likely scenario for Oakland and the Athletics.