Raiders owner furious with likely A's move to Las Vegas, won't work with management group

The city of Oakland is likely to lose a second professional sports team to Las Vegas, and the fans are not the only people unhappy about it.

Mark Davis, the owner of the new Las Vegas Raiders, is also pretty furious with the A's likely relocation to the desert. 

Davis sounded off to John Katsilometes of the Las Vegas Review Journal on Thursday night, blaming the A's for the stadium issues in Oakland and forcing the Raiders' hands into a move of their own.

Davis said the A's "squatted" on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for the Raiders to build a new stadium when they signed a 10-year lease the city and said they were the base team in Oakland. 

“They marketed the team as ‘Rooted in Oakland,’ that’s been their mantra through the whole thing,” Davis said. “The slogans they’ve been using have been a slap to the face of the Raiders, and they were trying to win over that type of mentality in the Bay Area. Well all they did was f—- the Bay Area. 

 “We ended up in Las Vegas, which is absolutely fantastic and couldn’t be better,” Davis said. “But the A’s never gave us a real good chance to stay up in Oakland.”

Davis added that he has nothing against the players and was at one time a huge A's fan and remains friends with Reggie Jackson. 

He just has absolutely no interest in working with or cross-promoting teams with this current management group. He added, “I just have, again, a lot of personal animosity toward the front office. But with a new management group? Absolutely.”

Professional sports leagues used to be afraid to touch Vegas because of the connections to gambling, but it has now become one of the hottest professional sports cities in the country. The NHL was the first league to step in with the Golden Knights, who have been a major success both on the ice and off of it. 

A couple of years later the NFL jumped in with the Raiders' move, and now the A's are joining them. The NBA has also expressed interest in putting a team in Las Vegas.