As the A’s face new hurdles in Oakland, they are making progress toward securing land — and a new home — in Las Vegas.

The MLB team is simultaneously pursuing both options as it seeks to move from the 56-year-old RingCentral Coliseum.

• A’s team president Dave Kaval said a decision could come by May on a Las Vegas site for a potential $1 billion domed stadium.
• The timing is partly based on the number of proposed stadium renderings to be included in the site announcement. 
• The team has made bids on at least five locations in Vegas alone.

“We’ve been going back and forth on term sheets with the owners of the land or with the potential partners, and making a lot of progress,” Kaval said. 

“There’s been a tremendous amount of negotiation in a positive way, and we hope to have a final one shortly here that we can announce and really move forward to the next stage.”

Lawsuits Not a Joke

Meanwhile, the A’s are facing a new challenge in their bid for a $12 billion stadium and development area on the Oakland waterfront. 

The Union Pacific Railroad Company and a coalition of marine, port, and transportation groups under the banner of the Oakland Stadium Alliance filed separate lawsuits challenging the city council’s certification of the environmental impact report for a potential new ballpark. 

“I thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke, but I guess the joke was on me,” Kaval quipped.

Six state attorneys general have sent a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell threatening to investigate allegations of mistreatment of female employees. 

Wednesday’s letter was sent by the attorneys general offices in Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, and New York — where the NFL is headquartered. 

• The letter was based primarily on allegations from more than 30 women detailed in a New York Times investigation from February. 
• It noted the NFL’s poor handling of the Ray Rice domestic abuse case in 2014 and cited the NFL’s promise to “improve” — though reports suggest it hasn’t. 

“Pink jerseys are not a replacement for equal treatment and full inclusion of women in the workplace,” the letter stated. 

Team-Specific Allegations

Several other reports suggest discrimination against women and people of color exists not only at NFL headquarters, but at the team level.

Pittsburgh Steelers assistant coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit against the Dolphins, Broncos, Giants, Texans, Titans, Cardinals, and 26 other “John Doe” NFL teams alleging teams engage in racially discriminatory hiring practices. Two more coaches — Steve Wilks and Ray Horton — joined the suit Thursday, according to ESPN.

There have been several stories detailing an alleged culture of harassment at the Washington Commanders, including a Washington Post story from 2020.

Now, the House Oversight Committee is investigating the team. The probe has recently been expanded to include allegations that the Commanders also used “two books” to report finances and withheld ticket revenue from other teams, as Front Office Sports first reported.

Gaming startup Improbable Worlds has raised $150 million for its new project, M², which is now valued at $1 billion, according to the company.

M² is a blockchain-enabled system that connects to the metaverse. Improbable, which received a roughly $2 billion valuation in 2018, says M² is an independent entity.

Led by longtime Improbable backers Andreessen Horowitz and SoftBank Group, the round will help the startup focus on the future.

• The company, which provides software supporting online multiplayer games, has seen high turnover from its top leaders.
• Multiple games using Improbable’s technology have reportedly failed.

“We’ve basically deep-pivoted our tech and R&D and other stuff toward Web3 over the last year, and this is a product of that,” Improbable co-founder and CEO Herman Narula said about M².

How It Works

Improbable launched Morpheus last year, a product allowing more than 10,000 players to be in a virtual space together — a significant hike from the 100-person limit on “Fortnite.” Morpheus and M² will go together, allowing users to move between virtual worlds.

Crypto investors Digital Currency Group, Ethereal Ventures, and CMT also participated in the round. Because of the influence venture capitalists can have over projects similar to M² — they receive large amounts of crypto tokens that grant them votes — Narula made it clear that the investors won’t have majority control. 

“We want to get to a place where the communities that make up the network have a lot more say,” he said.