With the end of the Oakland Athletics 2024 MLB season, we are likely looking at the end of the team’s tenure at the Oakland Coliseum. And while it’s not a totally done deal, this move surely marks the end of multiuse stadiums in professional baseball and football.
At one time the Oakland Coliseum and Oakland Arena (under various naming-rights deals, of course) was one of the business sports and entertainment complexed in the United States. The$25.5-million Coliseum, as well as the adjacent Oakland Arena, was built by Alameda County to attract professional sports to the East Bay, opening in 1966 as the home of the AFL’s Oakland Raiders. The Kansas City Athletics followed suit in the 1968 season, under owner Charlie Finley. On the arena side, the WHL’s San Francisco Seals were an original tenant, with the NHL’s California Golden Seals and the ABA’s Oakland Oaks launching play in 1967. The NBA’s Philadelphia Warriors would move west in 1971, playing as the Golden State Warriors there through the 2019 season. Over the years the complex would also host NASL, MLS and USL soccer; USFL football; World Team Tennis; and more. There’s a lot of professional sports history tied to the complex, ranging from Finley’s Swingin’ A’s to Al Davis’s iconic Raiders to the Bash Brothers to Billy Ball.
The Coliseum was not a particularly unique facility in any sense, but as a multiuse facility it was mainstream upon opening. By the time construction launched in 1964, multiuse stadiums had been in use for several years. Time for a definition here. A multiuse stadium is a sports facility specifically designed for reconfiguration based on the sport being played on the field. For RFK Stadium and Shea Stadium, that meant moveable sections depending on whether a baseball diamond or football gridiron was needed.
It was a modern approach to venues in response to changing needs. Baseball stadiums had been hosting college and pro football since the 1920s, but football was a definite afterthought. Wrigley Field hosted the Bears when owner George Halas invested in portable bleachers set up during football season, but Zachary Taylor Davis never envisioned football to be part of the mix when designing The Friendly Confines. Yankee Stadium’s odd configuration allowed for a gridiron laid out crookedly on the turf, while the bathtub layout of the Polo Grounds ended up working better for football than baseball. Even newer ballparks like the Met, Candlestick Park and County Stadium hosted pro football thanks to moveable bleachers wheeled closer to the playing field from the outfield. Baseball was the economic engine driving construction of those ballparks.
With the increasing popularity of pro football and the rise of municipal funding for sports facilities, it made economic sense to build multiuse stadiums, and we saw their construction in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, San Diego, St. Louis, Washington, Montreal, New York and New Orleans. (Yes, the Superdome was originally built to accommodate baseball, and New Orleans sought an MLB team.) But as football and baseball both grew in popularity—with football eventually surpassing baseball—economics dictated that each team capture as much revenue as possible. The model shifted from RFK Stadium and Shea Stadium to the Truman Sports Complex, Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead Stadium. Economics doomed multiuse stadiums.
(One thing to note: the terms multiuse stadium and cookie-cutter stadium are not interchangeable, although broadly speaking almost all cookie-cutter stadiums are multiuse stadiums, but not all multiuse stadiums are cookie-cutter stadiums. The Metrodome was a multiuse stadium, but certainly not a cookie-cutter stadium. Same with the other domes, like the Kingdome.)
(One second thing to note: Not every circular cookie-cutter stadium was in fact circular. Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, for instance, was not circular; in fact, it featured an octorad design, with eight circles—four large, four small—combined to impart the stadium footprint. And San Diego Stadium—later Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium–began life as a baseball-only horseshoe and ended up as an octorad.)
One by one mutliuse stadiums were replaced by single-tenant facilities. Most were torn down: Riverfront Stadium, Veterans Stadium, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, the Metrodome, Kingdome, Shea Stadium and Three Rivers Stadium are no more, while large sections of RFK Stadium have been demolished. Olympic Stadium, home of the Montreal Expos, also hosted Montreal Alouettes CFL football and more recently season-opener CF Montréal (MLS) matches. Toronto’s Rogers Centre remains but has been converted over the years into a baseball-only facility. When the Skydome opened in 1989, it featured a unique system that opened the grandstand to allow for the larger CFL playing field used by the Toronto Argonauts. That mechanical system was removed, and we ended up with a Rogers Centre focused on hosting baseball.
(One more thing to note: there will still be a multiuse venue for professional football and college baseball. U.S. Bank Stadium, home of the Minnesota Vikings, was built to accommodate baseball as well as football, with moveable sections in right field. It was built to replace the Metrodome, a multiuse venue that hosted the Vikings, the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football and baseball teams, the Minnesota Twins and a slew of college and high-school baseball games in the dead of winter. The enabling state legislation for U.S. Bank Stadium specified a design to accommodate baseball, so a Metrodome design feature—retractable seating in right field—became part of the U.S. Bank Stadium design. Turf replacement work kept the Golden Gophers out of U.S. Bank Stadium in 2024, but we’re expecting a return in 2025. Read more here.)
So, after all the demolitions and conversions and franchise moves, one NFL/MLB stadium still stands: the Oakland Coliseum. It did not ever sport the most distinctive design—lots of concrete, little charm—and perhaps the nicest part of the fan experience was the outfield vista: pure California. But when Mount Davis was constructed in center field for the return of the Oakland Raiders from Los Angeles, that tiny bit of charm was eliminated. You didn’t go to the Coliseum to immerse yourself in the great surroundings—you went to enjoy a game with the passionate Oakland A’s fan base. Those are the folks suffering the most in the move of the team to Sacramento and Las Vegas.
What happens to the Coliseum now is unknown. While the plan was to sell the Coliseum to African-American Sports & Entertainment Group for $110 million, which would redevelop portions of the complex to youth sports and support pro soccer and potentially independent baseball, that deal is in some doubt right now. Adaptive reuse for a facility like the Coliseum is always a huge challenge, as we discussed with the San Francisco Chronicle’s John King. Remember: The A’s planned to tear the place down and replace it with an amphitheater if a Howard Terminal ballpark had moved forward. Given all the physical challenges with the Coliseum, this still may be the most realistic option for the future.