With the Oakland Raiders long gone and the Oakland A’s having one foot out the door, the deficit-strapped City of Oakland just struck a deal to sell their 50% stake in the Oakland Coliseum to the African American Sports & Entertainment Group for more than $100 million.

The dilapidated Oakland Coliseum has long been a running joke on this website, with its feral cats, possums, and recurring raw sewage problems. And there is increasingly little use for the 63,000-seat concrete colossus, with the Oakland Raiders having left town in 2019, and the Oakland A’s now stumbling through their final season there.

But the City of Oakland has turned the Coliseum’s impending irrelevance into a win. The Chronicle reports that on Wednesday, the city will announce that they’re selling their 50% share of Oakland Coliseum ownership to the somewhat new African American Sports & Entertainment Group. The Chronicle describes the sale price as "a minimum of $105 million," which indicates the final price could be higher.

Of course, the bad news is that the Oakland A’s baseball team still owns the other 50% of the Coliseum, despite the fact the A’s will only be playing there for about four more months. That theoretically gives A’s owner John Fisher veto power over any possible redevelopment of the outdated facility.

Alameda County sold their 50% share to the A’s for $85 million back in 2019. Technically, that sale is still in progress, and the A’s wouldn’t take full ownership of that half-stake until 2026 (at which point, the team will have already moved to their rinky-dink temporary home in Sacramento at a minor-league ballpark). But there is also a lawsuit that could upend the sale, which is expected to begin proceedings in September.  

But for the City of Oakland, this $105 million sale comes in quite handy, considering that the city is running a $177 million deficit. The Chronicle notes that the city was planning on “closing four fire stations, reducing the staff of the police department into the 600s and laying off between 50 and 90 city workers in other departments,” but this infusion of new money allows them to keep all of those positions and services in effect.

The Oakland-based African American Sports & Entertainment Group (AASEG) has also negotiated with the A’s to buy their half of the Coliseum site. Last we heard, the A’s had rejected a $115 million offer for that stake last September, but those talks may still be ongoing.

Meanwhile, the AASEG is also in negotiations with the City of Oakland on a $5 billion Coliseum site overhaul that could potentially add housing, restaurants, and a new convention center to the site. The group is also hoping to attract a WNBA team to the city, as well as a potential NFL expansion team in the future.

Related: Oakland A’s Are Officially Moving to Sacramento for the Next Three Seasons [SFist]

Image: Oakland Arena