Well, that was certainly an eventful Memorial Day weekend! Things kicked off with, as threatened, Oakland A’s management and their political allies introducing a stadium bill late on Friday night when most everyone was busy sitting in traffic on their way out of town; subsequent analysis of the legislation’s fine print revealed that in addition to the previously announced $380 million in public spending for direct stadium construction costs, the addition of a taxpayer-funded slush fund for subsequent upgrades and a full property tax exemption for both the stadium and the land under it would bring the total taxpayer price tag to half a billion dollars or more.
Stage two of the weekend’s festivities was to hold the state legislature’s first hearing on the stadium bill at 4 pm on Memorial Day afternoon, during a Vegas Golden Knights conference finals game for good measure. (This gave legislators the opportunity to show how much they cared about sports by continually announcing updates on the hockey score.) The hearing kicked off with presentations by Gov. Joe Lombardo’s chief of staff Ben Kieckhefer, state treasurer Zach Conine, Las Vegas Stadium Authority CEO Steve Hill, and especially A’s consultant Jeremy “not an economist but plays one in the newspaper” Aguero, who filibustered at length on how spending hundreds of millions of tax dollars on an A’s stadium would in fact pay for itself somehow:
The Big Pitch — A's ballpark plan presented by A's consultant Jeremy Aguero. Not noted: Sports teams' fulltime staff employees are about 150-200 outside of the sports workers. Annual employment at stadiums is overwhelming part-time low-wage jobs. pic.twitter.com/dffZapgywM
— LVSportsBiz.com (@LVSportsBiz) May 30, 2023
Listening to the hearing on the A’s Vegas stadium. Can this guy just shut up already?!
— Frankie P. (@HomePlateDrums) May 30, 2023
It just like sitting in a timeshare presentation.
— Herr Hoffmann (@DerHoffinator) May 30, 2023
There wasn’t a whole lot new revealed in yesterday’s hearing, unless you count the projected stadium opening date moving back from 2027 to 2028 (the A’s would presumably rent the Las Vegas Aviators‘ stadium until then) and MLB’s relocation fee being set, according to Aguero, at $300 million (unless it’s waived). Several legislators and private citizens did question whether it was a good idea to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a baseball stadium when the state just received straight F’s from an education watchdog for its dismal school funding levels, but most of the presentation time went to rehashing pro-stadium talking points.
The whole strategy by A’s owner John Fisher and pro-stadium politicians so far seems to be to flood the zone with stadium information, misdirection — yes, this might end up being the largest private investment in an MLB stadium in history, but mostly because nobody has proposed a $1.5 billion 30,000-seat stadium before, and $500 million+ in public costs would still be one of the largest public spends as well — and shock and awe — witness the batch of fresh renderings that were also released on Friday, leading to much Twitter debate about why there’s so much foul territory and why a stadium limited to 9 acres appears to take up at least twice that amount of land. Debating these things takes away from the time available to examine questions like Why are we being asked for half a billion dollars in tax money exactly?, which is almost certainly to Fisher’s advantage.
And there’s already very little time available to ask such questions: Yesterday’s five-hour marathon will likely be the only hearing on the A’s stadium bill, which could move to a vote as soon as this week. This probably won’t be the final vote — there still needs to be a stadium lease and development agreement approved, and the Clark County Commission may yet get to weigh in on issuing stadium bonds — but as we’ve seen before, once the basic framework of a deal is rushed into place, it’s nearly impossible to slam on the brakes afterwards even if more damning details are revealed.
There’s no way to do a headcount of legislative votes based on last night’s hearing, not least because the legislature’s Democratic majority and Republican governor Lombardo are still in a standoff over the state budget, which could yet torpedo chances of any bills getting passed before the session ends next week. It would be bizarre for the fate of the A’s franchise to come down to battles over gun control and private school vouchers, but then everything about this has been bizarre: the nearly two decades of A’s owners sniffing around various stadium locations in the East Bay, Fisher’s apparently accidental slamming of the door on talks with Oakland, the last month’s seemingly endless stream of “binding” agreements on different Vegas sites. For a movie franchise this stupid, the only fitting way for it to conclude will be with a truly stupid ending, and we seem to be right on track for that.
I’m pretty skeptical that this is a leverage play for purposes of getting back to Oakland, or that the announcement regarding the Vegas relocation was intended to bring Oakland back to the table and blew up in their face.
I think Vegas was a leverage play up until 2019 or so. I think the litigation around the Coliseum site sale was something of a turning point — it was a key point where Manfred became involved for purposes of resolving the multi-party dispute — and I think that’s when they started taking Vegas seriously as a relocation option. I think they’ve probably known that relocation to Vegas was the most likely outcome for about 2 years now, and, it was the other way around, they only kept the HT vision alive for PR reasons (I’m not sure it was even a leverage play with respect to Vegas, where they never really needed much leverage, they were being courted; it was much more so just trying to not draw attention to themselves until they thought appropriate, to avoid media scrutiny).
Today, I think the relationship between Oakland the A’s is over. If the Vegas stadium project falls through when voted on, I think they’ll become the MLB’s Coyotes and relocate to the Las Vegas Ballpark while they (i) try a round 2 with Vegas legislators and/or (ii) start-up talks with SLC, Nashville or some other city for a move.
On the hearing, I think Aguero and Hill accomplished what they were trying to do, which was to show that this was a fairly standard 21st century MLB stadium financing deal. Their line of argument is basically, this is a standard financing deal for MLB, so if you want MLB added to the city’s suite of teams, go for it. The struggle for groups like Battle Born Progress is that they’re really arguing against an entire development model. They tried to make it about Fisher, but it isn’t clear at all that a new expansion ownership group, for example, would be able to put up more than the $1bn that Fisher is putting up, or that they’ll ask for less than the $400m in subsidies.
I thought it was notable that the A’s lined up union members for call-in support (they also launched a union-backed campaign called “A+ Jobs” to tout the construction jobs the stadium will create). This is a turnaround from the East Bay, where the Port of Oakland longshoremen’s union was party to the litigation opposing the certification of the HT environmental review.
A lot of the opposing testimony will be easy for the Legislature to dismiss. Much of it did not sound like the testimony of Nevadans concerned about public finances as much as aggrieved A’s fans who hate John Fisher but want to retain their team. Jeremy Koo, who used to write for Athletics Nation, openly identified himself as a resident of Sacramento, and I’m sure the legislators suspect that many other Californians called in. “Hal the Hot Dog Guy” of A’s social media fandom also made the trek from the Bay to Carson City and was there. The “No Nevada Money” site is run by Matt Ortega from Sacramento. A lot of the people pushing the “this is a bad deal for Nevada” line are really aggrieved fans from California who are hoping to jam the relocation in the hopes of retaining the team, but they can’t be obvious about their stance, so they mask it behind pseudo-concern for Nevada.
It’s certainly possible that Fisher and Kaval planned on going to Las Vegas in any event — Kaval has been acting that way all along, and for Fisher it would fit traditional failson logic. (“I’m gonna go find my *own* city and show all those guys!”) But given that they seem to have negotiated themselves into a deal where they still have to put up just as much stadium money as in Oakland ($1B) but now in a smaller metro area and with no opportunity to build surrounding development, it’s hard to figure out just what kind of 4D chess they think they’re playing here.
It’s like you’re dreamin’ about Gorgonzola cheese when it’s clearly Brie time, baby!
Step into my office.
Maybe they hired ‘Spanos Strategic Systems’ to lay out a plan for them.
You remember them:
“We can’t stay in San Diego without a stadium”.
Ok, here’s what we’ll offer towards a stadium.
“We can’t stay in San Diego without a stadium”
Yes, we get that. It’s not true, but whatever. Here’s what we are offering toward a new stadium.
“The League says we can’t stay in San Diego without a stadium”.
We’ve already offered you everything we can and are going to.
“The League says we’ll have to move to Los Angeles without a new stadium”
Well, the league didn’t actually say that. They said you or the Raiders had options to join the newly relocated Rams as tenants in Los Angeles. We are still prepared to honour our offer on a stadium here in San Diego.
“We can’t stay in San Diego without a new stadium and the league will make us move to Los Angeles if we don’t have one”.
Again, our offer stands. And nobody is making you move to Los Angeles.
“We’re moving to Los Angeles because if we don’t the Raiders will and we can’t stay in San Diego without a new stadium and we warned you”.
Our offer to help build a stadium in San Diego remains available.
“We’re moving to Los Angeles”.
Ok. Sorry to see you go, but good luck.
“waaaaaaaaaaah, I don’t wanna be in Los Angeles I like San Diego better we’re just a tenant here and nobody cares about us…. waaaaaaaaaaah”
I don’t live in Sacramento, my guy.
Apparently they’re talking about PSLs as part of the way to pay for construction. I hope that Nevada has the good sense to walk away from this thing at this point. I think that calling it is a mess is an understatement.
Agreed, Tim. This seems very poorly thought out. They are paying more to build in Vegas than they needed to in Oakland. They are also getting a significantly smaller subsidy, moving to a smaller market and at that a market which already has significant competition for discretionary spending dollars (both from pro sports and other attractions).
It’s the definition of a lose-lose proposition in my view. And as Neil has noted, even the tv rights issue has yet to be resolved… and that could be messy.
I would be pleased to see Fisher lose badly on this move/deal. The sad thing is that it seems like Nevadans and particularly Clark County residents stand to lose significantly more.
I have to disagree. As a Washoe County taxpayer (Reno) I think we lose the worst. Not only will our tax dollars be used by the state to pay for this debacle down south, if it comes to fruition, the A’s will be moving to our state, yet somehow still be even further away.
Fair enough. But you’ve got Reno 911!
And who can put a price on that?
Can you help me calibrate this Vegas-style? Does a +300 money line sound about right for a stadium “No” vote?
If there were likes in this comment section you’d be leading the pack with the comment.
As a Tampa Bay area resident I’m very disappointed that Nevada politicians are even dumber than Florida politicians. So far.
Well, now you jinxed it.
I still want to know who got the (Devil) Rays to sign that initial 30 year lease. They should have a statue.
Fisher has either lost his mind or he’s a complete idiot. 4pm games to cater to tourists???
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2023-05-31/commentary-bill-shaikin-on-baseball-athletics-las-vegas-move
That kills most of your leverage with the tv partner(s).