Another week, another seven days of Oakland A’s owner John Fisher not providing any updates on what his proposed Las Vegas stadium would look like or how he would pay for it. The Las Vegas Stadium Authority has a board meeting scheduled for Thursday with no A’s items on the agenda, the stadium renderings whose release in early December was supposedly held up to honor two dead Nevada state troopers still haven’t shown up, there’s no indication of where the A’s will play after 2024 while a stadium is presumably built, and people are starting to take notice:
The renderings and financials were to be made public in December. Where they’ll play in the interim years — the Las Vegas ballpark isn’t supposed to open until 2028, at the earliest — remains in limbo.
A’s president Dave Kaval initially said the Coliseum, Oracle Park and Summerlin, Nev. (home of the A’s Triple-A team) were the options for where the A’s will play in 2025, but industry sources with knowledge of MLB’s and the A’s thinking said Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, home of the San Francisco Giants’ top farm team, has emerged as a possible A’s landing spot.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s John Shea goes on to write about how one of the complications is the A’s TV contract, which currently covers San Francisco and not Sacramento, and yes this is ironic since the A’s famously gave up their territorial rights to San Francisco and the South Bay in the 1990s, but territorial rights and MLB TV rights and TV contracts are all different things. And anyway TV contracts can be revised, so Sacramento and San Francisco are both still in the mix for a temporary site, but either would require figuring out who’d get paid for what.
Meanwhile, Shea has a couple of tidbits about those long-awaited Vegas stadium renderings:
Renderings of the A’s future home in Las Vegas haven’t been made public, but it has been learned the roof will be fixed (not retractable) and the design will include a massive window beyond the outfield to provide views. Nevada Independent reporter Howard Stutz said on a recent public-broadcasting panel that Kaval told him the renderings might not be released until the A’s play their spring training series in Las Vegas against the Brewers on March 8-9.
Building a fixed roof instead of retractable would save a ton of money, and perhaps more importantly save space, which is at a premium given Fisher’s proposed nine-acre site in Vegas. It would contradict earlier reports that Fisher is looking at the Texas Rangers‘ retractable-roofed stadium as a model, and still probably doesn’t 100% resolve either the space or the funding gap questions, but it would be a small step in the right direction for both.
More information may or may not be revealed next Wednesday, when the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce holds a “fireside chat” where A’s execs will be “addressing the community for the first time,” and if that’s not worth the $125 ticket price, I don’t know what is. Maybe Fisher can raise his missing billion dollars in stadium funds by selling tickets to events where he reveals new renderings, only to declare them obsolete and promise newer renderings at new events? There are dumber ideas, and by this point I have faith in Fisher that he’ll be able to find them.
Neil, Thanks for the link to that “Ciderbeck” article…that article is a fantastic read!!
Yeah, I just ran across it now — I’d seen most of the details elsewhere, but this was the first time I’d found it all in one place.
Seconded Bill!
I’m sure the Fresno-Eureka Athletics will work all this out to the satisfaction of all parties. After all, they are professionals at this sort of thing.
The first non stupid thing Kaval and Fisher have done – assuming they actually have – in all this is to ditch the idea of a retractable roof. You do not need one in Vegas. And even in most of the places where a retractable roof (or opening tiny panel in some cases) could be advantageous for a significant part of the year, teams and leagues often want them closed.
As I’ve been saying, if the A’s must leave Oakland but can’t get anything done in Las Vegas, their best bet is to go to Salt Lake City, with a ready ownership group and stadium plan. (Hopefully, in any case, Fisher is forced to sell.)
That seems to be more than what Vegas has at this point while retaining a similar geographical footprint (including being a larger TV market than Vegas).
Salt Lake has a stadium plan in the sense of someone wanting to build one, but not so much in terms of someone wanting to pay for one. Is that any better than, say, Portland, let alone Oakland?
I have plans like that for additions to my house. The vision is there. The ownership is enthusiastic. Why can’t I have $100,000 to do it?
Have you tried selling the naming rights to your house?
(first smile for me today)
A’s have a home- in West Oakland or where they are!- at the Coliseum! they have the audacity to even want to build affordable housing on the coliseum property even though they intend to move to L.V.!
This is what the city of Oakland stuck with over the Raiders!
The A’s showed us who they were when they decided to not only move to L.V. where they’ll get on Mark Davis’ nerves but how they aren’t interested in any kind of relationship to fans or integrity.
I don’t just blame them do you know what kind of issues they, Raiders and the city of Oakland were dealing with with shady, powerful people using legal, corporate firms to block a new stadium being built there?
It was a lot of people and corporations who had pull with these pro leagues and owners to get them to help block and Oakland stadium building project. To even try to build a stadium that is fan friendly in that parking lot is ridiculous but they’ll do it because the word is pro teams in Oakland are there to be lead to L.V.! There, they can try and get people/ corporations and partnerships to buy the teams, the A’s won’t let that happen but the Raiders owners are being pressured to sell the team.
More problems for Ballys in Chicago.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2024/1/17/24042144/ballys-chicago-casino-design-change
I wish I was a billionaire asking for handouts
Not kidding – not sure I will be down with the Vegas A’s. But in a cheap dome?
Zero chance. What a tragedy,
As a practical matter, the A’s will have to finalize their 2025 location by June, if not May. Baseball typically announces their following year’s schedule in July. MLB will need time to factor in all the travel sequences and logistics.
And certain places, like the Vegas minor league park location, make daytime games in the middle of summer iffy.