The under-at-least-preliminary-construction Las Vegas A’s stadium got some vaportecture neighbors this weekend, as Bally’s released images of the casino/hotel/shopping/dining/etc. complex it plans to build on the rest of the old Tropicana hotel site. Let’s take a look, might as well:
That is decidedly a bunch of randomly assorted buildings surrounding the A’s armadillo dome, most of them plastered with video screens displaying A’s logos and (squints) people with bare midriffs. Are either of those blue things rooftop swimming pools? It’s all impossible to tell, and also doesn’t really matter, as most of the details here are just pasted-in clip art and not necessarily what any of this will look like when it’s built, assuming it all eventually gets built.
Meanwhile, what can we tell from the accompanying press verbiage? Well, the Bally’s resort “will have direct access to the ballpark, feature a casino and have exclusive VIP experiences,” which is just another way of saying it’ll be a Vegas resort next to a baseball stadium. And “the company wants to tap into the non-gaming revenue expected to be generated once the Athletics begin play in 2028,” with Bally’s chair Soo Kim doubling down on the idea that his casino will be mostly not a casino:
“It’s not lost upon me that 75 percent of Vegas revenues are non-gaming,” Kim said. “We want to make progress in that area, and we’re doing that now in real time.”
That 75% figure has been floating around a lot lately, and while it conjures images of three-quarters of people going to Vegas to do stuff other than gambling, a lot of it also involves people going there to gamble but being charged for other stuff ranging from hotels to food to silverware and napkins. It also obscures the fact that fewer people are visiting Vegas overall — in part because more and more people can now gamble at their own local casinos or just on their phones — meaning Bally’s may be chasing part of a shrinking pie.
Bally’s is planning on building the resort in stages, so it’s anyone’s guess when the pretty pictures will become reality, if ever. But then, that’s the case for John Fisher’s A’s stadium as well, which remains funded by about $600 million in public money and around $1.4 billion in “don’t worry, we’re good for it.” Vegas has seen a bunch of new sports and entertainment venues open in recent years, including some that seemed unlikely in the extreme, but it’s also seen years-long promises of other projects that never got off the ground. It’s anyone’s guess what the odds are of either the stadium or the accompanying development coming to fruition — there really ought to be a Vegas line on it, but maybe that’s too meta even for a place that lets you pretend you’re visiting other cities, only smaller.
Obligatory: Where’s the MONEY, FISHBOWSKI?!
The aramadillo really pulled the room together, man…
Get the marmadillo outta the tub, man!
To put a twist on a long-running joke, we really might get GTA6 before we get a new A’s ballpark in Vegas (or anywhere in Merica).
They seem to be putting 50 pounds of chits in a 10 cent slot. i.e. there’s too much stuff on that property.
Agreed. It’s looking sort of junky.
The Sphere may have been extraordinarily unlikely, but it had something the proposed A’s stadium doesn’t: An owner who could actually afford to build it.
Fading casino operator joining forces with undercapitalized and woefully incompetent sports franchise owner… yeah, this has Packard-Studebaker merger written all over it (although those companies at least made solid products at one time – something neither of the current partners can claim).
What could possibly go wrong?
IMO, those images are the equivalent of the photos of a lavishly-furnished house that real estate agents put on their online home listings.
In other words: Bally’s isn’t going to build anything like that. Bally’s released those images hoping that potential buyers will imagine what it could look like if they bought the land from Bally’s and built it up.