Oakland A's Las Vegas Stadium Renderings

Major league baseball is coming to Las Vegas. Forget all of the naysayers that claim it's not a done deal; The Oakland A's are moving to Las Vegas with a new stadium to hopefully be ready by 2028.

The Real Story about Why the A's Left Oakland

You hear all kinds of chatter about how bad a guy owner John Fisher is, but the truth is the City didn't provide a feasible proposal. The final proposal, after 5 years of negotiations, was a $12B waterfront mega-project which included redevelopment, condos, mixed use commercial buildings. The project was ridden with lawsuits; and it wouldn't be ready until after 2030, which was just too long to wait.

So the A's are moving to Las Vegas and they're building a new stadium. You'll hear ignorant people talk about use of "public fiunds", but this deal is a bargain for the people on Las Vegas. $380M in putlic funds; the A's are pumping 1.2B inti our economy; and all new stadiums get an All-Star game worth $100M+ to the city.

And what a stadium it will be. Renderings are always a bit optimistic, but it looks to be a stunning addition to the strip.

I've been surprised by the opposition to iit. We've heard it all. Here we debunk some of the negative arguments you've heard.

Las Vegas is too small of a market

Not true. Clark County is 2.3M people which is more than some existing team's markets. Salt Lake City is being considered for expansion with a population of only 250K.

The difference here is that Las Vegas is a destination with over 40M visitors a year. Thousands of people from the opponents city will flow to Vegas to see their team play in a shiny new stadium; the way the city is packed with Chiefs fans when they play the Raider. Baseball will be a huge draw for the city's tourism.

Las Vegas will never support the Oakland As

The A's AAA team plays in Summerlin, and they are the #1 minor league team in attendance with over 500K per y ear. The A's played a couple of spring training games and every game was sold out. There is a hunger for sports in Las Vegas. Add that to all of the people who live here from other places who want to see their team play, and others from out of town who will go to games while visiting and you're going to have trouble getting tickets to games against popular teams like the Yankees and Dodgers.. Baseball is relatively cheap entertainment. Even if the locals don't embrace the team, they'll do just find on the strip.

The A's are a bad team

True today, but 3 years ago they were a good team. A team can easily sign a few players and become good in 1 year. So that's not a problem

The Owner is a bad guy with a low Payroll team

The Owner has tried for a decade to stay in Oakland, and in 2018, 2019 and 2020 they were in the playoffs. In 2021 they won 86 games and only 500K fans showed up for the games. Between the pandemic and failure of fans to return afterwards, the team likely lost a fortune. It's easy to criticize, but the A's put very good teams together for many years until it became clear that the city of Oakland didn't want them very badly.

They Won't be able to Get Financing

You'll hear clowns like @VitalVegas rant about how nobody is going to finance a Las Vegas Stadium, and that the owner doens't want to put a dime of his own money into the project. This is patently untrue; Fisher has said his family is prepared to foot the entire bill but they'e also seeking an investor.

The arguments are that the team is only worth 1.2B so who is going to invest 500M? Of course the team will become EXPONENTIALLY more valuable as a team that owns their own stadium on Las vegas. Fisher has the money, and he'd actually be foolish to share the increase in value with an investor

The stadium will happen simply because worst case for Fisher is he has to pay for it himself. The stadium will pay for itself on day 1 in terms of the team's value

Stadium Renderings

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The Raiders built a stadium and they only play 8 or 9 games a year at home. They've yet to make the playoffs. And the stadium is a huge success. Baseball is every day; 81 home games in 6 months. With Adele tickets going for $845 for the cheapest seats, a $40 ticket to a baseball game will be affordable entertainment for every tourist who comes to town.

It's a long way off, but it's a lot more fun than a new hotel casino