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By Alan Snel/LVSportsBiz.com Publisher/Writer
The first time I had a front row seat to watch the political courtship between a major league sports team seeking stadium subsidies and elected officials was 25 years ago when the Denver Broncos wanted metro Denver to pay $180 million toward a new $240 million Broncos stadium.
Thing is, the Broncos then told the public the stadium was going to cost $320 million to build and Denver’s six-county metro area would have to fork over $265 million. So, the Broncos asked the Colorado Legislature to up the public tab from $180 million to $265 million. A state legislative committee had to first approve the $265 million in public money for former Broncos owner Pat Bowlen and his stadium. It did.
A committee member, legislator Elsie Lacy from Aurora outside Denver, was so happy her panel approved the extra public money to help build the Broncos stadium that she saw the Broncos lobbyist after the committee meeting and told him, “Give me a hug.”
The lobbyist, Porter Wharton, complied, knowing he politically massaged another $85 million from the public to help build the Broncos a new stadium in Denver.
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At the time in 1998, the Broncos said their stadium, old Mile High Stadium, was too old to host an NFL team. Bowlen said the team needed a modern stadium packed with revenue-generating amenities like fancy suites and club areas.
Funny how public opinion can turn on a dime when a funny story about a furry critter is involved. I reported an offbeat story about a raccoon that had the misfortune of falling through the ceiling in Mile High Stadium’s press box. It was an amusing yarn, but it underscored — in a disarming way — the Broncos’ political argument that it was time to move on from Mile High Stadium and use sales tax revenues to build a new NFL venue.
And from a raccoon at Mile High Stadium’s press box observers can draw a straight line to the Oakland Athletics’ cavernous Coliseum where a possum entered the visiting Minnesota Twins broadcast booth at the A’s ballpark in May 2022. A possum revisited the Coliseum broadcast booth earlier this month when the New York Mets played the A’s.
A few days after the Mets left Oakland and said goodbye to the Coliseum possum, Athletics President Dave Kaval told LVSportsBiz.com last week that the team’s pursuit of a new stadium has turned exclusively to 49 acres in Las Vegas on Tropicana Avenue just west of the Strip and Interstate 15.
Kaval was not playing possum about the significance of buying the old Wild Wild West site from Red Rock Resorts.
“We’re turning our full attention to Las Vegas,” Kaval told LVSportsBiz.com last week.
Oh, just one more thing.
Billionaire Athletics owner John Fisher, heir to the Gap retail store empire, would like $500 million in public dollars to help build the $1.5 billion ballpark at Tropicana and Polaris avenues.
“The only reason the A’s are leaving the Bay Area is that no one will build them a stadium there with taxpayer money,” Holy Cross College economist Victor Matheson observed.
“Of course, they are going to ask for money from Vegas. And given how Vegas handed over $750 million, what was then the largest public contribution to a sports stadium in US history, to the Raiders, the A’s certainly thought that they should get in on the deal,” Matheson said.
The Athletics’ party line was that the MLB team was pursuing parallel ballpark paths in both Oakland and Las Vegas.
But now with talks shut down in Oakland, the Athletics are romancing only one market.
And that surprised stadium funding writer Neil deMause, who co-authored the book, Field of Schemes, and publishes a website by the same name.
“What I think a lot of people are shocked by is the way that Kaval and Fisher effectively burned their bridges in Oakland by declaring that they were 100 percent focused on Vegas — before finalizing a stadium deal there,” deMause said. “That effectively destroys any leverage they might have with legislators in Nevada, since if they don’t get the $500 million-plus in tax breaks they’re looking for, their only other options will be to build their own stadium or to go play in the street.”
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Nobody is stopping the Athletics from building their ballpark in Las Vegas.
But $500 million in free public money toward its construction?
Well now, that’s a whole different matter.
“How the $500 million sum was arrived at was likely a mix of art and science, and may prove to be part of the overarching negotiation,” said David Carter, principal of the Sports Business Group and USC sports business professor.
Some things to ponder:
^ The A’s have neither a ballpark design architect nor a ballpark rendering for the old Wild Wild West casino site.
^ The team’s idea of a tax district generating $500 million appears far-fetched. “$500 million would require an awfully large tax increment district to work. And even if they did find $500 million, that just means that the area is short the funding needed for other basic public services,” Matheson said.
^ Then, there’s a very ambitious timeline. Kaval wants to apply to Major League Baseball in August for approval to move in order for it to be voted on at the owners meeting in the fall. That timeline would allow for a groundbreaking in 2024 and ballpark opening in Las Vegas in 2027.
^ The Athletics’ relocation request to MLB would have to include a public-private partnership deal and a ballpark funding summary. Can the A’s get that done in four months when public-private stadium deals typically take at least a couple of years?
^ Typically, a market that wants a Major League Baseball team will have a business or civic group vocalizing support for a franchise. One just popped up recently in Salt Lake City, for example, called Big League Utah. Other cities have Music City Baseball in Nashville and the Portland Diamond Project.
Where is the one is Las Vegas?
There is none.
The Athletics showed up on Las Vegas’ doorstep with their hat out asking for $500 million.
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The Athletics’ quest for $500 million to help build a ballpark for 30,000-32,000 fans is quite the contrast to the Raiders stadium process.
First, former Gov. Brian Sandoval created a super-official-sounding public panel called the Las Vegas Tourism Infrastructure Committee to give the appearance of due process to determine the need for a modern stadium in Las Vegas. Stop the presses: the committee said, yes, Las Vegas needs a new stadium for its tourism-based economy to compete.
Then, arguably Las Vegas’ most powerful businessman and political player, the late Sheldon Adelson, funded lobbyists to lean on state lawmakers to approve the Raiders’ stadium bill that called for a hotel room fee to generate more than a $1 billion in revenue over 30-year debt repayment schedule so that Southern Nevada could contribute $750 million to the stadium construction budget of $1.4 billion.
(While the overall stadium project was $2 billion, the actual stadium construction budget was $1.4 billion. Adelson later dropped out of the stadium deal with the Raiders.)
After launching that tourism infrastructure panel, Sandoval signed the Raiders stadium bill into law in 2016, the Raiders staged a groundbreaking in 2017, and the palatial domed venue opened in 2020.
In contrast, there are no Oakland Athletics ballpark committees, public meetings or any information sessions for Las Vegas denizens to weigh in on the topic.
“I was surprised that the A’s broke the news before they had at least a term sheet agreement. Or maybe they do and we don’t know about it yet,” said veteran sports economist Roger Noll, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Stanford University.
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The Athletics’ romance of Las Vegas was odd from the get-go, kind of like that first Match.com email message, when Kaval tweeted from a Vegas Golden Knights playoff game at T-Mobile Arena on May 24, 2021 while his A’s were in action back in Oakland playing the Seattle Mariners. Not only were Athletics fans ticked off by the tweet, San Jose Sharks fans in the same Bay sports market did not appreciate Kaval having a good time in the arena of a division rival. It was awkward.
Afterwards, former Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak — an ally of Raiders owner Mark Davis and big supporter of the Raiders stadium $750 million subsidy — said he planned no public funding resources for an Athletics baseball park in Las Vegas.
Keep in mind Sisolak’s friend — Davis — has been pissed off at the Athletics for years going back to his days when the Raiders and Athletics were co-tenants at the Coliseum in Oakland.
So, the Athletics got a nice break when new Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo was elected in November because he was not as friendly with Davis like Sisolak was with the Raiders owner. With Davis’ close relationship with Sisolak, the Athletics did not have a friend in the governor’s mansion in Carson City before November 2022.
But with Lombardo now in the state’s top executive post, the A’s are talking with a governor who is open to chatting: “As we continue to navigate this opportunity, I’m in regular communication with the A’s, Major League Baseball, legislative leadership, and local and state stakeholders,” Lombardo said in a prepared statement last week.
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The Athletics have one of Major League Baseball’s most fascinating histories.
As the Philadelphia Athletics, the team rivaled the feared New York Yankees in the early 1900s and appeared in five World Series classics from 1905-1914 and then another three from 1929-1931. Then the franchise moved to Kansas City and suffered through terrible seasons before landing in Oakland and winning three World Series titles in a row in the 1970s and appearing in three World Series from 1988-1990.
The team’s “moneyball” business approach to acquiring and analyzing players was the stuff of a movie and the A’s made the postseason 11 times between 2000 and 2020, all while playing in the Coliseum.
While Major League Baseball teams found new revenue streams in retro-looking downtown ballparks with plush amenities, the Athletics were playing ball in an old ballyard off an interstate. The Athletics missed MLB’s ballpark-building revolution.
This season, the team is suffering badly in the standings, winning only four of 22 games and already 10.5 games out of first place in its division with the season only one-eighth complete.
The franchise is now speed dating with Las Vegas in hopes of finding public dollars to build a venue in a market that is perceived to be kind to sports promoters.
The market’s publicly-funded tourism agency, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), has budgeted $23.5 million for sports sponsorships in fiscal year 2023 after spending $25.9 million in FY 2022.
It’s the same market that includes the Athletics’ minor league feeder team, the Triple-A Aviators. Interestingly enough, the Aviators’ owner, Summerlin master developer Howard Hughes Corporation, received $80 million in public money from the LVCVA in form of a naming rights deal at a ballpark that draws locals, not tourists.
“The Raiders got $750 million, even after the Golden Knights (played in an) arena without taxpayer dollars. That being said, maybe I am a little hopeful that having just built the most expensive minor league ballpark in the country only five years ago and quickly going from the largest metro area without a major league franchise to becoming the smallest metro area with three major league teams, maybe wiser heads will prevail,” Holy Cross economist Matheson said.
There’s talk of the A’s sharing the luxurious 10,000-seat minor league ballpark with the Aviators for a few baseball seasons in the event there’s a public-private ballpark deal for the Tropicana Avenue site. Kaval told LVSportsBiz.com that the Aviators are staying here if the A’s move to Las Vegas.
Though deMause put it this way about the A’s and Aviators sharing the same market, “It’s slightly baffling that Fisher and Kaval say the Aviators can coexist with the A’s in Las Vegas long-term. Sure, other MLB teams have minor-league affiliates in the same or neighboring cities, but Las Vegas is a lot smaller than most of them — not to mention that if Nevadans want to go see minor-league baseball, they’ll just be able to watch the A’s.”
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Las Vegas is growing its sports market with public money at a time when there are other vital public needs — if not more important needs — like schools, health care and transportation that are seen as less than robust for a metropolitan region of this size.
How will the Athletics ballpark deal shake out in Las Vegas?
Nobody knows.
And that’s because it’s not a done deal.
“Vegas hasn’t seemed all that interested in another Raiders-size subsidy, which this would be; on the other hand, you have to assume the A’s owners wouldn’t have made this announcement if Lombardo, at least, wasn’t on board,” deMause observed.
“Most of these deals end up going through eventually, but not always right away. I could see the deal going down by 2027 as predicted, much later with the A’s bunking with the Aviators for longer than expected, or not at all with the team staying in Oakland or even going elsewhere,” he said. “Pretty much anything is still in play until somebody shows somebody the money.”