VGK Owner Foley On Subsidized Athletics Stadium On Strip: ‘Baseball Will Be Tough, There’s A Lot Of Games’

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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer

Fresh off winning the Stanley Cup, Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley was in a good mood Friday when he met the media for a season wrap-up comment session at 12 noon.

The likable VGK owner and business entrepreneur was asked about Las Vegas’ expanding major league sports market, which now includes a current NHL champion team and the defending WNBA title holders.

Foley said he knew the Oakland Athletics will be receiving government assistance for a new baseball stadium on the Strip and offered his business perspective: “Baseball will be tough. There’s a lot of games.” Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo signed a bill into law Thursday that authorizes $380 million for a 30,000-seat, partially-retractable roof ballpark at Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard.

Indeed, Foley echoed what many have said about the Athletics’ move to the Tropicana hotel site on the Strip — that selling out 81 regular season games will be a challenge for the long haul, especially if A’s owner John Fisher continues to spend only $58 million on player payroll when most teams spend double, triple or quadruple that on player salaries.

Foley also acknowledged the National Basketball Association might be coming to Las Vegas and brought up the concept of a potential NBA team playing at the Golden Knights’ venue — T-Mobile Arena.

Then Foley stopped himself, noting that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman reprimanded him back in 2015 for getting too far ahead of himself about talking about the NHL awarding a franchise to his ownership group for the Las Vegas market.

Foley joked that Bettman gave him a good talking like the ones he use to get as a freshman plebe at the U.S. Military Academy. Foley is a 1967 West Point grad.

After MGM Resorts International and Los Angeles-based AEG privately built T-Mobile Arena in 2016, Foley bought a 15 percent share of the popular arena. Plus, Foley is a very entrepreneurial businessman with a varied portfolio from soccer teams in Europe to wineries in Northern California, so perhaps he’s involved in an effort to bring an NBA team to the arena that houses the VGK and also UFC fight shows.

Keep in mind an NBA team will be sold as former NBA superstar/Charlotte Hornets owner Michael Jordan is ending his ownership of the Hornets franchise after 13 years.

Plus, NBA star LeBron James has talked about owning a team in Las Vegas one day.

Foley’s NBA comments came just a day after Oak View Group CEO Tim Leiweke chatted about his $10 billion NBA arena/hotel/casino project at Las Vegas Boulevard at an economics forecast session put on by the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance.

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The Golden Knights PR team gave access to coach Bruce Cassidy, General Manager Kelly McCrimmon and the NHL iceman-cyborg himself, George McPhee, who is VGK head of hockey operations.

Cassidy thanked everyone.

McCrimmon said the team was a balanced squad that could play any style to win.

Then there was McPhee, who said “it was humbling” to get his hands on the Stanley Cup Tuesday night. “Somehow you feel you’re not worthy.”

McPhee recalled the Golden Knights’ journey from Year 1 in 2017 after a killer shot 58 people to death and injured hundreds more in the country’s biggest mass shooting in U.S. history.

“We became a community hub for a lot of emotion,” McPhee pointed out.

He recalled that first VGK regular season home game on Oct. 10, when the Knights scored four goals in the first nine minutes against the Coyotes en route to a 5-2 win.

“It was probably the first time people smiled and celebrated something,” McPhee said.

McPhee agreed with McCrimmon about the first year’s VGK team not being able to sustain a winning way that would result in competing for a Stanley Cup.

“We thought we needed other pieces and I supported Kelly aggressively getting those pieces,” he said. That meant acquiring two major stars — defenseman Alex Pietrangelo and center Jack Eichel. “There was risk in the deals,” McPhee observed, noting what if Eichel’s back surgery did not go well after the VGK traded for him.

LVSportsBiz.com asked McPhee how he planned to party at the parade Saturday.

“I’m 64, not 24.”

Fair enough.

And McPhee wrapped up his session by saying, “This was probably one of the best press conferences we’ll ever have.”

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