Athletics Owner John Fisher Looking For Investors To Help Fund $1.5 Billion Stadium On Strip

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Story by Alan Snel    Photos by Hugh Byrne

In his first public comments in Las Vegas Wednesday, MLB Athletics owner John Fisher said he would like to get some local Las Vegas investors to help him pay for a $1.5 billion A’s baseball stadium planned for the Tropicana hotel-casino site on the Strip.

Fisher, after talking for about 20 minutes at a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce event, said he would like to find local capital for his planned stadium in Las Vegas as a way of engaging his new host city.

Fisher, who received $380 million in government assistance in Nevada to help him fund the 33,000-seat baseball stadium, cited a familiar mantra for professional sports owners. He said the new venue will drive revenues to increase player payroll so that the Athletics can avoid letting their “best players go prematurely.” The Athletics’ $43 million player payroll is the lowest in the majors.

The friendly confines of a PR business setting and the softball fluff questions posed by the Vegas Chamber President Mary Beth Sewald did not yield any new information about the A’s stadium in Las Vegas.

Fisher and his crew have showed the stadium drawings to local powerhouses like MGM Resorts International, but have not shared any details with local residents and community groups. Fisher would not even say if the drawings show a fixed roof or a retractable roof.

In a sense, it was a missed opportunity for the A’s to create a positive buzz in the Las Vegas market by not revealing any new details about the stadium on the Strip.

Here are some of Fisher’s answers during the media scrum after his Chamber 2024 preview chat today.

The A’s had scheduled to release renderings of their stadium more than a month ago, but then the team cancelled the session because the team wanted to be respectful of the deaths of two Nevada state troopers.

But in his media scrum comments today, Fisher also indicated the Athletics now would like to release the stadium drawings as part of the redevelopment of the Tropicana site, which includes a plan for a new hotel on the 35 acres at the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.

“We had plans to release the renderings in December, unfortunately with the tragedy that occurred here, we postponed that,” Fisher said.

“Since then we’ve been working with Bally’s and GLPI, who are two of our partners on the Tropicana site, to try and see if instead of just releasing our renderings by themselves” we can release a plan also showing a proposed hotel, he said.

It was the first time Fisher talked publicly in Las Vegas. He did not speak at the committee hearings in Carson City in June when Las Vegas consultant Jeremy Aguero and LVCVA CEO/Las Vegas Stadium Board chairman Steve “Man of Many Hats” Hill represented the Athletics to win the $380 million in public assistance for the stadium. The $380 million includes $120 million that Clark County will contribute by selling bonds for the ballpark.

The A’s will play their final season at the Coliseum in Oakland in 2024. But the team has not said where it will play in 2025, 2026 and 2027 while the baseball stadium is built on the Strip. The Athletics did visit minor league baseball stadiums in Sacramento and Salt Lake City last week to evaluate those ballparks as a temporary home. The Athletics will not play at Las Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin, home of the A’s Triple-A team, the Aviators.

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