By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
Salt Lake City would welcome the MLB Athletics in 2025, 2026 and 2027 while the A’s stadium is supposedly being built on the Strip.
But billboards around Salt Lake City with the message, “UTAH WANTS THE A’s,” may have give some people the wrong idea that the Utah city that’s pushing for more big league sports like the NHL is trying to lure the Athletics from the Las Vegas market.
Not true.
A group called Big League Utah, which is trying to bring Major League Baseball to Salt Lake City, paid for the billboards to tell the public that Utah can host the Athletics in 2025, 2026 and 2027 while the A’s stadium is supposed to be under construction at the Tropicana hotel-casino site at the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.
Not much is happening on the Athletics stadium front here in Las Vegas.
A’s owner John Fisher made a rare public appearance at a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce event Wednesday, but he offered no new information about his stadium plan except to say he’s looking for local investors in Las Vegas to help him pay for the $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat stadium that is supposedly scheduled to open in 2028.
The entire Tropicana hotel site of 35 acres will have to be leveled and vacant, with the A’s saying demolition will start in late 2024 and construction will start in 2025.
Even without showing the public an actual stadium drawing or even explaining the type of stadium roof, the A’s and Fisher received $380 million in government assistance for stadium construction under a state bill approved by the Nevada Legislature in June. The Clark County commissioners also approved the funding of $120 million for the stadium, which will be included the overall $380 million public subsidy.