By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
The A’s stadium is on Thursday’s Las Vegas stadium board meeting agenda, with this document that would clear the way for the stadium authority to cut a development and lease deal with the MLB team that wants to build a $1.5 domed stadium on the Strip for the 2028 season.
The stadium board, which is meeting Thursday at 3 PM at the LVCVA’s convention center meeting room, also received a confirmation from Major League Baseball that the team owners have their blessing to allow the Athletics to leave Oakland for Las Vegas. This is the final season for the A’s in Oakland, with the team to play at a Triple-A minor league stadium in Sacramento in 2025, 2026 and 2027.
The stadium board also got an official piece of paper signed by A’s President Dave Kaval, saying the A’s really plan to move to a stadium in a 9-acre district at the old Tropicana hotel site at the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. The Nevada Legislature in June approved a bill designating $380 million in public assistance to help A’s owner John Fisher build the $1.5 billion baseball stadium on nine acres of the 35 acres controlled by Gaming & Leisure Properties, Inc. (GLPI) at the Tropicana hotel site on the Strip.
The A’s wants to have a groundbreaking in the first half of 2025, with construction of the 33,000-seat baseball stadium taking about 30 months so that it would be ready for the start of the 2028 season.
At this point, the team does not know where the stadium will exactly sit on the site. That’s because Bally’s Corp., which ran Tropicana hotel, has no “urgency” to build a new resort on the site. Plus, Fisher is looking for team investors to help finance his new A’s stadium. It does seem odd, doesn’t it, that state lawmakers would approve a $380 million stadium financing law without the owner having his financing lined up and the team knowing exactly where its nine-acre stadium footprint would be situated on the 35-acre site. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo signed the A’s stadium subsidy bill into law after the special session in June.
In other stadium board business, the Raiders reported there were four events at Allegiant stadium in the first three months of 2024, including the Super Bowl Feb. 13.
There were two NFL games, a rugby match and a concert for four stadium events in the first quarter of 2024, with 22 private events at the Raiders stadium. The Southern Nevada public is raising more than $1 billion over 30 years so that it can contribute $750 million toward the construction of the NFL domed stadium on the west side of I-15 across from Mandalay Bay.
The stadium board reported that February’s hotel room tax revenue spiked to nearly $6.6 million — $2.2 million more than the hotel room tax dollars from February 2023. The Super Bowl is certainly behind the massive 50 percent increase in rooms tax revenues from Feb. 2023 to Feb. 2024.