A’s Hit Stadium Agreement Milestones In Las Vegas Thursday After MLB Team Signs Pitcher To Three-Year, $67 Million Deal

 

 

 

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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The MLB Athletics have a friend in Steve Hill.

LVCVA CEO Hill lobbied the Nevada Legislature for public money in 2023 to help build an A’s stadium on the Strip and then today shook hands with an A’s exec after the stadium board he chairs approved development, lease, community benefits and non-location agreements with the A’s.

With Hill running interference for the A’s, there was hardly any doubt that the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board would green light the deals with the Major League Baseball team that aims to finish the $1.75 billion stadium project at the old Tropicana hotel-casino site for the 2028 MLB season. There was little board discussion about the agreements in past meetings leading up to Thursday’s session.

Bally’s plans to build a hotel-casino that would connect to the Athletics’ 30,000-seat, domed stadium. Bally’s owned the former Tropicana hotel, which was demolished and imploded in October. A’s owner John Fisher thanked Hill for his support and work moments before the Tropicana hotel buildings were imploded.

Hill shook hands with A’s representative Sandy Dean, not team president Dave Kaval or owner Fisher. Kaval attended a few stadium board meetings this past year, but the A’s have deployed Dean to provide comments to the stadium board at meetings.

Fisher has not attended stadium board meetings in Las Vegas and rarely talks with the media. When the stadium board and Raiders  marked their agreements in March 2018, Raiders then-president Marc Badain was there like he was for all stadium meetings in Las Vegas. At that occasion back in 2018, Hill gave a speech about the stadium deal. With a sly sense of humor, Badain thanked Hill and quipped the music would have started playing if Hill gave the speech at an Oscars award show.

At Las Vegas stadium meetings, it’s been Dean and not Kaval the team president representing the A’s lately. At Kaval’s first meeting before the stadium board, the team president introduced himself and told the panel he would be the A’s stadium point man. Hill, the board chairman, cracked to Kaval then that his first meeting would be his easiest one.

 

Fisher looked at five potential sites in the Oakland and Bay area, but failed to nail down a location for a new stadium.

Then, Las Vegas and Nevada showed the A’s the public money — $380 million in government assistance to help build the stadium on the Strip. The A’s say they will use $350 million. MLB’s Lords of Baseball liked that Southern Nevada is contributing dollars to help build the stadium on the Strip.

 

Nevada and the Las Vegas area have been on a public sports spending spree to subsidize stadiums for the NFL Raiders and A’s, while Clark County handed over the Strip and neighboring roads for free to Formula 1 to stage a 3.8-mile grand prix in the Strip corridor.

Hill, a small concrete contractor from Ohio who moved to Las Vegas for his concrete, sand and gravel supplier  business, has been a strong voice to spend public dollars to boost big league sports in Las Vegas.

As CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Authority (LVCVA), he routinely gets the public agency’s tourism board to approve millions of dollars annually for sponsorships for everything from college basketball conference tournaments to NASCAR events to the NBA Summer League.

The approved agreements were a formality for the stadium board Thursday.

But observers still want to see Fisher spend the first $100 million on the stadium project as required under the state subsidy law called Senate Bill 1 approved last year and a groundbreaking that the A’s say will happen in either April, May or June of 2025.

The A’s have hired the Mortenson-McCarthy team to construct the stadium, which is designed to include a very high percentage of premium seating.

Kaval told LVSportsBiz.com earlier this year that the A’s stadium will have the highest percentage of premium seating in the majors. Mortenson-McCarthy also built the Raiders stadium.

The A’s hope to maximize revenues from the stadium by using it for concert purposes, while trying to allow natural light into the domed venue.

Earlier in the day, the A’s had much more shocking news when the Athletics and right-hand pitcher Luis Severino agreed to a three-year, $67 million deal — the biggest guaranteed contract in A’s history. The A’s payroll has been known as one of the lowest in MLB, which is why the Severino signing stunned many.

The A’s will play the next three seasons in a minor league stadium in Sacramento while the Vegas ballpark is built on a nine-acre footprint at the southeast corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard.

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