Aviators And Parent Athletics Will Share Las Vegas In 2028, Offering Two Different Baseball Products; Final: A’s 4 Seattle Mariners 2 Saturday
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — They’re all trying to reach the Big Show, the majors at a stadium that’s not much bigger than the one they play at in the Vegas suburb of Summerlin.
These are the Las Vegas Aviators, named to honor that famous Las Vegas aviator and developer Howard Hughes. The Triple-A affiliate of the Athletics, the Aviators used to be the Las Vegas 51s, which played at a stadium in downtown Las Vegas.
The comfortable $150 million minor league ball park in Downtown Summerlin holds a few thousand less fans than Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, where the A’s are scheduled to play the Chicago Cubs Monday for the Athletics’ home-opener. The A’s defeated the Seattle Mariners, 4-2, Saturday to take two of three games so far from the Mariners in Seattle. The A’s and M’s tangle in the final game of the four-game set Sunday before the Athletics host the Chicago Cubs the next day.
While the A’s prepare to break ground at the old Tropicana hotel-casino site on the Strip in the next few months, their Triple-A affiliate Aviators provide the Las Vegas market with an affordable product of baseball.
It will be a much more affordable alternative to the A’s stadium on the Strip when it opens in 2028 assuming the construction of the $1.75 billion, 33,000-capacity domed stadium goes on schedule.
The A’s stadium on the Strip will be a swanky venue with a healthy percentage of luxury seating options. And expect lots of tourists and visitors to attend A’s games there. After all, the state law approved in 2023 that designated $380 million in government assistance to help the A’s build the stadium includes the term, “tourism,” in it. Southern Nevada Tourism Innovation Act (SB1) is the name.
To really confuse you, the Aviators’ ballpark’s former owner, Howard Hughes Corp., received $80 million from the public Las Vegas tourism agency in the form of a 20-year naming rights deal even though mostly locals attend Aviators games at the ballpark. That’s rather bizarre because the tourism agency, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), is charged with attracting out-of-towners to Las Vegas. That’s how Las Vegas rolls these days.
It’s a very nice ballpark. On Friday, the Aviators announced a sellout crowd of 9,167 for its 3-2 win over Reno.
And today, for the record, the Aviators are now 2 and 0 on the season after a 10-3 win over the Reno Aces with an announced crowd of 6,834.
