Shop at Jay’s Market at 190 East Flamingo Road at the Koval Lane intersection east of the Strip.
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Technically, it was the first home-opener for the Athletics after 57 such experiences in Oakland.
But when the home is only for three years, perhaps home should be framed by quotation marks.
West Sacramento and a Triple-A ballpark with capacity of 14,014 are the A’s home for 2025, 2026 and 2027 before a construction schedule has the Athletics slated to christen a $1.75 billion domed stadium on the Strip in Las Vegas in 2028.
Tonight’s A’s-Cubs game was a sellout at Sutter Health Park, which will be a busy place this summer with its usual tenant — the Pacific Coast League’s River Cats — playing most nights there when the A’s are on the road.
The first game of the post-Oakland era did not go well for the A’s. Chants of “sell the team” were heard at the ballpark during a game in which the Athletics yielded 18 runs to the Cubs while plating only three. A 15-run loss in the historic A’s game was a rather dubious beginning in West Sacramento.
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Here in Las Vegas, I decided to watch a few innings of the A’s game at the Durango hotel-casino off the 215 beltway in the fast-growing southwest valley.
On the way over, I turned my car radio to 95.5 FM The Bull, but the A’s radio broadcast was not there because it’s actually on the HD2 channel of iHeartMedia’s 95.5 KWNR FM The Bull.
Oh well.
Then it was time to visit the Durango sportsbook, a nicely-designed sports betting section of the newish Station Casinos property.
The A’s might be a Las Vegas sports team in three years.
But for now, the A’s game was not exactly a featured contest on the sportsbook screens. The MLB Dodgers-Braves and NBA Lakers-Rockets games were the marquee games on the biggest screens, with an assortment of NBA and MLB games above the A’s-Cubs screen.
It’s going to be a long haul to make Las Vegas an A’s market.
Athletics staff doled out A’s ballcaps at a recent A’s season-opener watch party at a brewery in downtown Henderson Thursday.
But the Raiders have been handing out free football equipment to high schoolers and contributing to educational programs since they arrived at Allegiant Stadium in 2020 and the NFL team is still trying to convince Las Vegas locals to accept them as their home team.
It was the Dodgers game — not the A’s game — that was on the big screen at the sportsbook in Las Vegas.
Enough said.