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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
SEATTLE, Washington — Many stadium host commnities will sign lease deals with major league teams for 30 years, but the Seattle Mariners want their stadium to last 100 years and serve as the Fenway Park or Wrigley Field of the West Coast.
That means knowing your fan base very well and dealing with stadium issues like addressing a concourse getting clogged with fans waiting on long concessions lines or recruiting non-baseball events to make a stadium a 365-day facility, Mariners Chief Operating Officer Trevor Gooby told LVSportsBiz.com before Saturday’s A’s-Mariners game at T-Mobile Park.
The A’s have begun building a $2 billion, 33,000-fan, domed stadium on the Strip and they have paid close attention to how other teams design and develop stadiums, including studying fan amenities from food and bev options to how teams use the space inside venues.
The Mariners ballpark opened in July 1999, debuting in the middle of the baseball season, which was unusual.
The team has several clubs in the stadium such as the 210-person Press Club just above the lower bowl (opened in 2022) and the 410-person Diamond Club behind home plate. Out in rightfield above the lower bowl bleachers is the 300-person Hit It Here Cafe. Denver’s Coors Field, home of the Rockies, has a similar restaurant out in rightfield.
The A’s stadium will have one of the highest percentage of premium seats and expect the venue that is supposed to open in 2028 to have swanky clubs. It’s in Las Vegas, after all.
The Mariners also renovated its scoreboard control room and has plans to replaced its massive video scoreboard, Gooby said.
And there are about 300 points of sale around the venue, he noted.
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Just before 5 PM, A’s manager Mark Kotsay met the media and he’s the one who asked the first question, inquiring about how the Summerlin South Little Leaguers did in the Las Vegas area.
He learned Summerlin South won the U.S. championship and will now play for the world championship.
LVSportsBiz.com asked Kotsay about the challenge of managing a team that has has three distinct parts to a roller coaster season — 22-20 start, then losing 20 of 21 and then playing .500+ baseball since.
Kotsay ticked off some topics like the importance of having depth in the organization, staying away from injuries, enduring “a lot of changes,” being more creative with personnel and making roster changes faster.
He noted other teams after the All-Star break has endured some losing ways, though not as extreme as losing 20 of 21 games.
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It was another balmy evening in Seattle’s SoDo district, with 36,524 fans announced as the attendance for the game that started at 6:42 PM.
PSA
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