A’s Give Las Vegas Market Real Taste Of MLB Regular Season Game Product With Series Against Brewers, Rockies This Week

 

A’s manager Mark Kotsay

 


      Story by Alan Snel    Photos by Hugh Byrne

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — As if hosting the wildly-exciting Stanley Cup Final was not intense enough, Las Vegas is also home to six MLB Athletics games at Las Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin this week.

A’s owner John Fisher

LVSportsBiz.com caught up with A’s owner John Fisher, who attended the insane, epic and instant-classic SCF Game 3 in which the Vegas Golden Knights won, 5-4, over the Carolina Hurricanes after the VGK led, 4-0, after two periods.

In a wild finish that felt like the crazy ending to the VGK Game 3, the Milwaukee Brewers defeated the A’s, 15-14, in 12 innings after the Athletics rallied for four runs in the bottom of the 10th inning to tie the game after the Brewers had scored four in the top of the inning. The A’s fell to a record of 31 wins and 35 losses.

 

Here’s our Fisher interview before his A’s hosted the 40-23 Milwaukee Brewers for the 7 PM MLB game at the Triple-A ballpark in Downtown Summerlin. The stadium is the home of the Las Vegas Aviators, the Athletics’ AAA affiliate.

 

LVSportsBiz.com also interviewed A’s president Marc Badain, who talked about the excitement of the A’s big leaguers playing MLB regular season games in their future 2028 home market. Badain, who also oversaw the construction of the Raiders stadium as that team’s former president, said construction of the A’s stadium roof just began.

The Athletics’ $2 billion domed stadium is slated to open for the 2028 MLB season.

We even chatted with A’s broadcaster Chris Caray, the great-grandson of legendary baseball broadcaster Harry Caray and the latest member of the Caray baseball broadcaster legacy.

Caray talked about an ascending A’s team that is expected to compete for a division title in 2026 and can still be improving by 2028 when the historic American League franchise lands at its palatial ball yard at the former Tropicana hotel-casino site on the Strip at Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard.

The A’s are playing in a Triple-A ballpark in West Sacramento while their stadium is being built on the Strip.

They’re also phasing business operations into the Las Vegas market like opening a visitors center in the UnCommons business and food hub while also trying to sell premium seat deals that require a personal seat license charge.

*

The A’s signed up Carnell Johnson, who sings the national anthem before VGK games, to perform his splendid two-minute Star-Spangled Banner tonight while announcer Bruce Buffer screamed out the Athletics’ starting lineup.

The A’s entered Monday with a record of 31 wins and 34 losses, trailing first place Seattle by three games, but only two in the all-important loss column. The A’s are now 31-35 on the season.

It was a packed house, with fans wearing the game giveaway of a white Athletics jersey with “28” on the back. Fans waited on a long line to get into the ballyard.

Fans wait to get inside Las Vegas Ballpark for A’s vs Brewers MLB regular season game.

As for the game itself, it was a slugfest with A’s players Shea Langeliers, Nick Kurtz, Zack Gelof, Tyler Soderstrom and  Jonah Heim blasting home runs. Soderstrom and Kurtz hit two homers with four ribbies in the game that was 10-10 after nine innings.  Each team scored four runs in their halves of the tenth inning for a 14-14 ties after ten.

Nick Kurtz

 


 

Alan Snel

Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.