Debacle in the desert: Will the Athetics' $1.75bn stadium on the Vegas Strip ever be built?

The Guardian

3 days ago

It had just turned 8am on a crystal clear, late June Monday morning, but it was already 85F (29F). Despite the tolerable heat (for the desert), a giant air conditioned tent had been erected on the former site of the Tropicana, the famed hotel which was demolished in a controlled implosion last October. Athletics owner John Fisher, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and a gaggle of politicians had all gathered on the compact, nine-acre site for a ceremony over two years in the making: the groundbreaking for the new A's stadium on the Strip, coming your way in 2028.
On the surface, it was your run-of-the-mill pomp and circumstance: a series of uneven speeches mixed in with a few kids gushing over how much they can't wait to have the former Oakland and current A's in Las Vegas. But if you had been following the long-running A's stadium saga, one which led them to a temporary minor-league residency in Sacramento this season, you didn't have to look far beyond the rented heavy-duty construction props to see the farce, and you didn't have to dig much deeper than the dignitaries shoveling into the makeshift baseball diamond to understand what this ceremony really was: the latest stop on Fisher's neverending, would-be stadium tour.
The heavy equipment staged behind A's owner John Fisher at today's stadium groundbreaking was 𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲 and isn't being used in construction, a PR person confirmed. 1/3#Athletics #LasVegas #StadiumDeals #ENR #RentAGroundbreaking pic.twitter.com/hkZRM4PWGy
'This could be an entire 10-part Netflix docuseries,' Neil DeMause, editor of Field of Schemes, a site that follows the trials and travails of stadium construction and renovation in North America, told The Guardian. 'All the twists and turns in all the different places in the Bay Area they looked, and John Fisher throwing a hissy fit and going off to Las Vegas. And now them being in Sacramento but saying they're going to move to Las Vegas, but still not actually seemingly making any progress. I mean, it's a lot.'
'It's unclear what the endgame of John Fisher is,' JC Bradbury, an economist who studies the financing of sports venues, said. 'Whether he miscalculated, doesn't understand, doesn't care about money, or there's something I'm just totally missing in all of this'
It's not the first time the A's have faced questions about their ability to build their new stadium. As far back as 2001, the A's tried to construct a successor to the aging, dilapidated Oakland Coliseum in at least nine sites across the Bay Area, including their final bid, a waterfront shipping port known as Howard Terminal. The city had agreed to hand Mr Fisher, a part-owner and heir to The Gap clothing empire, some $750m in infrastructure and grants before he controversially pulled out of the deal and fled for the desert.
Why would Fisher leave nearly a billion dollars for a park on a 55-acre plot, in a top-10 television market in love with its ballclub, for nine acres and a minuscule market with fans who don't know their A's from their elbow? We still don't know, but there are plenty of new questions to try and answer about a process that doesn't add up to anyone despite Fisher, Manfred, and the Vegas officials who insist that everything is on time and on schedule.
What we do know is that Fisher has not surpassed the $100m he must spend on the park to unlock the $380m in public dollars; he's reportedly spent half that on planning and development. We also know that costs of construction are rising on a daily basis. One of the reasons that Stuart Sternberg, owner of the Tampa Bay Rays, says he pulled out of a $600m public subsidy deal is that Hurricane Milton caused a delay to construction of his new stadium, and so he wanted even more public capital to make him whole on potential overruns. Perhaps seeing a future of cash calls, Sternberg is now selling the Rays, another team with long-term stadium issues currently playing home games in a minor league park.
Fisher, who on the surface has far less business acumen than Sternberg, has seen construction prices rise for the original 33,000-capacity stadium, which would be the smallest in baseball, from $1.5bn to the $1.75bn figure announced six months ago. With an unstable inflationary environment, potential tariff costs and heavy debate on interest rates, Alexander Marks, who heads up Schools over Stadiums, a protest group that has tried to block massive public subsidies that were provided for a billionaires ballpark despite Nevada's abysmal education rankings, is among critics who believe the price doesn't add up.
'Schools in Clark County aren't being built because of construction costs,' Marks told the Guardian. 'The Wynn Resorts just announced that they would be putting their renovations on hold because construction costs are up. So it's kind of odd that this is the one guy in Vegas that has figured out how to keep costs the exact same, which leads me to believe that's not the case.'
Turns out Marks was onto something. On Saturday, just days after the 'groundbreaking', Fisher finally admitted that the cost could rise yet again to $2bn. It takes time to get the raw materials and labor in place for a project of this scale, and time is quickly translating into money, all while the A's owner is on the hook for all overruns.
So where is all this capital coming from? And does Fisher have, or wish to spend, his family fortune on the ballpark? The back-of-the-napkin math says the 64-year-old currently has a $300m loan from Goldman Sachs, $380m in public dollars and roughly $175m from Aramark, the stadium vending group that purchased an equity stake in the A's in May. That's around $855m, leaving a sizable gap left to get this project over the line. On 18 June, Fisher, who Forbes says is worth $3bn, announced he's selling Major League Soccer's San Jose Earthquakes, who were valued in January by Sportico at $600m. It's a move that will both take time to complete and seems hasty considering the money pit this project is becoming.
Fisher is short – way short – and that will mean digging deep into his own pockets and risking his family wealth for a project that makes little fiscal sense to anyone analyzing in good faith. The team is valued at roughly $1.7bn, close to the recent Baltimore Orioles sale, a team that actually has a major-league park to play in. The stadium could cost over a billion of his own money, and so there are some serious doubts as to whether this venue will actually happen. Are there contractor deals done? Has a memorandum of understanding, outlining financial obligations, outlining the intentions and expectations of the parties involved, actually been written?
'Fisher has to realize he's a dead man walking,' Bradbury said. 'And he is sort of trying to play out the string to save as much face as he can. And what's eventually going to happen is someone will come in and be the savior. And that may involve not being in Las Vegas.'
Even if the stadium is actually built, and the low-budget A's do land in Vegas, there are even more issues waiting. Despite the 40m visitors that Las Vegas counts annually, the A's will have to fight to fill seats while competing with live entertainment and nightlife, gambling and the NFL's Raiders and the NHL's Golden Knights, at least for at least a few months a season, all inside their tiny market. So with all that said, why didn't the A's fight to play at least some games at the local minor-league park and try to get some grassroots support going? It's just another confounding move by Fisher, who made the shortsighted move to play in Sacramento in order to keep revenue from his local television deal.
Meanwhile, over in Sactown, not only are the A's not selling out their small minor league park, but their failure to take the capital's name and embrace the city in any tangible way has alienated fans in what's meant to be their home for three years. Not to mention that players are already fed up with their substandard MLB ballpark. Bradbury speculates that with all the bad will surrounding the club, they could wind up in Salt Lake City or elsewhere next season. So now Fisher is, and let's say it politely, disliked, in multiple cities. And should the stadium deal in Las Vegas unravel, it would make for a unique trifecta.
That all leads to the final question. Why? Why would a billionaire go through all these trials and travails for a move that seemingly doesn't add up in any way shape or form, practically or fiscally? We know the then-Oakland A's needed some sort of stadium deal in place by 2024 in order to keep their slice of MLB's revenue sharing stream, but that doesn't begin to explain it.
'This is the dog catching the car,' DeMause said. 'And now that he has caught the car, I don't think he had any idea what to do with it. He switched up on stadium sites [in Las Vegas] in a matter of 24 hours. He did not have a plan for where to play once Oakland kicked him out, even though he didn't have a lease. It either didn't occur to him or he figured he would figure it out later.'
The case against Fisher is damning, yet instead of selling and walking away with a tidy profit now, he soldiers on. Is it a case of a wealthy team owner thoroughly enjoying the attention of desert-based suitors after years of combat with Oakland's leaders? Is it a case of an heir on a quest to prove to someone, maybe himself, that he has the chops to pull something like this off? DeMause believes it's all possible, but offers up a simpler explanation.
'It's very, very clear: he's really bad at this.'