Las Vegas A's nearly a reality after Nevada governor approves $380 million for stadium

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo approved a bill guaranteeing the Athletics $380 million in public funds for a new stadium on the Strip, clearing the path for the franchise's move from Oakland to Las Vegas.

Lombardo's signature Thursday afternoon marks a significant step toward ending the Athletics' 55-year run in the Bay Area and bringing Major League Baseball to Las Vegas, where A's owner John Fisher hopes to build a $1.5 billion stadium with a partially retractable roof. The Republican governor's approval of State Bill 1 was viewed as a formality, since Lombardo called a special session after the state's regularly scheduled legislative period expired before SB1 could make it out of a senate committee.

Their new stadium will be constructed on the site of the current Tropicana Las Vegas and open for the 2028 season, according to the bill.

"I'm excited to officially sign SB1 this afternoon," Lombardo said in a statement Thursday. "This is an incredible opportunity to bring the A's to Nevada, and this legislation reflects months of negotiations between the team, the state, (Clark County) and the league. Las Vegas' position as a global sports destination is only growing, and Major League Baseball is another tremendous asset for the city."

The A's would become the first franchise to move since MLB took control of the Montreal Expos and relocated them to Washington, D.C. after the 2004 season. Fisher would become the first owner to move his franchise since 1971, when Bob Short moved the Senators from Washington to Arlington, Texas.

The A's must gain approval from 23 of the other 29 MLB owners and clear a handful of local and federal hurdles in Nevada and Clark County before relocating, and may require approval from the MLB Players Assn. for the 2025-27 seasons, during which the club may play at Class AAA ballparks in Las Vegas and Reno while their stadium is constructed.

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But MLB approval is expected to be a formality; Commissioner Rob Manfred has done a significant amount of public- and privately-facing lobbying on behalf of the reclusive Fisher, and told reporters at Thursday's owners' meetings in New York he would waive the team's relocation fee. The A's long-running failure to secure a new stadium to replace Oakland's anachronistic Coliseum has kept them among the league's beneficiaries of revenue sharing, annoying fellow owners.

Unresolved stadium issues in Oakland and Tampa Bay have prevented MLB from expanding to 32 teams and pocketing close to $10 billion in expansion fees that two new franchises would produce. Las Vegas was on a short list of potential expansion sites. Now, it will receive another city's franchise and add to a rapidly expanding sports portfolio that includes the NFL's Raiders — also relocated from Oakland — the WNBA's Aces and the NHL's Golden Knights. The Knights won their first Stanley Cup title Tuesday at T-Mobile Arena, which was privately financed by owner Bill Foley.

The A's, meanwhile, came to the desert seeking a handout. By the time they were done, Nevada had pledged more than $1 billion in public subsidies for the A's and Raiders — who received $750 million in 2016 to move from Oakland.

While the A's — who lost 50 of their first 65 games this season and have carried a payroll at or near the bottom of the major leagues while trading away talented players — faced initial skepticism from Nevada lawmakers, they managed to flip roughly eight votes in the Senate, according to the Nevada Independent. That apparently required a significant amount of horse trading among Lombardo and legislators, and while the A's faced mostly Democratic opposition to SB1, votes in both chambers did not break along party lines.

Lawmakers needed convincing that they should expend nearly half a billion dollars on a team for which few appear to clamor, in a state that ranks near the bottom in education funding. But a no vote also carried political peril, given the bill's unanimous support among the state's construction and culinary unions.

Still, the bill was universally panned by economists, since the proposed site for the ballpark at the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard is prime real estate and would generate significant tax revenue regardless of what was constructed there — with only a ballpark requiring a massive public subsidy. The A's also estimated that stadium financing will require the club averaging 28,000 fans per game — in a 30,000-seat stadium — over the 30 years that stadium bonds will be paid off.

The A's have not drawn that many fans since 1992, when they averaged 30,792 fans.

Three years later, Oakland approved a stadium deal to lure the Raiders back to the Coliseum, constructing what became known as Mt. Davis — a towering sea of football seats looming over center field — and essentially relegating the A's to second-class citizenry. Still, thanks in large part to general manager Billy Beane — whose innovation was captured in book and film in "Moneyball" — the A's became plucky overachievers, reaching the playoffs eight times between 2000 and 2014 while flailing about from Oakland to Fremont to San Jose in search of a new home.

The on-field product began deteriorating and the stadium search grew more desperate after Fisher — whose family owns the Gap and was the majority investor in the club's 2016 purchase — took over as managing general partner in 2016. While the club won wild-card berths in 2018 and '19 and reached the short-season playoffs in 2020, the young players responsible for those runs were shipped off in trades.

The low point was reached in a one-week span in March 2022, when All-Stars Matt Olson (Atlanta), Matt Chapman (Toronto) and Chris Bassitt (New York Mets) were traded; the 2022 A's lost 102 games and finished 46 games out of first.

The club yielded much heavier lumber in seeking a new home.

In April 2021, the team presented the city of Oakland a term sheet for a new ballpark and $11 billion development at Howard Terminal. The city, stung by poison pills in the 1995 deal with the Raiders that it is still paying off, reviewed the proposal.

That's when the A's utilized Manfred's muscle.

Less than three weeks after the A's released their term sheet, Manfred and the league issued a statement urging the A's to explore relocation options and essentially calling Howard Terminal the only viable site. Two weeks later, Kaval tweeted his amazement with Las Vegas from a Golden Knights playoff game.

It was pretty much over in Oakland.

The COVID-19 pandemic did not help, nor did economic factors that increased the price tag for Fisher's Howard Terminal utopia. He pivoted quickly to Las Vegas in May, announcing a "binding agreement" to purchase land for a stadium before the team opted for the Tropicana site.

The $380 million ask for the stadium was hammered out with less than two weeks left in the legislative session, but Lombardo extended the bill's life by calling a special session.

Now, the A's are poised to make a different kind of baseball history.

They would become the first major league team to call four cities home, wandering from Philadelphia (1901-1954) to Kansas City (1955-1967) to Oakland, their latter stint also their longest in one place.

With that run in serious jeopardy, A's fans organized a "reverse boycott" to illustrate that it is not a dearth of fan passion, but rather Fisher's indifference and incompetence that prompted relocation talk.

Tuesday, nearly 28,000 fans — very vocal and clad in matching "SELL" T-shirts, showed up for an A's-Rays game. The same matchup drew just 4,400 the night before. Boycott organizers did not know the timing would be both serendipitous and solemn, with Nevada legislators fixing the fine print on a bill to bring them to the desert.

The club should be Nevada's problem soon. The A's have one year remaining on their Coliseum lease; a new Las Vegas ballpark won't be ready until at least 2028, leaving the team to try and stay in Oakland for three awkward seasons, play in their outdoor Class AAA ballpark in the Vegas suburbs or bounce between the Strip and Reno.

A lease would bind the club to Las Vegas for 30 years; with modern stadiums not lasting that long in Texas and Atlanta, Las Vegas may go through all this again just as debt for this edifice is hopefully retired.

And if there's any hesitation, another city looking to make a name for itself may become the stalking horse. Just ask Oakland.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Las Vegas A's nearly a reality as Nevada governor approves $380M bill