A’s attempted move to Las Vegas is fast becoming the biggest mess in sports

Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher thought this would be easy. He’d twiddle his fingers for a while in the Bay Area trying to get a new stadium, and if that didn’t materialize he’d bolt for Las Vegas with MLB’s blessing — getting richer in the process. Fisher’s assumption was that with the Raiders’ move, and the Golden Knights selling out their arena, it was going to be simple to get a boatload of taxpayer money to build a ballpark, with private investors falling over themselves to get a piece of the action.

One month later, Fisher’s dream is collapsing around him. Everything is on fire and he’s left trying to work out what the hell to do next.

Nevada grew a backbone at the worst possible time for the A’s

The entire process of potentially moving to Las Vegas has been cooking for years. Fisher saw it as his ace in the hole for a new stadium deal in Oakland. However, it appears there was a stunning lack of foresight in announcing the move without any guarantees from the city of Las Vegas, Clark County, or the state of Nevada.

Essentially what the A’s did was “hey, we’re moving to Vegas” with hopes someone else would pick up the tab. That hasn’t happened. In one of the most spectacular funding failures in recent memory, the A’s released renderings of a beautiful, state-of-the-art facility that carried a $1.5B price tag — with the expectation the state would pick up a significant portion of the bill. Instead, Fisher was told that any discussion of public funds would be capped at $380M. Even then, it’s been an uphill climb.

State Bill 509, titled the “Southern Nevada Tourism Innovation Act,” might as well be called the “Build A Park For The A’s Act.” It contains one item: Building a ballpark for the team. Since its introduction there has been significant lobbying to convince lawmakers to pass the proposal, including using some really fuzzy math.

Estimates being given project that on average 2.6 million people will go to A’s games, should the team move to Las Vegas. This means that they believe 32,098 will attend each home game. This represents a jump from 30th to 11th in attendance, with the assertion the A’s will attract more fans than the Boston Red Sox, and only slightly fewer than the Chicago Cubs. It would also mean that the worst team in baseball would see a 370 percent increase in attendance because of the move.

What pays for the “Southern Nevada Tourism Innovation Act”? Taxes. Specifically rerouting funds from Nevada’s existing hotel room tax to help fund the ballpark. This has turned into a semantic argument, with Governor Joe Lombardo being resolute on his campaign promise of “no new taxes,” while pro-A’s members of the legislature essentially saying “this isn’t a new tax, just part of an existing one.”

Still, it means pulling money away from other projects and giving it to a relocating baseball team — which doesn’t have the support it needs. At least not yet.

Debate on the bill has been tabled until Monday, but this gets worse and worse for the A’s the longer this gets drawn out. Amendments are being made to the bill, though it’s unclear what those entail — or whether these changes would see passage of the funding bill.

So, to be clear:

• The A’s wanted $500M in public funding for a ballpark. They’re getting $380M max.
• There’s no guarantee this bill will pass.
• Without state funding it appears impossible a ballpark will be built.
• There’s no indication that the city of Las Vegas or Clark County have a funding plan in case state funding isn’t agreed to.
• Oakland has moved on.
• The A’s have no home, just a handful of magic beans they’re trying to plant in the desert.

As it stands it appears the A’s don’t have support from Democrats in the Senate, with the Las Vegas Review-Journal reporting that team representatives met with lawmakers late into the night on Friday morning.

What happens if this deal doesn’t get done?

It’s really bad for John Fisher and the Athletics! Seriously, the path forward is murky. The most likely scenario is that the A’s greatly reduce the scope of their stadium plans to turn it into something much more economically viable for private investment, but that’s incredibly embarrassing for the team after plans have been released.

In addition, it opens up a whole host of questions about why the A’s are moving at all, if their primary reason for abandoning the Bay Area was lack of public funding, and now they’re settling for a lack of public funding.

Could the team stay in Oakland? Perhaps, but with as much damage has been done in prior negotiations it will take significant work to get things back on track. Even then, there’s no clear way how the Athletics get a new stadium in Oakland, should they abandon a move to Las Vegas.