Casinos Giving "Full Support" to A's Potential Vegas Relocation

Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal is reporting that the north Strip and downtown resort operators strongly support the A's potential move to their neck of the woods--or desert.

That's really the meat of the article. It sounds great, but it doesn't hold much weight, honestly. I would love for Disneyland to be a whole lot closer, and I support Disney moving their entire operation to the Bay Area. But unless I'm willing to chip in a little bit, I doubt it'll happen.

And that's John Fisher's dilemma.

He is looking for someone to take on a significant portion of the bill, and so far, nearly two years into the Vegas process, nobody is biting. It's not typically so hard to sell a sports team to an area, but right now it doesn't look like Fisher is very popular in two different markets.

Heck, he has the support of the MLB Commissioner, but Rob Manfred couldn't be bothered to leave New York to attend Fisher's latest meetings with Vegas casino magnates.

Funnily enough, the way that he has run the Oakland A's--by going through a roster churn every few seasons, never re-signing a fan favorite free agent (if they make it to free agency before being traded), generally not spending much on the roster, and letting the ballpark that he does have get so bad that it's deemed unfit to play in--may actually be what keeps the A's in Oakland after all. It just doesn't seem like anyone wants to work with John Fisher because of his track record.

If something were to develop in Las Vegas with the A's, I would wager that it would start happening pretty soon, and that's mostly because it would have to. The A's need a binding agreement on a ballpark plan by January of next year or they start losing out on their revenue sharing checks, and there's a lot of ground to cover in order to get a ballpark built--like figuring out where they want to build this billion dollar dome.

The A's lease with the Coliseum also runs out next year, but they can just renew that.

The A's already have a number of boxes checked with the city of Oakland and have been working towards a binding vote, but both sides seem to know where the other stands in terms of funding for the project, and now Fisher is out there looking for a better deal for himself.

While he's doing that, I'm going to sit here patiently and wait for Mickey Mouse to show up.