A's to Provide Las Vegas Updates

Thursday will be the bi-monthly meeting of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board, and in this meeting there are going to be a couple of points that pertain to the Athletics. The first is that they will be discussing, and perhaps appointing someone, to take a leadership position when it comes to the team's $2 million annual community benefits package.

The second item on the docket will be to present a progress report of sorts, complete with new renderings that will provide a glimpse of the proposed ballpark's interior spaces.

Neither is necessarily groundbreaking (pun intended), and doesn't put the club much closer to actually opening a ballpark on the Las Vegas Strip.

While the A's have been saying that they plan to open the ballpark in 2028, with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred recently stating that everything is on target for that date, they would already seem to be up against the timeframe, given the estimated 36-month timeline to build the ballpark.

That would equate to a full three years, and Opening Day would be, at the latest, April 1.

It's impossible for the A's to break ground by that date this year, which would entail many overtime hours to help close that time gap, and that rate of pay just may not be in the budget with owner John Fisher already on the hook for $1.1 billion. If the A's fail to meet their 2028 goal, they would likely have to postpone the ballpark's opening until 2029.

This contingency has already been planned for, with the Athletics having a temporary home sorted out in West Sacramento for at least the next three seasons (including 2025), but with a fourth year option that would extend to the 2028 season, if needed.

The A's also can't begin building until they receive approval for a building permit from the FAA, due to the ballpark's proximity to the airport. According to the Nevada Independent, that process is ongoing.

""The Clark County Building Department has not received permit applications for the proposed A’s Stadium yet, so the department is unable to comment on where that project is with regard to FAA approvals,” Clark County spokeswoman Jennifer Cooper wrote in an email."

These permits, which are needed to begin construction, are expected to take a little while to go through, and yet the A's have not even handed them in yet. That certainly doesn't scream that they're pushing forward with any sort of haste.

As we have said repeatedly here at Athletics on SI, this ballpark can certainly get done. That said, we have seen how John Fisher operates for decades at this point, and until he starts going about things in a different manner, then the more likely scenario is that this ballpark doesn't get built.

Once he begins showing actual progress, not pictures, then it will seem like more of a reality. We're talking financing plan, and even some shovels in the ground. Perhaps providing an accurate timeline, since the three-year construction window is about to exceed when it would need to be completed (let alone tested out) for Opening Day, 2028.

These aren't big asks if everything is actually going as well as ownership would want the public to believe.

It's also worth noting that the team will be opening up the priority list for season tickets to fans that pay $19.01 beginning on Friday. Being on that list would give those fans the first opportunity to buy A's season tickets in Las Vegas when they go on sale.

The opening of this ballpark is at least three years away, so it should come as no surprise that this is a marketing gimmick. They're going to collect some email addresses for potential future needs, and get some quick cash in the process. Their hope has to be that they get thousands of people clamoring for these tickets. It should also lead to a nice press release for some easy good news.

The more sinister plan at work here could be using the data that they receive, and if it's not up to where they want it to be, to have it be a reason to back out of Las Vegas in the long run. This will either begin laying the groundwork for their eventual home, or be used as a talking point for the excitement just not being there in Sin City, so they had to look somewhere else as prices to build rose too high.

They could compare the interest in the club in Sacramento to Las Vegas pretty easily.

There's always a second way to look at things when it comes to Fisher, and it's important to be on the lookout for what the backup plan could be.