A's Potential Las Vegas Home at the Tropicana Stopping Reservations
The Oakland A's plan to relocate to Las Vegas with the hope of having a ballpark ready for the 2028 baseball season. The site they've landed on is the current location of the Tropicana, which needs to be demolished before any construction on the site--ballpark or new hotel/casino--can begin.
The Nevada Independent wrote an excellent piece on the topic on Sunday, and we'll get into some of that in a moment. But first, in their article they said the Tropicana's website showed "no availability" past October 19, 2024. After looking at their website, that date has moved up significantly. The latest date that you can currently book a stay at the Trop is April 1st. That's in just a couple of months. It would also be the first step towards landing the A's in Vegas to keep everything on schedule. Demolition is expected to occur sometime this summer as part of that schedule, though no date has been announced.
This could just be the Tropicana not keeping their bookings open too far in advance to limit the number of refunds they'd potentially have to issue if they did in fact have to close the hotel when there are still reservations on the books. Earlier this month Brodie Brazil mentioned that the Tropicana was still taking reservations through the end of the year in a few videos on his YouTube page. This could just be them scaling back a little bit.
That also seems to fit some of what the NV Indy mentioned, which is that Bally's is waiting for the A's. "The Tropicana can’t set a closing date until the A’s have all their stadium agreements and financing in place." The team has yet to finalize their development plans, a community benefits agreement or a lease agreement with the LV Stadium Authority as well, so it seems premature to think that the Tropicana has a definitive closing date without those items at least being agreed upon.
Bally's "'Chief Financial Officer Marcus Glover said during the company’s earnings call that it was “very difficult to put any more investment into operational changes” at the Tropicana ”until we get more clarity on what the A's are going to do.'"
This quote from the article also seems to support the new reservation plan idea, because it basically says that they don't know what the A's plans for the site are, even now.
That is fairly telling. A's owner John Fisher said last week that the team and Bally's were working together to provide "a better picture of what the redeveloped location would resemble." Yet, the quote from Glover makes it sound like the A's are still trying to figure out what they want to do at all, and that is what is holding things up. Sure, he likely wanted to sound better on an earnings call and pass the blame, but it's also Fisher's M.O. to be incredibly indecisive.
Fisher is still looking for minority investors in the club to "help build a relationship with the community." Given the speculation of the billionaire having trouble finding funding for the project, it's more likely that he's looking for money to finance the ballpark than give up partial stakes in the team, despite claiming that he and his family have the funding last week.
While there is currently an end date for the Tropicana to stop taking reservations, that could end up being a moving target as they await more details from the A's and lock up funding of their own.