Will it or won’t it?
The future of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, whether they remain in the Bay Area or relocate to Las Vegas, remains to be seen.
But the move to Las Vegas seems to be getting a lot more support. Where would it be built, is one question. The other is — who is going to pay for it?
And if the team relocates, and it has the blessing, maybe even the encouragement, of Major League Baseball, it would be the forth major league team to land in Las Vegas in six years.
Meanwhile, the team is still chasing a $12 billion dream of a new stadium and residential-retail development in Oakland. So nothing is for certain yet.
And for those of you who remember the building of Allegiant Stadium, home to the Oakland Raiders — supported with some $750 million in room taxes over 30 years — do you like the idea? If you do, how should it be paid for? More tax dollars? Let the team pay for it? Tax breaks for the team? Or another room tax? Should Las Vegas roll out the red carpet for a new major league team?
Mick Akers is the sports business reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal who has been covering this story, and he joined State of Nevada host Joe Schoenmann to talk about the possible move.
On the status of negotiations between the city of Oakland and the A's
It's a good question. They've been pretty quiet on the Oakland front and they had some change over with some of the city council members. They got a new mayor. She hasn't been very vocal about it. She's only said, "Hey, I would love to keep them here, but not at the cost of taxpayers." She hasn't talked to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred yet. And you know, incoming Governor Joe Lombardo has already spoken with him. So he obviously that kind of shows, you know, where the situation you're setting right now.
On where the team could land
They've been in and out here, doing meetings with different people, they had a big meeting with some of the casino operators on the north Strip and downtown, obviously, that's going to be centered around the Las Vegas Festival Grounds site. So all those operators gave their full support to the A's. … Derek Stevens even saying, some of these people are complaining about maybe some public money going or public assistance going towards this are crazy not to support that because I know this impact that bring an A's will have on no community. Looks like some of those north Strip people are very much behind this. They also still have talks going on with the Tropicana folks and the Rio site.
On if the team would have support in Las Vegas
Anything that's coming out here and it's brand new, the fans are going to be pretty excited; that's going to last for a few years. And then once that wears off, obviously, the best thing to keep fans coming back is winning. A lot of people look at the situation up there and ownership and how they have that Moneyball mentality where they're trying to spend as little as they can for the players that they have, and try to get the most out of their players, which worked sometime here and there. They've had a few years of success, but you know, not much recently. The hope is if they come out here, and they put all this investment in and relocation, building a new ballpark and just moving the team, I heard that they would potentially start spending a little bit more on the team side; that remains to be seen. That's the hope at least a lot of the fans I talked to.
Guest: Mick Akers, sports business reporter, Las Vegas Review-Journal
