The Oakland Athletics of Sacramento have announced a June 23 groundbreaking for their new Las Vegas stadium, and the gambling news site Casino.org doesn’t pull any punches with its subheds:
A’s owner John Fisher has been promising for a while now that he would hold a groundbreaking in June, and this will get in under the gun by a week. This isn’t the start of actual work on the site — that arguably was last month when workers started drilling some holes and building a perimeter fence — and doesn’t seem to represent any ramping up of construction, either: The Las Vegas Review-Journal calls it “more of a celebration for the A’s and state and local politicians to celebrate the work they put into the project leading up to construction beginning.”
Once the celebration is celebrated, it’s unclear what happens next. The plan is to open the stadium by Opening Day 2028, which is maybe possible in a less-than-three-year timespan even with the stadium’s unique engineering challenges, but, as Casino.org and everyone else paying even the slightest attention notes, somebody still needs to cut a $1.75 billion check to the construction company first. Fisher is still hoping to raise $550 million by shopping around chunks of team ownership to potential “investors,” and while concessionaire Aramark is reportedly in for $100 million, that still leaves a sizable funding gap. Fisher could always start spending his own money while waiting to see if any more suckers are willing to buy into the team at an inflated $2 billion value — we’ll see if anyone picks up real shovels after the ceremonial ones get put down on June 23.
There’s no real reason Fisher has to do anything immediately. The state can declare the project abandoned and back out of it if no work has been done in a 180-day span, so expect at least some work before Christmas to keep that clock running, but otherwise he can continue to slow-walk this if he wants to — or needs to, if he really doesn’t have the cash himself. That would likely mean extending his stay in Sacramento, and how’s that going, anyway?
The Athletics have set a groundbreaking ceremony date for their new Las Vegas Strip stadium
Which may not get built because the large majority of its funding is still not in place after nearly two years of soliciting shares in the team
But there’s nothing to see here
A’s owner John Fisher has been promising for a while now that he would hold a groundbreaking in June, and this will get in under the gun by a week. This isn’t the start of actual work on the site — that arguably was last month when workers started drilling some holes and building a perimeter fence — and doesn’t seem to represent any ramping up of construction, either: The Las Vegas Review-Journal calls it “more of a celebration for the A’s and state and local politicians to celebrate the work they put into the project leading up to construction beginning.”
Once the celebration is celebrated, it’s unclear what happens next. The plan is to open the stadium by Opening Day 2028, which is maybe possible in a less-than-three-year timespan even with the stadium’s unique engineering challenges, but, as Casino.org and everyone else paying even the slightest attention notes, somebody still needs to cut a $1.75 billion check to the construction company first. Fisher is still hoping to raise $550 million by shopping around chunks of team ownership to potential “investors,” and while concessionaire Aramark is reportedly in for $100 million, that still leaves a sizable funding gap. Fisher could always start spending his own money while waiting to see if any more suckers are willing to buy into the team at an inflated $2 billion value — we’ll see if anyone picks up real shovels after the ceremonial ones get put down on June 23.
There’s no real reason Fisher has to do anything immediately. The state can declare the project abandoned and back out of it if no work has been done in a 180-day span, so expect at least some work before Christmas to keep that clock running, but otherwise he can continue to slow-walk this if he wants to — or needs to, if he really doesn’t have the cash himself. That would likely mean extending his stay in Sacramento, and how’s that going, anyway?