The Athletics celebrated the groundbreaking of a $2 billion ballpark project in Las Vegas last month, but the future of the franchise remains uncertain.
Mounds of dirt, construction vehicles and a sign pointing to the exact location of where home plate will be served as the backdrop on June 23 as owner John Fisher shared his bold message.
“We are Vegas’ team,” he told the crowd gathered on the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard.
Indeed, it appeared that last month, the A’s took a big step toward their next chapter in Southern Nevada.
The historic franchise dates all the way back to 1901, when owner Connie Mack founded the Philadelphia Athletics of the American Baseball League.
Five decades on from that, the club moved to Kansas City in 1955 for 13 seasons.
The Athletics then went out west, to Oakland, where they played for 57 seasons before temporarily relocating to West Sacramento in 2025.
Now, though, they are set to make a 545 mile move to the Vegas strip, holding hopes that a new ballpark will be finished in time for Opening Day 2028.
There’s a chance, though, that the facility may never be built.
A’s Vegas stadium plan questioned by experts
A report from The Guardian, published on July 2, described the A’s potential relocation as a ‘debacle in the desert’.
Baseball journalist David Lengel wrote that owner Fisher is ‘way short’ of funding for the project that is already becoming a money pit.
“It’s unclear what the endgame of John Fisher is,” JC Bradbury, an economist who studies the financing of sports venues, told The Guardian.
“Whether he miscalculated, doesn’t understand, doesn’t care about money, or there’s something I’m just totally missing in all of this.”
The new A’s facility is set to be built on nine acres of a 36-acre lot where the Tropicana Hotel once stood, and will hold a capacity of 33,000 fans.
Plans suggest it will feature the closest seats to home plate and the smallest foul territory of any MLB ballpark, while the building will be fully enclosed by a roof.
From home plate, the see-through dome will offer views of the Vegas Strip, with the famous MGM Grand in clear sight beyond the outfield.
How much will the new stadium cost to build?
While exciting, it’s set to cost a lot of money, and it’s estimated construction prices have jumped from $1.5bn to $2bn in just six months.
According Lengel, Fisher is ‘on the hook for all overruns’ and has not surpassed the $100m he must spend on the park to unlock $380m in public dollars toward the build.
Lengel wrote of the project: “Fisher is short — way short — and that will mean digging deep into his own pockets and risking his family wealth for a project that makes little fiscal sense to anyone analyzing in good faith.”
Bradbury, meanwhile, argued that the A’s owner is a ‘dead man walking’ and could be bailed out — but not by Vegas.
“Fisher has to realize he’s a dead man walking. And he is sort of trying to play out the string to save as much face as he can,” Bradbury said.
“What’s eventually going to happen is someone will come in and be the savior. And that may involve not being in Las Vegas.”
Plans for the new billion-dollar ballpark certainly look impressive, but it appears there are plenty who question if it can actually be built.
Fisher, however, remains bullish and the A’s plan to play six games in Vegas in June 2026.
“The costs have gone up as more detail comes in. That’s fine,” he told The Nevada Independent. “From the very beginning, we wanted a design that was unique.
“Vegas is one of the most unique towns in the world. We wanted a building that would symbolize the excitement and uniqueness that is the market.”
The six games will be played at the Las Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin — the 10,000-seat home to the Triple-A affiliate Aviators.
A’s President Marc Badain credited Aviators President Don Logan with the move.
“He’s been pushing for this for a while. There’s a lot of machinations that you have to go through,” Badain said.
After five decades in Oakland, where the A’s played for 56 years at the now-dilapidated Coliseum, the future of the franchise is far from clear.
On the field, the situation isn’t much better.
Oakland is bottom of the American League West with a 63-75 record.
All-Star Mason Miller was sent ot the San Diego Padres in July.
Royals and White Sox facing uncertainty over future
The A’s aren’t the only team facing uncertainty around their future, with the Kansas City Royals also having a stadium headache.
The Royals want to be in a new home by 2031, but the team has yet to name a site.
The franchise has spent over a year looking at potential sites across the metro area.
Bosses insist they will not renew the lease at the Kauffman Stadium when it expires in 2031.
That would give the team just six years to pick a site, work out financing with lawmakers and complete construction.
Estimates for construction costs range from $1 billion to $2 billion with over half of the costs unfunded, per The Beacon.
Blair Kerkhoff, a Kansas City Star sports writer who covers the Chiefs, exclusively told talkSPORT in June that he expects the NFL franchise to head for Kansas City and the MLB outfit to remain in Missouri.
“What I think is, how it’s gonna play out — through all the twists and turns — I think the Chiefs are going to end up over on the Kansas side of the state line,” he said.
“I think the Royals will find a way to work something out with Jackson County in the city of Kansas City to be in downtown Kansas City.
“Baseball would stay in Missouri. The football (NFL) moves to Kansas.”