How the Las Vegas A's Stadium Got Built: The Politics, the Money, and the Deal
The $380 million Nevada public funding deal, the opposition, the politics, and how a ballpark on the Strip got approved.
The Nevada legislature convened a special session on June 12, 2023. The specific purpose was to consider a bill that would authorize $380 million in public financing for an MLB stadium in Las Vegas. From the time the session opened to the time Governor Joe Lombardo signed the resulting legislation, approximately forty-eight hours passed. It was, by any measure, a swift transaction.
Understanding how Nevada got to that point -- and why the deal moved so quickly once it was in motion -- requires tracing the lines of political and economic interest that converged on the Las Vegas baseball question in 2023.
The Raiders Precedent
Nothing in Nevada's recent sports history is more relevant to the A's stadium deal than what happened with Allegiant Stadium, the Las Vegas Raiders facility that opened in 2020. That project involved $750 million in public financing, drawn from a hotel room tax that had been specifically created for the purpose. The Raiders stadium is by any measure a success: it hosts Raiders games, UNLV football, major concerts, soccer matches, and international sporting events. The economic activity around it has been real and measurable.
When the A's began seriously exploring Las Vegas in 2022 and 2023, Nevada officials who had navigated the Raiders deal were not starting from zero. They had a template. They had relationships with the financing mechanisms. They had a baseline understanding of how to structure public participation in a sports facility project in a way that could survive political scrutiny.
The hotel room tax structure was central to this. Nevada's gaming and hospitality industry generates enormous tax revenue, and a fraction of that revenue -- dedicated specifically to facilities that bring visitors to the region -- has been the funding mechanism for major Vegas sports projects. The argument for using it is that sports facilities are, in the Nevada context, infrastructure for the tourism economy rather than subsidies to private sports franchises. Whether that framing is correct is genuinely debatable, but it is the framing that has worked politically.
The Lobbyists and the Governor
The A's hired a formidable lobbying team for the Nevada effort. The team retained Sig Rogich, one of the most prominent political operatives in Nevada history, along with several other firms with established relationships in both the Democratic and Republican legislative caucuses. The lobbying operation began well before the formal public announcement of the Las Vegas interest.
Governor Joe Lombardo, a Republican who had been elected in 2022, was receptive. Lombardo had campaign commitments to economic development and had expressed general support for the Raiders and Allegiant Stadium during the campaign. When the A's situation materialized as a potential win for his administration, his office engaged constructively.
The politics within the legislature were more complicated. Nevada has a part-time legislature that meets in regular session every two years, which is why the special session was necessary when the June timeline for the A's deal became clear. Democratic Assembly members, in particular, needed to be brought along on a deal that involved substantial public funds going to a private sports franchise owned by a billionaire.
The bill's supporters emphasized the construction jobs, the ongoing economic activity, and the reputational benefit to Las Vegas of becoming a full major-league sports market. They also pointed to the structure of the financing: the $380 million would not come from the general fund, would not reduce spending on education or public services, and would be derived entirely from the hotel room tax that had been created specifically for this purpose.
Critics argued that $380 million in public money was $380 million that could be spent on things that benefited Nevada residents directly, not an entertainment facility for a billionaire's sports team. They also noted that the A's, under John Fisher's ownership, had been one of the lowest-payroll teams in baseball for years, and that there was no guarantee the Las Vegas team would spend at a level that would justify the public investment.
The Opposition
The opposition to the stadium deal included a coalition of fiscal conservatives who opposed public financing of private sports facilities on principle, progressive groups who wanted the money directed toward housing or public services, and a contingent of Oakland-solidarity advocates who viewed the deal as rewarding a franchise that had mistreated its original city.
The Oakland contingent was vocal but limited in its Nevada political influence. Their argument -- that Nevada was enabling Fisher to profit from abandoning a community -- resonated emotionally but did not translate directly into votes in the Nevada legislature.
The fiscal conservative opposition was more substantive. Several economists testified that the economic multiplier effects of sports stadiums are routinely overstated, that the money spent at ballgames largely displaces other local spending rather than generating new economic activity, and that the long history of public stadium financing has generally not delivered the promised returns to host communities.
The bill passed over this opposition. The final vote in the assembly was 28-14, and the state senate approved it 13-8. The margins were not comfortable for a deal the governor had publicly championed.
The Site and the Tropicana
The land for the new ballpark was the former site of the Tropicana Hotel and Casino, a Vegas landmark that had operated since 1957 and was demolished in 2024. The Bally's Corporation, which owned the Tropicana, agreed to sell the site to the A's after determining that redevelopment around a ballpark was more valuable than maintaining a gaming property on a site that had become dated.
The location is significant. Tropicana Avenue and Dean Martin Drive sits in the resort corridor, accessible from multiple Strip properties and from the Las Vegas convention center complex. The site was not on the Strip itself but close enough to benefit from the pedestrian and tourist traffic that defines the area.
The ballpark design, rendered by Gensler with significant input from the team's front office, calls for a retractable roof structure that will allow the venue to host events year-round. The roof is operationally essential -- the Las Vegas summer is categorically incompatible with outdoor baseball -- and also enables the kind of multi-use programming that justifies the investment from the team's business perspective.
The $380 Million Question
The public funding figure deserves scrutiny beyond the political framing. Nevada is committing $380 million in hotel tax revenue to a facility primarily used by a private franchise owned by a family of billionaires. The return to the public is measured in construction jobs, tax revenue from ballpark activity, and the intangible benefit of major-league sports status.
Independent economic analyses of similar deals generally show that the public return on sports stadium investments is positive but modest, and that the claims made by stadium proponents about job creation and economic multipliers are consistently overstated. The Nevada deal is probably not exceptional in either direction. It is a transaction in which a city and state pay to attract a franchise that they believe will generate positive economic effects, with the understanding that those effects will not be as large as advertised but will be real.
What Nevada bought was something more specific than the economic projections suggest. It bought a claim on the major-league status that the Golden Knights and the Raiders had partially established. It bought another piece of evidence for the argument that Las Vegas is a real sports city, not just a gambling and entertainment destination. Whether that is worth $380 million to Nevada taxpayers is a values question as much as an economic one. The vote in the legislature, 28-14 in the Assembly and 13-8 in the Senate, suggests the elected representatives thought it was -- though barely.
The stadium is being built. The team is coming. The question of whether the deal was worth it will take at least a decade to answer with any confidence.
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