The Oakland Athletics announced on Monday that they have reached an agreement to build a stadium in Las Vegas, a prelude to a move by the Californian franchise to Nevada.
“We’re excited to bring MLB to this iconic venue,” A’s President Dave Kaval said following the announcement.
The agreement for the construction of a new 30,000-seat stadium, near the Tropicana hotel, has been concluded with a local company, Bally Entertainment, according to a press release from this company specializing in games.
According to American media, the cost of the project is estimated at 1.5 billion US dollars, including nearly 400 million in public funding, which remains to be consolidated.
According to the same sources, the new enclosure would be ready to welcome the Athletics, based since 1968 in Oakland, in the suburbs of San Francisco, for the start of the 2027 season.
Indispensable, the agreement of the MLB seems already acquired.
This announcement comes as the Athletics failed to obtain the construction of a new stadium in Oakland.
If the move is confirmed, the A’s club, whose ninth and last MLB title dates back to 1989, would be the second major sports franchise in the United States to join Las Vegas after the Raiders. In NFL football, the Raiders franchise was also based in Oakland before moving to the gaming capital of the world in 2020.
For this, the Raiders have built a 65,000 seat stadium in the heart of Las Vegas, a project of some two billion US dollars. Nearly half of this amount was financed by public funds via an increase in the tourist tax levied by the famous hotel-casinos of the “city of sin”.