Bally’s Is Still Interested In Bringing The A’s To Vegas

Bally’s wants to hit a home run with its Tropicana Las Vegas property. As in, a literal home run.

Bally’s CEO Lee Fenton confirmed in the company’s Q3 earnings call that the company still wants to bring a Major League Baseball team to Las Vegas. And where would that team play?

Fenton said the company is willing to replace the famous Las Vegas casino with a stadium. Fenton said when asked about the A’s:

“I think that’s still very much in the cards for us. We’re very much looking at the long-term plan for the Tropicana property, and that includes whether or not we could put a diamond in the middle.”

Talk of bringing an MLB team to Vegas comes just months after Bally’s completed its acquisition of the Tropicana.

Is the Tropicana going to be th
e A’s new stadium site?

This past fall, reports surfaced that the Oakland A’s wanted to move to Las Vegas. The team was having issues building a new stadium in Oakland and, much like its former professional sports neighbor, the Raiders, the A’s set their sights on America’s Playground.

By December, the Review-Journal reported that the A’s had made an offer on a Vegas site for a planned $1 billion stadium. The team started with 20 possible Vegas sites and eliminated all but two or three options.

News of the A’s offer all but guaranteed the team wouldn’t stay in Oakland. And it meshed with what MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told the Los Angeles Times two months earlier. At the time, he said the A’s had “work to do” in Vegas, and that a plan wasn’t locked in.

Now, it seems the A’s have done that work and may very well be eyeing the old Las Vegas casino, Tropicana for a new stadium.

However, it’s important to remember that the A’s are exploring Las Vegas because the league allowed them to. Other cities are in the running for a new team, including:

• Nashville
• Portland
• Charlotte
• Montreal

Rumors of a Las Vegas casino tear-down surface with Bally’s acquisition

Bally’s announced the Tropicana acquisition in 2021 and closed the deal earlier this year. Since the initial announcement, there have been multiple hints the company would have no problem tearing the Las Vegas casino down to replace it with something more profitable.

In January, Bally’s Chairman Soohyung Kim told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the management team had no issues with knocking down the casino and “starting over.” Kim said that tearing down the casino hotel and replacing it with a new development would be a way for the company to maximize the property’s value.

A month later, Fenton said Bally’s aims to have its partners and development plans finalized by early 2023. This timeline could match up with the news that the A’s made an offer on a site.

However, there is no about who owns the site or where the site is.