With Nevada legislators now saying they won't consider a Vegas stadium bill this summer, the only thing for sure is that A's owner John Fisher's attempt to rush through a bill with only one public hearing in the final week of the session came up empty.
Field of Schemes
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Sports stadium and arena news by Neil deMause (@neildemause), co-author of the book Field of Schemes.
- The MLB national TV schedule means all A's Sunday home games in Sacramento will have to start at 1 pm local time, plus the limitations set by the Pacific Coast League schedule means it'll be even harder than usual to avoid weekday games on "getaway days."
- John Fisher has delayed publicly releasing fresh Vegas A's renderings for 29 days and counting, and still hasn't said a word about where he's going to find another billion-dollars-plus in stadium money to go with the $600m he got from the state last June.
- "If you don't send this unlikeable billionaire a whole of money, his billionaire pals won't either!" isn't exactly how threats work, I don't think?
- At this point, it's about seeing what A's owner John Fisher does with the car now that he's caught it: Spending around $1B of his own money to build a 30,000-seat stadium in the nation's 40th-largest media market is not necessarily a recipe for success.
- It's way too easy for MLB owners to cook the books, whether by charging a consulting fee for negotiating your own cable deal or fancy depreciation tricks. So while the A's may show a $39m loss, that doesn't mean that it's necessarily a *loss* loss. fieldofschemes.com/2023/09/12/203…
- A design team won't be picked until November, and no one knows how much building the stadium will actually cost until then. “We told the groups, ‘You saw renderings in the newspaper, but wad those up for now,’” A’s director of design Brad Schrock said.
- Until John Fisher presents an "irrevocable" financing plan, Nevada won't release $380m in stadium funding approved last summer — along with $180m in property tax breaks and $100m in ticket tax breaks — so right now the whole thing still remains on hold.
- A's owner John Fisher's strategy seems to be to flood the zone with renderings and spreadsheets and paid consultants, hoping to limit the remaining time for examining questions like "Why are we being asked for half a billion dollars in tax money exactly?"
- Your regular reminder that A's "economist" Jeremy Aguero's degree is actually in hotel administration: linkedin.com/in/jeremy-ague…
- 58-42% is pretty definitive. It's going to be fascinating to see what the Royals and Chiefs owners do next, because it's not like they have a ton of great other options that involve receiving large government checks for doing nothing.
- Spending around $1B to build MLB's smallest stadium in its smallest market and hoping the A's would earn it back seemed dubious from the start, and it's only more so now that it'll be more like $1.5B and Vegas tourism is down.
- Poll of Austin voters finds they want soccer stadium to pay property taxes and rent and share revenue; poll of Crew owner finds he don't wanna pay none of that: fieldofschemes.com/2018/06/04/138…
- John Fisher's $70m/year cable deal will vanish if the A's play next year in Sacramento or Kuala Lumpur or even Las Vegas. That's a sizable chunk of change, and for Oakland to ask for a large cut of it seems like a no-brainer. fieldofschemes.com/2024/02/14/209…

