Las Vegas A's Season Tickets Come with Caveats
The Athletics have been in the news quite a bit this week, with the club scheduled to play their spring training games in Las Vegas as part of the yearly Big League Weekend tradition.
This year, their big announcements have been
hiring new president Marc Badain, who was formerly the president of the Las Vegas Raiders,
extending Lawrence Butler,
releasing updated interior renderings of their proposed ballpark, and
unveiling a new patch for their uniforms with "Las Vegas" on in.
Oh, and they also announced the opportunity
to join the priority wait list for season tickets when they become available in Sin City. Those wait list spots went on sale on Friday morning.
They also come with
a little caveat in the fine print: "priority access is non-refundable and does not place you on a numbered waitlist or provide specific priority in terms of when you will be contacted or which tickets, if any, may be available to you."
The patches, as the A's said, were meant to be a promise that the team is most definitely headed to Las Vegas. So why is this small $19.01 purchase non-refundable?
If the team has essentially broken ground on their ballpark (the way they tell it), then why is that money not guaranteed to go towards the purchase of season tickets?
The details of this one just feel slightly off, given what the A's messaging has been this week. As we said earlier this week, the priority wait list could be a way for the team to gauge interest in the franchise in Las Vegas. Sure it's late in the process, but we're getting to the point in the process where it's time for things to either happen or fall apart.
For A's owner John Fisher to plop down at least $1.1 billion of his own money on this project, he'd likely want some assurances that the local fans will show up. A large wave of enthusiasm here could also be a selling point for Fisher to potential investors, as he continues to look for someone to pay $500 million for a non-majority portion of the team.
One last thing that was odd came during Jim Gibson's speech at the
A's patch press conference on Friday. Gibson is the chair of the LVCVA board, and he spent most of his few minutes talking about how great the project is and how this project is definitely going to work. He didn't offer any insight as to how, but he did say not to pay attention to the negative noise surrounding the project.
When talking about people that have wondered if the A's will even come to Las Vegas, Gibson ended his speech by saying "This is as good a sign as we could come up with that says you are already here."
A patch is the best sign to signify that the A's are headed to Las Vegas. Not financial documents that people have been clamoring for, but a patch.
If that's the best sign that they could come up with, then maybe this project really is in trouble. Again, we are about to enter go time for this project, with construction repeatedly said to be starting by June.
Take it from John Fisher himself at the press conference, "This is an exciting time for the Athletics as we plan to open our new stadium in Las Vegas in 2028." The word plan leaves a lot of room for the timeline, or the plan itself, to change.
https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/las-vegas-a-s-season-tickets-come-with-caveats-01jnt27gby6e
