A brand new Bally’s Las Vegas is in our future. But that means the Tropicana is on borrowed time. Plans are to tear down the 66-year-old resort within the next two years, which will lead to a new Bally’s Las Vegas. How are these events tied together? And what does it all have to do with baseball and California?
Hello friends, and welcome to This Week in Gambling, where our big stories are the pending implosion of Tropicana Las Vegas, and the return of a new Bally’s Las Vegas. And it all begins with baseball. Baseball? Yes, baseball! Over the summer the Oakland Athletics made it very clear they want to move to Sin City. But in order to make that happen a lot of things had to go right.
They needed to get the funding approved for a new stadium... which they did. They needed the approval of Major League Baseball to move the team… which they got. Then they needed to find a place to build that brand new stadium. While that was going on, Caesar’s Entertainment decided to re-brand their Bally’s Las Vegas to the Horseshoe.
When they did, they sold the Bally’s name to… Bally Corporation. So, that worked out well. Bally Corporation owns the Tropicana Las Vegas, and that leads us right back around to baseball. You see, the A’s were looking for a place to build that new stadium in Las Vegas… and that’s when Bally Corp stepped up offering them free land where the the Tropicana Casino now stands. 9 Acres of prime real estate, right on the Las Vegas Strip, valued at $180 million… for free!
Needless to say, that’s where the new stadium is going up, and that’s why the Tropicana has to come down. However, that new stadium will not take up the entire property. So, Bally Corporation has announced that they will be building a brand new resort casino! A new Bally’s Las Vegas! Didn’t see that coming, did you?! When is all this going to take place? Well, not anytime soon.
Plans are to keep the resort open through 2024… possibly into 2025, when construction on the new stadium is scheduled to begin, with the first baseball game slated to be played in the brand new stadium in the spring of 2028. As for when the new Bally’s Casino will be built, no one really knows because there is no official timeline. However, one would think that they would build the new casino while the new stadium was also under construction. So, now you know, my friends: The old Tropicana is coming down, and a new Bally’s Las Vegas is going up, and it’s all thanks to baseball.