Las Vegas baseball stadium financing will not be on the November ballot

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) - A vote on public financing for the Athletics baseball stadium will not be on the November ballot.

The state supreme court of Nevada rejected an appeal of a court’s decision to strike down the petition opposing public financing for an Athletics baseball stadium on the Las Vegas Strip Monday.

According to the decision from the Supreme Court of the State of Nevada, the petition did not comply with the Nevada Constitution as it did not include the full text of the proposed measure when each person signed. The decision also stated that the petition contained an inadequate description of the effect of the proposed referendum.

“This description explains the general effect of a referendum, but it does not describe the practical effects of this specific referendum,” the decision said. “The description is also misleading.”

According to the decision, the statement that the bill would allow Clark County to use “up to $380 million taxpayer dollars” implies that existing state funds were being used for the stadium, omitting that “a portion of those funds are to be generated from specified sources within the sports and entertainment improvement district.”

The petition would have only prevented the state portion of the money from being used, not any money that Clark County is kicking in.

The judgment was signed by justices Elissa Cadish, Lidia Stiglich, Douglas Herndon, Ron Parraguirre, and Linda Bell.

The dissent, written by Justice Kristina Pickering, said that as the referendum asks voters to address the parts of the bill referencing “state-level credit and financial support for the Major League Baseball stadium,” the bill satisfied the full-text requirement.

"Schools Over Stadiums has been committed to pursuing every possible path to stop the use of public funds to subsidize a billionaire's stadium, and that has always included putting the question to Nevada voters who were effectively shut out of the process," Dawn Etcheverry, a music teacher and president of NSEA and Schools Over Stadiums, said when the petition was filed in September. Organizers said they would try to get a vote on the 2026 ballot.

The $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat stadium at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard was expected to be ready for the start of the 2028 MLB season. Recent reporting indicated that Athletics organization owner John Fisher had not secured financing for the franchise’s part of the Strip stadium and that an investor or investors willing to stake $500 million in the new Las Vegas Stadium would need to be found, likely taking a large portion of the team’s $1.2 billion value.

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