Bally’s Financing Problems Are Becoming the A’s Problem Too
The Las Vegas Athletics ballpark is, by most accounts, one of the smoother major stadium construction projects in recent memory.
The $2 billion facility is rising on nine acres of the former Tropicana site at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. The steel is up, the timeline is intact, and officials have said the park is on track for its planned 2028 opening. The construction story is not the problem. But the 26 acres next to it is a different story.
Bally’s Corporation was supposed to develop the remainder of the 35-acre campus: two hotel towers, a casino, a parking structure, a central utility plant, and more than 500,000 square feet of retail, dining, and entertainment space. The integrated resort was designed to give the ballpark its context, the surrounding infrastructure that would make a baseball game on the Las Vegas Strip feel like a destination rather than a stadium dropped into a construction site. Steve Hill, head of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and chairman of the local stadium authority, told The Athletic this week that Bally’s still does not have the financing in place to do it, and that the authority has given the company an August deadline to produce a credible plan.
The gap between Bally’s renderings and its current financial position is not new information for anyone following the company’s credit situation. What is new is the price tag that gap is starting to generate for John Fisher and the A’s.
Bally’s Inability to Secure Financing May Impact the Overall Cost for the A’s Immediately
The most immediate consequence of Bally’s construction lag is the absence of a parking structure. The original development plan had Bally’s build the parking infrastructure that the ballpark campus would need. With that timeline now in serious doubt, the A’s are contemplating building an interim 1,500-stall parking structure themselves at an estimated cost of $60 million to $100 million. Parking is not the only shortfall. The A’s will also need to fund a weaker central utility plant than the one Bally’s was supposed to develop, and a makeshift plaza and entrance for fans that substitutes for the grand arrival experience the renderings promised.
None of this was in the original budget for the A’s. The stadium itself has already grown from an initial estimate of $1.5 billion to approximately $2.1 billion, with Hill explaining that the A’s will likely spend all $380 million of available public funds, up from initial expectations of drawing only $350 million from that pool. Adding a nine-figure parking structure on top of an already escalating construction budget to compensate for a partner’s inability to secure financing is a different category of problem from ordinary cost overruns.
Bally’s is Trying to Bankroll Multiple Projects Both Home and Abroad
The credit picture for Bally’s has been deteriorating in plain sight for long enough that the Las Vegas situation should not surprise anyone. Fitch rates the company B-minus, six notches into junk territory and one rung above the CCC range, which implies substantial default risk. The agency has cited limited access to the debt market, high leverage, and execution risk concentrated in Chicago as the primary drivers of that rating.
In Chicago, Bally’s is targeting a December 2026 opening for its $1.7 billion casino hotel, a project that has already seen construction pauses and setbacks, including debris falling into the Chicago River during demolition and an Illinois Gaming Board investigation into a subcontractor’s prior mob ties.
In New York, Bally’s is one of three remaining contenders for a downstate casino license with its $4 billion Ferry Point project in the Bronx, a campus that would deliver a $115 million payout to the Trump Organization if Bally’s secures the license.
The company has been managing its debt load through a series of transactions that have provided liquidity without resolving the underlying leverage problem. In February, Bally’s entered into a new $1.1 billion credit facility due 2031, backed by Ares Management, King Street Capital Management, and TPG Credit, using proceeds to retire its prior $1.47 billion term loan due 2028. The refinancing bought a runway, but it did not change the fundamental picture.
That picture consists of a company carrying junk-rated debt while simultaneously trying to finish a major casino in Chicago, pursue a license in New York, rescue a distressed Australian casino operator through a 38% equity stake in Star Entertainment, and now apparently failing to secure financing for a Las Vegas resort campus with an August deadline bearing down.
A Questionable Acquisition May Have Been the First Domino in a String of Overextending Decisions
The Las Vegas situation is also a delayed consequence of a strategic bet Bally’s made several years ago that did not pay off as planned. The 2021 acquisition of GameSys for approximately $2.7 billion was supposed to transform Bally’s into a serious iGaming competitor alongside its regional casino operations. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how things played out.
Fitch has consistently characterized Bally’s digital operations as not a material credit driver in the near- to medium-term, noting that digital operations generated negative cash flow and remain uncertain as a standalone business. Bally’s ultimately combined the international digital business with Greek lottery provider Intralot, receiving $1.76 billion in cash and a 60% equity stake. The transaction was framed as a strategic combination. The math suggests it was closer to an exit from a position that had not delivered.
The capital that went into GameSys, and the debt service burden it created, reduced Bally’s flexibility precisely when the company needed maximum flexibility to fund its most ambitious development pipeline. A company in a stronger financial shape might be building two hotel towers in Las Vegas while also completing a casino in Chicago. Bally’s is doing neither on schedule, and the A’s may now be absorbing part of the cost.
Bally’s Has Until August to Provide a Financing Plan the A’s Find Sufficient
Hill’s August deadline for Bally’s to produce a financing plan is worth taking seriously as a pressure point. The Las Vegas resort development was structured to share a 35-acre campus with the ballpark, with Bally’s occupying 26 of those acres. The interdependencies between the two projects are real: utilities, pedestrian access, parking, and the overall guest experience on opening day are all affected by what sits on Bally’s side of the site.
An August deadline without a credible plan does not automatically mean Bally’s loses the project, but it signals that the stadium authority is running out of patience for a partner that keeps promising financing it has not yet secured.
The irony is that Bally’s name is already going on the ballpark campus as a cornerstone branding element, associating the company with one of the most high-profile sports venue developments in the country. Whether it can actually build what it has promised to build next to the stadium it is lending its name to is a question the next two months will start to answer.
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