Formula One drivers hit Las Vegas Boulevard Saturday night in a race watched around the world, and the Oakland A's are one step closer to moving to Las Vegas.

Covering both of those major sports stories is Mick Akers from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Welcome to Nevada Week.

Thanks for having me.

So you were in Texas where Major League Baseball team owners voted unanimously to approve the A's relocation to Las Vegas.

Not one single no vote.

Why do you think that is?

Yeah, I think it's just been over a decade in Oakland trying to get something done out there.

Nothing happened there to change over in mayors.

Obviously, that kind of had them maybe starting over from scratch there.

So that a lot of people are looking at that saying, hey, we've been trying to get it done out there for so long.

We get to Vegas and within two years they really approved $380 million in public funding.

And I'm sure that was a big take there as well.

So, you know, just the inaction in Oakland and the ability to get things done out here in Nevada so quickly, I think was a big part in that.

And so that is one step.

Major League Baseball's approval.

But what else has to actually happen before the teams can move here?

Yeah, so similar to the Raiders situation when they moved here, they're working with the Las Vegas Stadium Authority.

They're going to strike a number of agreements with them as far as coming here, not in relocation, a lease agreement and then development agreement as well.

That will take, you know, several months to get those fine tune.

They've been through it before.

So it shouldn't take as long as the Raiders did from there.

They also have to wait for the Tropicana to get imploded.

They got to make space for the ballpark, obviously.

So tentative timeline is they're looking to start construction in April of 2025.

So nothing imminent on that front.

So a couple of things more.

You know, I would say they're just kind of formalities at this point.

Also, there is also the potential litigation from schools over stadiums.

The Nevada teacher bat group, they're looking to try to get that to a public vote on that, a petition going that got struck down by a judge.

And now they're looking at certain things they say violate the state constitution.

As far as Senate Bill one, the funding mechanism for the public side of things here.

So I know a few things that go through, but anyone I talked to as far as the litigation goes, says they're not really too worried about it.

Senate Bill one was basically a copy of the one that Raiders use.

So I'm not sure what kind of, you know, issues with the state constitution that they can find in that.

And you talk about construction of the stadium.

I'd love to show you some renderings of it, but the renderings that the A's released, they say, are no longer valid.

What happened in that situation?

Yeah, they put it out.

And initially they were pretty upfront saying these are, you know, just subject to change basically.

So they wanted to give people a kind of a, you know, a look at what could be on on the site and kind of drum up some of the excitement on that.

And they've been doing a a a competition of sorts between two design groups, pretty much getting a design to about 70% done.

So I think that should come out here pretty soon and some new renderings with that.

So everyone's been kind of, you know, pointing that out, saying, hey, we have these fake renderings, you know, how real is this?

It is going on behind the scenes that I think, you know, sometime over the next few weeks, we'll see some new ones come out.

Looking forward to those new renderings.

Let's move on to F one.

Now.

I'm curious to know your takeaways as far as how well the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix went.

You know, got off to a rocky start.

As you know, Wednesday.

They dealt with some rain and what in their opening ceremony.

So kind of put a damper on that.

I think it shortened that a little bit just because, you know inclement weather in the first day of practices obviously they had that they issues with the water valve cover coming up and damaging multiple F1 cars that put a delay on that.

So they canceled the first practice session after 9 minutes only and then the second one was delayed for two and a half hours.

So that was supposed to start at midnight on Friday.

And you know, starting at 2:30 a.m. fans is stuck around, were hoping that you know catch that they paid for and they're waiting to do that.

And about 1:30 a.m. Friday, they came in and kicked people out and people were pretty upset about that.

Fast forward to Friday night and there's a litigation already filed, a class action lawsuit.

So people are looking to recoup their money for the tickets and their travel expenses.

And so that so we'll see how that plays out.

But, you know, after that smoothed out a little bit and know whether to deal with no issues on the track, nothing else along those lines, people seem to have a great time as far as, you know, the second day of practices and qualifying and then the race itself, I was all about, you know, all around the area from the pit building to the sphere and all that and pretty packed stands.

No real issues with lines pretty smooth as far as concessions go.

But some of the high end people were in the pit area.

I was watching the race room, seemed like they were enjoying themselves.

They were kind of complaining about lack of screens on their end because they had a grandstand across them and they had four big screens for them to watch it from when they're not in race in front of you, which is, you know, 95% of the racing.

Right.

So that was the only complaint I heard from people.

And they probably what about from an economic standpoint?

So they're still saying 1.2 billion.

Obviously, we're going to have to wait and see how the official numbers come in.

And as far as the visitation and such clientele is a little bit different than, say, a NASCAR one, They're tend to spend more, they say, in international as well.

And that's one of the main drivers they're trying to bring back.

As far as tourism go, is that from the covered area was international.

So it hasn't really came back as strong as everything else has.

So they're hoping this kind of spurs that and gets people attention on Vegas.

Obviously, worldwide win on TV.

So maybe someone you know overseas sees, hey, there's Vegas, you know, sparkling and shiny lights.

I want to go out there and visit it.

So they're hoping some, you know, turn a turnover effect on that in Las Vegas.

Certainly got a lot of exposure.

And now Las Vegas is set to deconstruct everything that's been put together for the event.

How long until Las Vegas Boulevard looks back to normal?

It's going to be about two months.

So they're going to start they're really starting over.

Yeah, they already started taking some of the barriers and the the fencing and lighting all that down right now.

But certain things like the Flamingo Bridge that they built over Cobar, that's going to be waiting to be deconstructed until about the end of holidays because we got NFR coming in.

Obviously they don't want to impact that.

They got a convention at the venue at the Venetian Expo Center.

So they're going to wait on that as well.

So that's not going to be down maybe fully until early January.

It just depends on how long it takes to do it there.

So and then everyone looks at the Bellagio offline.

Obviously, they built their own high end hospitality area there.

And they say that's all set to go through about the holidays and have it back to normal before New Year's Eve.

And we're going to do it all again next year.

Makers from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, thank you for joining Nevada Week.

Thank you.