After several days of a special session in Carson City, Nevada, legislators approved funding that will provide $380 million for a $1.5 billion retractable-roof ballpark in Las Vegas for MLB’s Athletics. In doing so, it all but ensures that after more than 55 years in Oakland, the club will be relocating.

Senate Bill 1 (SB1) went through several amendments before passage on Wednesday. In a split-screen moment, the bill passed the Nevada Senate on Tuesday afternoon, while that evening fans staged a reverse boycott of a game in Oakland that saw the largest crowd of the season show up to protest owner John Fisher’s handling of the club. After a moment of silence in the 5th inning – a nod to the 55 years in Oakland – the crowd launched into the boisterous chant of “Sell the team!”

While the passage of the funding bill is the key to the A’s relocation to Las Vegas, it is not the final hurdle. Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, who has signaled he will do so, needs to sign the bill into law. From there, 75% of MLB’s other 29 owners have to approve the move. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred had signaled that that could have been a part of the league’s quarterly owners meetings that are taking place in New York, but with the meetings wrapping up today, no vote will take place. As is traditionally the case, Manfred will address the media today at the closing of the meetings where the A’s will assuredly be the chief topic.

After passage, the A’s released a statement thanking legistators.

“Tonight, we thank the members of the Nevada State Legislature and their staff for their hard work, due diligence, and attention to detail as we work to bring the Athletics to Las Vegas. We are especially grateful for the legislators’ time and dedication to shepherding this bill through the process, including the special session. We look forward to Governor Lombardo’s signature as our next step.”

The $380 million in funding comes from several pieces , including $180 million in transferable tax credits and $120 million in bonds from Clark County, which Las Vegas is a part of. An additional $25 million will come from Clark Co. to cover infrastructure improvements. Paying back the bonds would come through everything from a special tax district around the ballpark to revenue from the minimum 81 dates that the A’s will play, additional events such as concerts, and a charter personal seat license program. Questions have swirled around whether lofty attendance projections which baseball boosters have said would average 27,000 per game in the 30,000-seat ballpark. The contention is 7,000 unique tourists would make up that figure for each game. If the attendance figures are met, the A’s would rank in the 50th percent of league attendance. That figure seems all but impossible to meet given the market size, and the vast number of entertainment options the A’s would compete with. Las Vegas becomes the first new market MLB has moved into since the expansion of the league in the late ‘90s.

The A’s will become just the second team to relocate in 55 years. The last to relocate were the Montreal Expos who were rechristened the Washington Nationals in September of 2004.

With relocation all but a foregone conclusion, politicians in Oakland weighed in. After decades of trying to come up with a ballpark solution, the city was largely jilted as Fisher and prior ownership pushed everywhere from Oakland to Fremont to San Jose to kick in millions in taxpayer dollars to fund a new ballpark. Current owner John Fisher is one of the league’s wealthiest owners with a net worth calculated by Forbes to be $2.2 billion.

"Oaklanders know better than anyone that it’s a long road between state legislation and shovels in the ground," said Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao. But with Lombardo being a big advocate of bringing MLB to Las Vegas and Rob Manfred endorsing the relocation, the shovels are all but certain to go into the ground. The ballpark is targeted to go online in 2028.

The financial obligation to Nevada taxpayers is risky, and will increase. While there are options to allow the tax district to expand if needed, with Fisher running the A’s into the ground, there’s little excitement and no plan to improve player payroll spending. Based on USA Today’s Opening Day payroll tracker, the A’s are dead last in spending at $56,895,000, nearly $4 million less than the second-lowest Baltimore Orioles. Just eight clubs in Major League Baseball see player payrolls under $100 million. As of publication the A’s are 20.5 games out of the AL West with a 19-51 record (.251).

While there are concerns with meeting the bond obligation, additional costs to taxpayers never were raised as part of the special session and will likely become a major issue over the life of the ballpark.

With the public owning the ballpark, and the A’s leasing it, maintenance of the ballpark and possible capital improvements will fall on the shoulders of the taxpayers, not the A’s. In the past, this arrangement has been contentious in some cases as the addition of hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the ballpark running and up to MLB standards build up over the life of the facility. The Arizona Diamondbacks and Maricopa County were mired in a bitter battle over meeting costs to maintain Chase Field. In 2006, with hundreds of millions already poured into the facility, the Diamondbacks concluded that $187 million would be required to keep the facility up to date over the remaining life of the ballpark. When adjusting for inflation, the figure would now be more than $282 million.