Former Las Vegas Raiders President Marc Badain, who oversaw the team’s relocation and the development of Allegiant Stadium, is getting a second chance to leave his imprint on the Southern Nevada sports scene. 

The Athletics announced Thursday that they had hired Badain as the Major League Baseball team’s new president and will oversee all aspects of the team’s pending move to Las Vegas, including the planning and construction of the team’s $1.75 billion ballpark on the south end of the Strip. 

Badain played a lead role in the relocation of the Raiders to Las Vegas for the 2020 NFL season to the $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat Allegiant Stadium. 

With the A’s, Badain will lead the 33,000-capacity ballpark’s development and construction efforts. Construction is expected to begin this year. The A’s are playing home games for the next three seasons at a minor league ballpark in Sacramento ahead of the planned April 2028 move to Las Vegas. 

Badain said in an interview with The Nevada Independent that the smaller baseball stadium will provide a more intimate setting than Allegiant Stadium, given the seating capacity is roughly half the size and the ballpark will have standing-room areas.

“I think there's a lot of great things for the market, on the high end, from the luxury premium standpoint, as well as you and me going out to the ballpark, standing up at a railing and watching a couple innings,” Badain said.

Badain said he reviewed designs for the ballpark over the past few days and was impressed with the architects’ work.

“They've been able to study all the other venues around the league and see what's worked and what hasn't worked, and then bring a little bit of Vegas into the design,” he said.

Badain’s hiring was revealed a few hours before the team’s presentation to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, which included an update on development plans for the 9-acre stadium site being prepared for construction on the site of the former Tropicana Las Vegas, which closed nearly a year ago and was imploded in October. 

“It’s good to have you back,” said Stadium Authority board chairman Steve Hill, who also serves as CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Following the hearing, he said Badain’s involvement is like “having the whole team back together.” Mortenson | McCarthy, which is overseeing all construction-related activities for the A’s, handled the same role for Allegiant.

“Marc knows this community. He’s ingrained in it,” Hill said. 

A’s officials said Thursday the ballpark’s ceremonial groundbreaking will take place in the second quarter of 2025 — between April 1 and June 30. The team also unveiled a series of new renderings of the interior public space and the exterior glass and steel, multilayered roof.

Frankie Sharp, the president of sports for the Bjarke Ingels Group, the Danish architectural firm that designed the stadium, said the interiors took into account the brutal Vegas summer heat. 

“We want to make sure that fan comfort, player comfort, staff comfort, and anyone who's in the ballpark has a first class experience,” Sharp said. “It’s really about what the fans are going to experience. We want to keep people in the ballpark. We want them to come back. We want this to be a unique experience when you come to this incredible city.”

The team reached out in January

Badain had been serving as president of Oak View Group Las Vegas and heading the Los Angeles-based entertainment company’s efforts to develop a 20,000-seat sports arena in Las Vegas. He replaces Sandy Dean, a longtime business partner with team owner John Fisher’s family.

Dean, who has served as interim A’s president following the December departure of former team president Dave Kaval, will now take on the role of vice chairman and continue to represent the ownership group and remain involved in the ballpark development.

Badain said he had discussions with the A’s going back to 2023 about how to work with Las Vegas and the community in developing the ballpark. He said the team reached out to him in January following Kaval’s departure.

“Sandy and I started talking a little bit after the first of the year and those talks just accelerated very quickly,” Badain said. “I think they wanted to learn a little bit more about me, and I obviously wanted to learn about the project.”

In a statement, A’s owner Fisher said Badain’s experience with Allegiant Stadium and overseeing the Raiders’ move were the primary reasons for the hiring, adding that he was “a great addition at this pivotal moment.”

The A’s and the Raiders shared the Oakland Coliseum and Badain became well-acquainted with A’s executives. The relationship between the two teams grew contentious over the years following the 1995 development of a 28,000-seat grandstand built specifically for the Raiders, but went largely unused for baseball.

Badain participated in a 2023 IndyFest panel discussion on the growing Las Vegas sports community, speaking in his role with Oak ViewGroup Las Vegas along with representatives from the Las Vegas Aces and Vegas Golden Knights.

At the time, he offered the A’s some suggestions for building a baseball stadium roughly a mile away from Allegiant Stadium.

“I know what we put into building Allegiant Stadium, and you better build something special here,” Badain said. “I know what we're doing for the arena. You can't just build some cookie-cutter facility. You have to come up with something dynamic, and something that's going to draw attention and is going to be worthy of this market.”

In his role with Oak View over the last three years, Badain oversaw the planning for a 20,000-seat sports arena that was tied to a planned resort complex on a 25-acre site at the Blue Diamond Road and Las Vegas Boulevard. 

However, Oak View has moved on from that location and has been associated with potential arena locations at the Rio Hotel and Casino and Resorts World Las Vegas.

Badain’s career with the Raiders spanned several decades starting in 1991 as a training camp intern. He advanced through the ranks, eventually becoming the team’s chief financial officer in 2004 and later its president, a position he held for seven years.