Circa Is the A's First Las Vegas Founding Partner and Gets a Dugout Box to Fill

Derek Stevens' downtown resort becomes the Athletics' official resort and Circa Sports their official sportsbook in a multi-year deal announced on Thursday, 19 months before the ballpark opens. The 22-seat Circa Dugout Box sits beside the home dugout and, Stevens says, "it's going to be very important to know a Circa casino host" to get in.

• The Athletics named Circa Resort & Casino their "first official founding partner" on Thursday, 17 September, in a multi-year agreement whose financial terms and length were not disclosed, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and The Nevada Independent reported
• Circa becomes the official resort of the A's and Circa Sports the team's official sportsbook when the club moves into its 33,000-seat, closed-roof ballpark on the Strip for the 2028 season
• The Circa Dugout Box, a 22-seat field-level hospitality space connected to the home dugout, will be filled by invitation from Circa; the resort also takes 32 further seats around the stadium for "Time of Your Life" packages that bundle a stay downtown with game tickets, plus the largest permanent outfield-wall sign and signage behind home plate in the ninth and extra innings
• A's president Marc Badain said Circa "made it very easy to sit down and come up with a package of assets" and that the deal does not prevent other casino operators from signing sponsorships; 12 owners' suites are sold and half of the executive-level suites, with no timeframe yet for stadium naming rights
• Stevens first bought into the A's in 2025, paying for Circa Sports signage on the left-field wall at Sacramento's Sutter Health Park, where the team plays through 2027 and where the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority pays $8.25m for a jersey patch
• Circa Sports operates in Nevada and a handful of other states, but California, where the A's currently play, remains one of ten states without legal sports betting

What Circa Bought

The A's have been selling their Las Vegas ballpark since ground broke, and the first founding-partner deal went to the operator who had been asking longest. "I love baseball, and I reached out to the A's early and said I want to do a deal with you guys," Stevens told The Nevada Independent. "The real premise was I wanted to develop something unique and special for when the A's got to Vegas." He and his brother Greg owned the Triple-A Las Vegas 51s for seven years until 2013, and Circa's three-level sportsbook and Stadium Swim, a 60,000 sq ft pool deck with a 40-foot screen, are built around live sport.

The centrepiece is the Circa Dugout Box, 22 seats directly connected to the A's dugout, which Badain described as an experience unlike a traditional suite. Circa will decide who sits in it. "That's going to be a very Circa-specific thing," Stevens told the Review-Journal. "I can tell you it's going to be very important to know a Circa casino host. That's how you're going to get in." The resort also holds 32 more seats spread through the stadium for hotel-and-ticket packages, the largest permanent sign on the outfield wall, and the behind-home-plate signage during the ninth and any extra innings, when broadcast cameras are fixed on the batter.

Badain said the 12 owners' suites are sold, half of the executive-level suites are gone, and others are being held back for resort partnerships and naming opportunities. Naming rights for the stadium itself, which he said could be worth millions of dollars a year, have no timetable. "We sat down with Derek and his team and the goal was not just to do a traditional sponsorship, but to do something that added to the experience," he said. A's owner John Fisher, who sat in Stevens' front-row seats for Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final in June, said Stevens "truly put Vegas on the map as the sports capital of the world".

A Deal Built in Sacramento

Stevens did not wait for the ballpark. In 2025 he paid an undisclosed sum for Circa Sports signage on the left-field wall at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, where the A's are playing until the Las Vegas stadium opens. The nearest Circa book to Sacramento is 140 miles away in Sparks, Nevada, because California has no legal sports betting. The signage was a branding play for a Nevada book in a state that cannot use it, and a way of being in the room. The LVCVA has a bigger version of the same idea: $8.25m through 2027 for a "Las Vegas" patch on the team's left sleeve and three Las Vegas signs on the same outfield wall.

The Sportsbook Is the Product, Not the Sponsor

Every Las Vegas team sells casino partnerships. What is different here is that Circa's asset is not a logo but a room, and the room is allocated by casino hosts. The Dugout Box turns 81 home games into a comp for Circa's best sports bettors, in a city where the sponsor can legally take the bet on the game its guest is watching.

Downtown Beat the Strip to the First Deal

The ballpark is on the Strip, on the old Tropicana site, and the Strip's operators have far more money than Circa. Badain's line that the deal "doesn't preclude" other resort partnerships is a signal that they are still being sold, and the held-back suites are where those deals will land. Stevens got the word "first" and the dugout because he started early and turned up to every meeting, which is how Circa has competed with the Strip since it opened in 2020.

The Undisclosed Number Is the Point

Neither side gave a figure, and "multi-year" is the only term on the record. For an owner whose three properties are all downtown and whose sportsbook is known for the size of its limits rather than the size of its marketing budget, the value of the deal is in the 54 seats and what Circa's hosts do with them. Whether that is worth what Stevens paid will be visible in Circa's handle in April 2028, not in a press release now.

Circa asked first, paid for the wall in Sacramento, and got the dugout. The naming rights, and the Strip's turn, are still to come.