Oakland Raiders, Las Vegas, and NFL Politics
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
The Oakland Raiders have made the news multiple times in the past week with news regarding their future. The franchise has been in a state of limbo since their failed attempt at relocation to Los Angeles earlier this year. The team has been working with Oakland officials for eight years on a new stadium proposal which has made no progress toward becoming a reality.
The Raiders owner, Mark Davis, has floated several ideas that were thought to be used to leverage Oakland to keep the team in the Bay Area. One of those concepts was a relocation to San Antonio, which looked like an obvious leverage play because it is doubtful that the owners would approve a third NFL team in Texas.
However, one relocation concept gained a great deal of traction, and that is the Raiders and Las Vegas being a potential fit. The political process there is moving towards the approval of $750 million in public money to fund approximately half the total project of a domed stadium proposal located just off The Strip in Las Vegas.
That total represents the largest amount of public funding for a stadium project in American history. The most powerful man in Nevada is behind the project, Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino hotel mogul. His involvement explains a great deal about the trajectory and progress of this project.
In short, Adelson knows how to get things built and get things done in Las Vegas. His interest in the project is not because he is a football fan, he has no interest in football. I think he is interested in owning a piece of the Raiders because it is a big money business, but he is not investing in this project because of a passion for sports. His interest in the interviews I have read about his role is strictly from a business perspective in the hotel and casino/entertainment realm.
Adelson explains that the bulk of the NFL season falls into the slowest time of the year for Vegas tourism (after the summer vacation period in those autumn months) then tourism picks up again around the holidays and New Year’s. The presence of an NFL team would bring in people for the games that would make a long weekend out of the experience. It would increase occupancy at the hotels and the slight increase in the hotel tax (around 1%) is how the government proposes to cover their end of the financing for the stadium.
Mark Davis is interested in relocating the team to Las Vegas for obvious reasons: he is in a situation in Oakland where there is no political will for public money for a stadium of any kind, the Raiders would not have to compete with any other NFL teams in the city or the region for corporate sponsorships or fans, and the team would play in a brand new facility in one of the largest tourist destinations in the world.
Conversely, the NFL has reservations about Las Vegas and the relocation of the Raiders on a variety of levels. The legalized gambling and the perception of Las Vegas runs counter to the image that the NFL wishes to portray to the public.
In addition, the size and makeup of the market is troubling for the NFL in that much of the population is transient and the tourism industry requires that local residents (who would be potential fans) work on weekends and at night (the only two times the NFL has games during the season). The Vegas market is also small in terms of the rest of the league and for TV/media it is a very small market. The NFL would lose part of their current Bay Area presence which is a much larger marketplace if the Raiders relocated.
The counterpoint from the Raiders is that their franchise has a nationwide appeal and that will help boost the ratings of the team when it moves to Vegas as well as the fan support. The issue is that not all of those fans will be able to travel to Las Vegas every weekend the team has a home game, and the TV rights deals will limit the accessibility of those broadcasts as well.
The NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, held a press conference where he stated that he feels the Raiders need to explore every option to remain in Oakland. He reiterated the league’s focus on keeping teams in their home markets due to the disruption it would cause to the fans in the event that a team left the particular city. He also cited the history of the franchise in Oakland and the fact that the fans had lost the team once already in the 1990s when Al Davis moved the Raiders to Los Angeles.
Then, about a week later, it was announced that a group of investors led by former Raiders players Ronnie Lott and Rodney Peete and a group which specializes in the construction of stadium projects had partnered to offer the City of Oakland $167 million to buy the Coliseum and the land surrounding it which is over 100 acres. This offer was no coincidence, the NFL has been quietly orchestrating a situation where they will compel the Raiders to remain in Oakland.
Some may ask what would stop Mark Davis from just getting up and moving the franchise to Las Vegas without the NFL’s permission; the answer is that the league has put many legal safeguards in place to make that process very difficult. Davis would face a protracted legal battle if he went that route, and many believe he does not want to pay for lawyers and slog through that type of scenario at this point.
The City of Oakland entered into a 90 day Memorandum of Understanding with Lott and Peete’s group regarding their plans for the land. The group is formulating a proposal that is supposed to include two plans: one for the extensive renovation of the old Coliseum building, and the other for the construction of a “state of the art” new football stadium on that land.
In my earlier reports on this topic, I included the fact that the main stumbling block to the Raiders and the Oakland stadium project was public money, and that still remains, though Lott and Peete’s group may make that component less of an issue. The other main issue was the Oakland A’s playing baseball in the Coliseum during the summer months when construction could be actively taking place for a football stadium.
The news that the A’s have advanced further in the process towards the potential construction of a new baseball park in the waterfront area of the city could go a long way toward clearing the path for the future of the Coliseum site and the Raiders new facility. The NFL last week sent representatives to Oakland and published reports saying it is going to be very active in working with the local government there to gaining a stadium resolution to keep the Raiders in the Bay Area.
The Mayor and other officials have not said much regarding this except that the Mayor felt that Lott and Peete understood the dynamics of the Raiders in growing the community into a stronger one and about the business side of building a stadium. The Mayor also stated that no public money would be used for the construction of a stadium but that public funding would be used for infrastructure improvements for the new facility at the Coliseum site.
Those close to the situation which were cited in local media reports on this matter had captured the sentiment of the Oakland officials at this point. Those involved in Oakland feel that the Vegas proposal is too outlandish to gain final approval and become a reality.
In my view, from extensively covering the NFL reentry into Los Angeles and the Chargers with their stadium saga in San Diego, the politics of the NFL always looms large in these situations. Goodell is there to make the owners happy, so he would not be making overtures to Oakland if the owners wanted a team in Las Vegas at this point.
I could see the “old guard” owners of teams like the Giants (Mara & Tisch families) and the Steelers (the Rooney family) having some deep reservations over the league moving into Las Vegas. The NFL players have been dogged by run-ins with law enforcement for all types of incidences and could you imagine the type of issues that could present themselves if they had a team in Las Vegas? That is a big part of the push to have the Raiders remain in Oakland.
The NFL usually always gets their way, they have a great deal of power and influence. The Raiders and their owner, Mark Davis, are at a disadvantage in that regard. The team has worked with Oakland for eight years now on a stadium and the Coliseum is quite literally falling apart, so this is a scenario where the need for a new facility is actually legitimate and must be addressed.
I am not sure if Ronnie Lott and Rodney Peete and their partners are the answer, but it is certainly the best shot that Oakland has had for a while in this saga with the Raiders. The one certainty is that the window for Oakland is rapidly closing they have about a year before the team will make other plans for relocation somewhere.
It should be noted that the other added impetus for the NFL to get involved here at this time with Oakland and advocating for that city to keep the Raiders is partially driven by the agreement made by the league with the Raiders and Chargers after awarding the L.A. relocation to the Rams.
Under the terms of that agreement the Chargers have the right of first refusal to join the Rams in L.A. with two one year options (2016 and 2017). The Chargers opted to stay in San Diego for this season, and if on Election Day, the referendum ballot initiative for a tax increase for their new downtown stadium gains passage, it is widely expected that they will remain in San Diego and decline their 2017 option to Los Angeles.
The agreement then stipulates that if the Chargers pass on the right to move to L.A., then the Raiders have the option to join the Rams in Southern California. This is seen as a move that is unpopular with the NFL owners, that they have many reasons for not wanting the Raiders in Los Angeles. That leads me to believe that the team will remain in Oakland.
It remains to be seen if the NFL owners would actually pass on the Vegas deal with the largest amount of public financing for a stadium and the future precedent that may set for other stadium project proposals. The counterpoint there is that their reaction to the Vegas deal would be very telling regarding the underlying reservations that the NFL would have about a franchise in that resort city.
The situation is fluid, and the next few months will be very interesting as the politics of this situation play out. In the end, the NFL gets what it wants, and in this situation it certainly looks like they want the Raiders to remain in Oakland.
