Las Vegas Raiders?

[ChiefsCountry]

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14...ng-leaked-memo

ALAMEDA, Calif. -- While a leaked memo from UNLV president Len Jessup said representatives of the Oakland Raiders will be in Las Vegas on Friday to check out potential stadium sites, team owner Mark Davis would offer only a cryptic comment.

"In typical Raider fashion," Davis said with a laugh over the phone from the Bay Area, "I can neither confirm nor deny."

Davis will be in Las Vegas and is scheduled to meet with Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson, Sands spokesman Ron Reese confirmed.

The Sands Corp. announced Thursday that it was lending its support to build a $1 billion domed stadium on a vacant 42 acres of land recently purchased by UNLV near the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Koval Lane across from McCarran International Airport.

"Correspondingly, the Sands leadership team let us know that officials from the Oakland Raiders are scheduled to travel to Las Vegas and tour locations around the valley for a potential new home, and they have asked us to meet them at our 42-acre site on Friday morning to answer questions about that site," Jessup wrote in the memo, which was reported earlier by Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston.

UNLV is looking for a new home for its football program, which has played at 35,500-seat Sam Boyd Stadium some nine miles from campus on the eastern edge of the city since 1971.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Los Angeles-based Majestic Realty Co. and UNLV are involved in the conceptual plans, and Las Vegas Sands senior vice president of government relations and community development Andy Abboud said the project would be a "public-private" partnership, with the Sands or the Adelson family contributing a large portion of the financing.

"He said the casino company, which operates the Venetian and Palazzo [casinos], as well as casinos in Macau, Singapore and Pennsylvania, could also raise financing for the project," the Review-Journal reported.

Tony Sanchez, UNLV's head football coach, said "having an on-campus, state-of-the-art stadium would be huge."

"We have a nice stadium now; the location is just a little further out," said Sanchez, who grew up a die-hard Raiders fan in the Bay Area. "To have something on campus, right in the heart of Las Vegas, would change the entire game-day atmosphere. We're right near the Strip. People can walk or take public transportation. It would be a great addition for the city."

Davis has long stated that remaining in Oakland is his primary goal, but after being rebuffed in an attempt to move to Los Angeles and join the Chargers in a joint-stadium project in nearby Carson, the Raiders do not have a lease for a home stadium for the 2016 season. They do have the option to join the Rams in Inglewood should the Chargers decline.

It is expected that the Raiders will play at least the 2016 season in Oakland. They have also been linked to San Diego, should the Chargers go to Los Angeles, for the following years as well as to San Antonio.

The NFL has had a hard line against Las Vegas, and it is hard to see the league signing off on allowing a team to relocate to the gambling capital of the country. The NFL did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Las Vegas has chased a major league franchise for almost two decades, including MLB and NBA teams. The city appears close to getting an NHL team in under-construction T-Mobile Arena between the New York-New York and Monte Carlo casinos.

And while Las Vegas may be a relatively small media market at No. 41 nationally, it is bigger than four other current NFL markets in Jacksonville (No. 48), New Orleans (No. 51), Buffalo (No. 52) and Green Bay (No. 68), per last year's Nielsen data.

[GloryDayz]

The team is certainly making an upgrade if they do it.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

The team is certainly making an upgrade if they do it.

Just not having to play on a baseball field would be an upgrade.

[ChiefsCountry]

According to the NFL fan map in 2014, Raiders were 3rd most popular team in Vegas already behind the 49ers and Cowboys, numbers were pretty tight as well.

[BWillie]

Blah. I was hoping Vegas would get NBA or Hockey. Don't care about NFL in Vegas at all. I'm not going to Vegas to watch a football game. It's also going to make my hotel more expensive and make Las Vegasians (?) into Raider shitbags. **** me.

[mr. tegu]

This is so terrific. Perhaps this could get us one step closer to more wide spread sports betting.

[kstater]

An open air stadium in Vegas? The first month of games willll be 100 degrees out

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[-King-]

Originally Posted by BWillie

Blah. I was hoping Vegas would get NBA or Hockey. Don't care about NFL in Vegas at all. I'm not going to Vegas to watch a football game. It's also going to make my hotel more expensive and make Las Vegasians (?) into Raider shitbags. **** me.

Uh, Vegas IS getting hockey...

[Nickhead]

Originally Posted by kstater

An open air stadium in Vegas? The first month of games willll be 100 degrees out

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call it an extended preseason

[Deberg_1990]

Hell yes. I'm there

[GloucesterChief]

Originally Posted by kstater

An open air stadium in Vegas? The first month of games willll be 100 degrees out

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Not as bad as: Houston, Miami, DC, Baltimore, Tampa, and Jacksonville.

Dry heat is much easier to deal with then humid heat.

[DaNewGuy]

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/1...aiders-oakland

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by DaNewGuy

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/1...aiders-oakland

**** that. Get out of Oakland.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Originally Posted by Pestilence

**** that. Get out of Oakland.

Why would you want to purchase a broken toilet?

[scho63]

It certainly just took a big step forward!

---------------------------------------------------------

The Raiders were just gifted $750 million by Nevada. What does it mean for the Oakland A’s?


http://mlb.nbcsports.com/2016/10/12/...he-oakland-as/

By Craig CalcaterraOct 12, 2016, 12:24 PM EDT

We’ve been watching the stadium situation in Oakland for years now. For all that watching nothing has happened for the Oakland Athletics, however, because they are basically held hostage by entities who are not the Oakland Athletics.

They couldn’t move to San Jose like they and San Jose wanted to because of the San Francisco Giants and Major League Baseball’s antitrust law-immune territory system. Likewise, they have been delayed in finding any solution in Oakland because the Oakland Raiders are also looking for someplace new to play and they and the NFL simply suck up more oxygen than the A’s do, meaning that the A’s have had to bide their time and wait to see what develops with the football team.

Now something is developing. The Raiders have been in discussions with Las Vegas for a good while now, and have seemed poised to move there if they can get the money for a new stadium. Money which no one in California is willing to give them because California is one of the few places in America that has woken up to how bad a deal it is to give professional sports teams free stadiums. But Nevada is still sleeping:

The Nevada Senate approved a plan Tuesday to spend $750 million in public funds for a new stadium in hopes of luring the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas, despite critics saying the deal “is deeply flawed.”

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval called a special session that began Monday in Carson City so lawmakers could take up a bill that would finance a $1.9 billion stadium off the Las Vegas Strip by providing $750 million from bonds that would be repaid with new revenue raised from a hotel tax.

Whether the Raiders move, ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio explains, is dependent upon the votes of the other NFL owners, several of whom are opposed to having a team in Las Vegas. The NFL is not like Major League Baseball, however, and owners have been known to go rogue in the past, suing to move despite league opposition and, in some cases, being successful in doing it. Heck, the Raiders themselves have done it before.

What does this all mean for the A’s? Well, if the Raiders do get to take that three quarters of a billion Nevada is foolishly giving them and move away from the Bay Area, the prospects for a new ballpark in Oakland are substantially better. Oakland has said at various times it wants both the A’s and the Raiders, but they’ve likewise noted that only one team is going to be able to get the sort of public accommodations a stadium would require, even if the construction of the place itself would be financed with private money.

For what it’s worth, Rob Manfred said this week that Oakland officials have privately told him that baseball is the city’s priority over football, and suggested that if the Raiders moved, the A’s new ballpark, wherever it is, could finally become a reality as opposed to the theoretical construct it has been for a good decade.

Good luck with that, A’s. And good luck giving the Raiders millions and millions of dollars to relocate, Nevada. That has never come back to bite anyone in the past. Like, ever.

[GloryDayz]

I can't imagine any team would choose to stay in Oakland instead of move to Vegas. It's only a matter of time.