The Raiders have been building momentum towards a Las Vegas move, but they could be hitting a snag. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is not happy with what he perceives as changes to the stadium deal and he is threatening to walk.
[RELATED: Goodell May Exert Influence In Las Vegas Vote]
“I negotiated to bring in the Oakland Raiders, an NFL football team from Oakland, because they don’t have a stadium there, that I would build a stadium and rent it out to the Oakland Raiders,” Adelson told Reuters’ Ari Rabinovitch. “They want so much. So I told my people, ‘Tell them I could live with the deal, I could live without the deal. Here’s the way it’s gonna go down. If they don’t want it, bye-bye.”
The Raiders’ Las Vegas project took a major leap forward last week when Nevada’s governor OK’d a bill that would increase hotel taxes and reroute those additional funds to the new stadium. Adelson, meanwhile, has pledged up to $650MM toward building the stadium. If Adelson were to pull out, the Raiders and the state of Nevada would have to scramble for a new billionaire partner.
Judging from that picture it doesn’t look like Sheldon is walking away from anything
Yea hopefully he won’t
Hey Now!
That guy deserves whatever is said about him.
Sheldon “who loves ya baby” Adelson.”
Would you want to rent anything from this guy? I wouldn’t trust him for a second. Get to Las Vegas and suddenly terms change. This guy just seems like a shark; the Las Vegas Swindlers.
There aren’t a lot of details in the article about what he’s not happy with; but he stresses “Oakland Raiders” so many times and with emphasis: “I negotiated to bring in the Oakland Raiders, an NFL football team from Oakland, because they don’t have a stadium there, that I would build a stadium and rent it out to the Oakland Raiders”
That plus Goodell talking about wanting to keep the Raiders in Oakland because of the media market, but that Las Vegas might be a landing spot for another franchise, I wonder if Adelson might be getting more upset and frustrated with the NFL, not Mark Davis. I wonder if the brilliant commissioner has been trying to talk to Adelson about allowing the Chargers to move to Vegas instead of the Raiders. That would let the NFL stay in Oakland (and the San Francisco media market) and would also allow the Rams to not have to share the LA market. That would get the two big things Goodell wants (the Raiders not to move and the Chargers to not move to LA) and it’s already been reported that Goodell is trying to influence the Las Vegas decision.
The city of Oakland has said time after time they won’t compromise public funding a.k.a tax payers money to build a new facility so Vegas is the alternative with no financial hurdles…