Las Vegas Raiders? City and team want you to believe in it
On Friday afternoon the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, whose most famous holdings are the Venetian and Palazzo resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, sent out a tweet with its chariman Sheldon Adelson and Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis that sent a pretty clear message:
Yep, the Raiders and Las Vegas Sands wants you to know, both sides are serious about this whole Las Vegas Raiders idea.
That staged photo was just the topper to a day of tweets from Las Vegas Sands after news broke on Thursday that the company has proposed a $1 biillion stadium not far from The Strip for UNLV football and perhaps an NFL team too. The Raiders, left out of the Los Angeles mix for the time being, don’t have a permanent home for the future with Oakland not committing to a new stadium plan. So the Sands’ PR team was in full throat on Friday. Here is some of what it said on Twitter:
“LVS strongly supports a new stadium in #Vegas to attract major sporting & entertainment events as well as be the home of @unlvfootball #UNLV“
“The objective is to benefit & grow our tourism economy, nothing will move that needle like a new world-class stadium.”
“A state-of-the-art stadium in #Vegas would attract numerous major sporting events that would drive tourism.”
“A world-class stadium would benefit and grow the #Vegas tourism economy.”
Notice that Davis isn’t exactly hiding from the camera either in that photo the Sands sent out.
The Raiders and Las Vegas want everyone to hear them telling you this is real. It doesn’t make a ton of sense for LVS to be running a bluff. This seems like a legitimate sales pitch, even in a city in which projects are announced and never come to pass all the time. There’s no obvious reason why Las Vegas Sands would benefit from publicizing this if it wasn’t serious.
Are the Raiders serious too? Well, a billion-dollar stadium anywhere would be great for them. And Las Vegas is an untapped market for professional sports, one that supports UNLV basketball very well. Imagine fans from everywhere traveling to Las Vegas to see their favorite team play a road game. Las Vegas would become the greatest destination for future Super Bowls. And the Raiders seem like a great fit for the city that likes to play up its dangerous image. But, like the San Antonio rumors over the past year-and-a-half, having other options also creates at least the illusion of leverage. Maybe Las Vegas will be a better chip for the Raiders than San Antonio.
Here’s the big problem: The NFL has always treated Las Vegas like a disease.
The NFL as forever been strongly against gambling, even as it puts out injury reports and embraces fantasy football.
“We’re not in favor of legalizing sports gambling,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said just last October on ESPN Radio, via the New York Times. “We think that’s a mistake for sports. The integrity of the game is the most important thing. We want to make sure that our game is above any kind of influence. We do not want to participate in that. That’s something we’ve had a longstanding position — we continue to have that.”
This is how deeply the NFL has dug in against Las Vegas: Less than 10 years ago it had a policy that banned Las Vegas tourism advertisements during games, which included the Super Bowl. There was a highly publicized case in 2003 of Vegas tourism ads that didn’t even include a mention of or images of gambling being banned by the NFL from its Super Bowl broadcast because of its policy against gambling-related advertising. The NFL has restricted Vegas hotels from using the words “Super Bowl” to promote their parties on Super Bowl Sunday. That’s a trademark issue, sure, but it’s no surprise that Las Vegas was targeted.
So the NFL, which for years a really over-the-top and strict policy against gambling and Las Vegas, is going to suddenly allow one of its teams to move there? Hmmm. That’s why I have to believe this is a long shot, at best.
Maybe that is why Las Vegas Sands is selling its flirting with the Raiders so hard and so publicly. They want to win the public PR battle early. Many people would love if an NFL team was in Las Vegas. It’s a perfect city to visit, and taking in an NFL game (or a Super Bowl) there would be incredible. But there’s a long way to go.
The stadium project needs to get beyond the grandstanding stages, and a similar project for a UNLV stadium just off The Strip fizzled when it didn’t win approval from Nevada Legislature. Again, many Vegas projects that are hyped up by excited press releases never see the light of day. And then there would be the NFL side of it. Maybe the league will feel bad that the Raiders got left out of the LA mix and make sure the vote for the Las Vegas Raiders went the team’s way. Also, the NFL isn’t the type to turn down a $1 billion stadium. But it would require a significant U-turn on their Vegas attitude to put a team there.
Either way, Las Vegas and the Raiders want you to believe this is possible. Crazy dreams by visitors are nothing new to Sin City.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
