In football, the field is always 100 yards long. In business, it’s possible to move the goal line.
Call it speculation from the cheap seats, but I’m starting to think that goal adjustment might be happening in the deal to bring the Los Angeles Raiders to Las Vegas to play in a sparkling domed stadium, one to be built with a whopping infusion of public funding.
Casino titan Sheldon Adelson, a principal partner in the deal, fueled speculation recently when he told a Reuters reporter, “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.’”
That comment must have raised eyebrows not only with Raiders’ owner Mark Davis, who has been gushing and glowing about moving his NFL franchise from Oakland to Las Vegas, but with the gang of elected officials and bureaucrats who risked their credibility by supporting a deal that includes an unprecedented $750 million investment of hotel room tax dollars, and otherwise substantially favors the developers. For his part, Adelson has pledged $650 million for the deal; Davis is piecing together $500 million.
For months, critics of the blitz to approve the stadium plan found themselves frequently saying, “They want so much.” But as everyone has once again been reminded, in Nevada the best of any deal rarely flows to the general public. And so the stadium deal was approved with much fanfare, without a penny required to repay any of the public investment.
Davis visited Las Vegas often during the development’s dog-and-pony media show. He was at the plentiful press briefings, and at the long public airing of issues by Governor Brian Sandoval’s Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee. There was even a stop in Reno, to talk of that city becoming the site of a training camp. Davis has gone so far as to call Las Vegas the “new home for the entire Raider Nation.”
Did he speak too soon?
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently called the idea of the “Las Vegas Raiders” a work in progress that’s being studied, one not without its challenges, which include Nevada’s status as the state with long-time legalized sports betting.
As to the deal, whether Adelson was merely popping off or sending a pointed message to Davis is hard to say, but the casino king’s statement to reporter Ari Rabinovitch has ricocheted around the Internet and echoed through at least some of the media. It gave the inimitable Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle, an opening to wisecrack, “There’s an incredible backroom battle raging between Raiders owner Mark Davis and Las Vegas billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson (hereafter referred to as LVBCMSA). I call dibs on the movie rights to ‘Mogul vs. Moptop: Neon-Noon Showdown on the Strip.”
Jason Cole of The Bleacher Report website reported that Davis was angered by Adelson’s expectation of being allowed to buy a piece of the Raiders. Davis, Cole wrote, was “caught off guard” by Adelson, and added that the team owner “has no intention of selling a portion of the Raiders to anyone.”
While reporters have been working to develop the story, Adelson spokesman Andy Abboud has been busy denying its existence. In an interview with News 3 in Las Vegas, he assured skeptics there’s no problem between the casino man and the football man.
“Kind of a nonstory, a taken-out-of-context situation,” Abboud said. “We’re not even close to [walking away]. Everything is moving along really well.”
The dustup, should it exist, may add perspective to the story of why the highly successful and experienced developer Majestic Realty
abruptly ended its partnership with Team Adelson in early October, just as the stadium deal was being rammed through the Nevada Legislature. Majestic Realty executive vice president Craig Cavileer told a reporter, “The project has evolved and it’s no longer a [Las Vegas] Sands and Majestic deal. It’s really personalized and it’s something that Sheldon wants to do as a legacy for his family, and we’re respectful of that, and we’re looking forward to seeing the project move forward.”
Majestic had no equity position in the stadium development. As for Davis, he appears motivated to maintain his own equity position in the football team, at minimum. Does that mean no one is going to succeed in moving the goal lines in this billion-dollar deal, or if they do, that the deal will still happen?
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com, or on Twitter at @jlnevadasmith.
