National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell knows the score when it comes to placing a franchise in Las Vegas, and it doesn’t yet add up.
That’s the only level-headed take away from last week’s press conference in Houston that found Goodell answering reporters’ questions about the league’s position on the Oakland Raiders’ stated plan to move the team to a new stadium near the Strip in a deal funded largely with room tax dollars and a healthy investment from the family of casino multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson. As anxious as Southern Nevadans may be to have their own NFL team, and as expedited as the taxpayer funding element was jammed through the recent special session of the state Legislature, it’s still early in the process.
His tone was polite, but firm. It’s clear from multiple reports that his first duty is to protect the league’s waffling credibility. With domestic violence and player injury scandals brewing, the last thing Goodell and the owners want to do is get ahead of themselves by planting the league’s flag in the world’s capital of legalized sports betting.
Cue the catcalls of hypocrisy. Yes, anyone with a lick of sense knows the NFL — its vociferous denials to the contrary — has facilitated America’s obsession with sports wagering for the past half century. At times, it’s hard for some of us to recall which came first, the league or the bookmakers.
But don’t miss the point. Goodell makes a king’s ransom of a salary to please the owners and protect the image — or as he likes to call it, the integrity — of the sport that generates billions in annual revenues. After 35 years in the league, he knows precisely what he’s saying when he tries to keep the hysteria from the Vegas promoters in perspective.
There are economic considerations to weigh not only for the Raiders and the Las Vegas developers, but for every other owner and the league in general. Economics, fan support, and the stadium boondoggle deal itself. Believe it or not, the league may not actually be all that fond of attaching itself to the greatest hijacking by percentage of public tax dollars to build a stadium in professional sports history.
Las Vegas may defy gravity when it comes to marketing and drawing tourists, but all the neon-lighted media reports to the contrary we’re still a small market by NFL standards. And Oakland, as tattered and debt-laden as it’s stadium certainly is, is positioned in a much better place to succeed.
A team from the league is studying the nuances and could have a report as early as December. His public view of a meeting with Raiders owner Mark Davis could only be described as civil. He called it “respectful.” There were presentations from all three California teams, he said. “The membership had an opportunity to ask questions. … There’s still a great deal of information that we have to gather with respect to the circumstances that we see in Las Vegas. The opportunities and also the challenges.”
But if he sought to clear up any mystery, he failed. Asked about the presence of casino man Adelson in the stadium deal, Goodell said, “I don’t know what his role will be.”
At the heart of the league’s position, of course, is its tradition of balking at any close association with gambling. Goodell acknowledged society appears to have shifted its views on the subject, but “So I think there have been shifts, and we obviously monitor for that. But we still remain very much opposed to legalized gambling on sports, and we think that has an impact on the integrity of our game, and that’s what we watch. Whether people gamble or not is not necessarily our particular focus. But we want to do is make sure we’re doing what’s right for the game. We’re the NFL. That’s what our focus is.”
Although it’s too soon to tell whether the commissioner was attempting to let a little air out of the Vegas Raiders football, Goodell’s views should at least have a sobering effect on some of the rip-roaring promotion of the stadium plan.
And don’t think the American Gaming Association’s recently announced push to lobby to change federal law and expand legalized sports betting outside Nevada is lost on the professional sports leagues. But even the AGA’s most optimistic estimates place big changes in three-to-five years.
That leaves the current atmosphere and the reality that Las Vegas plays big but is actually on the small side of the league’s markets.
“We’re going to look at the market,” Goodell said. “We’re going to look at what we see as the opportunities. We’re going to look at … every aspect so that we’re making the right decision long term for the NFL.”
If the numbers add up for the owners, and only then, that could one day mean professional football on the Strip.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.
